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I wish we would get to see more negitive result papers. I would love to read a paper entitled: "Logic Gates Can't Be Implemented by Wombats"
by teruakohatu 6y ago
I wish we would get to see more negitive result papers. I would love to read a paper entitled:
"Logic Gates Can't Be Implemented by Wombats"
- andrewl 6y agoI would also be interested in a paper titled: Logic Gates Can Be Implemented by Wombats
- jonplackett 6y agoThat’s a hn front pager for sure.
- gaoshan 6y agoI'd bet money that a sufficiently large swarm of wombats, placed in a geometrically constrained environment, could indeed implement a logic gate.
- sitkack 6y agoI have been doing reversible computations on the WombatLattice for millidecades.
- gwern 6y agoHow would one prove that? It's easy to show crabs can make logic gates - just do it. How would you prove wombats can't ever implement logic gates? Maybe you just used the wrong treats, and peanut butter snacks would make them motivated enough to train.
- teruakohatu 6y agoOk fair enough, how about "Peanut Butter Does Not Make Wombats Turing Complete"? But I get what you are saying, if I were writing a paper it would be along the lines of: "Response reinforcement in wombats: Failure to obtain logic gate behaviors".
- dalbasal 6y ago...further research required.
- parliament32 6y agoBut again, how do you prove wombats + peanut butter won't ever make logic gates? Maybe they will if the temperature and humidity are at certain levels? Or maybe different levels of lights or sound? It's really, really hard to account for all variables with a negative result.
- Bjartr 6y agoYou don't "prove" that, you fail to reject the null hypothesis. That's what the post you're responding to meant by "negative result"
- geoduck14 6y agoI would read an article about people trying to find out.
- wombatmobile 6y agoCrowd Safety and Crowd Risk Analysis Prof. Dr. G. Keith Still FIMA FICPEM SFIIRSM MEWI FIPM FHEA https://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter3.html https://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter3.html
- hansvm 6y ago> It's easy to show crabs can make logic gates - just do it That's just an artifact of the way we reason about the world. We take as an assumption that induction works for "positive" events (we showed that these crabs can make logic gates) and can't accept the same evidence when it pertains to "negative" events (we showed that crab movements _are not_ uniformly random -- no you didn't; what if you didn't feed the crabs the right kind of peanut butter?).
- Dylan16807 6y agoIt's easy to prove "X is not always true". It's hard to prove "X is not ever true". Your "random movement" hypothesis is the former, so this evidence would in fact be accepted. The wombat hypothesis is the latter.
- hansvm 6y agoYes, but the hypothesis in the paper (soldier crabs can implement logic gates) is _also_ of the latter form, despite its positive construction. Being usable for a logic gate implies an element of control and repeatability, and unlike a statement like "the sky can be blue" a point observation doesn't suffice as proof.
- Dylan16807 6y agoI disagree. A moderately unreliable logic gate is still a logic gate, and no reasonable person would say that the crabs are guaranteed to work. Look at the actual paper. A full third of it is about the robustness of the gate.
- ineedasername 6y agoHence David Hume's criticisms on the limits of inductive reasoning.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoIs that how the scientific method works. Proving a negative. (Impossible.) Or is it aimed at "disproving a positive".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ineedasername 6y ago"Mashed potatoes at 5 degrees Kelvin Still not Effective Superconductors"
- _Microft 6y agoThe "Kelvin" is the great exception with temperature units by the way, as it is not used with "degrees" but just on its own.
- Dylan16807 6y agoI'd use it anyway just to annoy people, to be honest. It's not like the distinction is particularly based on logic. Edit: They used to use degree Kelvin, so it's not even wrong.
- _Microft 6y agoAnnoying people intentionally does not sound too clever, is there some context I am missing?
- Dylan16807 6y agoThey won't be annoyed if they use language normally. But if someone is trying to be prescriptivist, they deserve some annoyance. And I didn't say it was clever.