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I got lost quite a bit on this, but luckily I stayed through the end. > It’s a similar problem in natural science. You see some elaborate set of things happeni
by aakilfernandes 8y ago
I got lost quite a bit on this, but luckily I stayed through the end.
> It’s a similar problem in natural science. You see some elaborate set of things happening in some biological system. Can one “reverse engineer” these to find an “explanation” for them? Sometimes one might be able to say, for example, that evolution by natural selection would be likely to lead to something. Or that it’s just common in the computational universe and so is likely to occur. But there’s no guarantee that the natural world is set up in any way that necessarily allows human explanation.
- Iv 8y agoI remember a quote, I think it was from Asimov, that really enlightened me. He explains that before Newton's law of gravity, we had ways to calculate orbits and planets positions. It involved complex abacus but a model existed. The fact that he worked so hard, trying to find a simpler model was, according to Asimov, an essential act of faith in "the intelligibility of the universe". He argued that this was a principle of faith held by many fundamental researchers.
- tensor 8y agoI'm pretty sure that the previous methods were imperfect, so it wasn't simply that we wanted a "simpler" method, but one that would stand the test of time.
- Custardian 8y agolv is citing an Asimov quotation on Newton's actual motivations, not the motivations Newton plausibly had or you think Newton had. Trying to infer the motivation from the result is exactly what aakilfernandes's quotation is referring to! (Whether Asimov had done his research on this is another matter.)