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Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.
by zardo 10y ago
Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.
- pron 10y agoI don't think "real mathematicians" do anything less worthy, novel or even revolutionary than "real explorers". Newton's contribution wasn't in collecting data about the motion of the planets or even in discovering patterns in that motion, but in uncovering laws. At this point in time (more precisely, in the past three decades), the study of neural networks feels like ancient astronomy (aside from some early theoretical results); we're in the data-collection and pattern-search phase. The scientific revolution is yet to happen.
- zardo 10y ago>we're in the data-collection and pattern-search phase. The scientific revolution is yet to happen. Sure, and I would call that an age of exploration. I just take issue with criticizing work in a field with no great explanatory theory, for a lack of theory. There are only two routes a researcher can take to address the criticism, abandon work in the field, or come up with the missing breakthrough theory. It's sort of like saying no one should have bothered with biology until after Darwin figured out what was going on.
- pron 10y agoYou're right. I didn't mean it as criticism, although it may have come out this way, only I decided to read a modern NN paper after not having touched NNs for almost 20 years, and was surprised to learn that there's little if any new theory.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]