3 ms·

Can someone help me see a charitable framing of the phrase "not even wrong", as used in articles like this? My best guess is that it's equivalent to him saying

Can someone help me see a charitable framing of the phrase "not even wrong", as used in articles like this? My best guess is that it's equivalent to him saying that he disagrees with a position's premises. But in a deeply pejorative, dismissive, condescending, conversation-ending manner. It's hard to imagine someone in those crosshairs wanting to engage with him in discussion. But, maybe I'm badly misreading the author's intent.

anyonecancode 4y ago
Don't know if this makes it better, worse, or no change, or if you already knew the origin of the phrase, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
- bombcar 4y ago
  Basically shorthand for >Mr. Madison, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    In the words of Martin Luther: "Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them."
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zmgsabst 4y ago
I think it’s saying that the model used can’t conclude anything about the topic they purport to examine. You don’t reach the wrong conclusion from the premises (in analogy to a scientific theory making a wrong prediction) — you don’t reach any conclusion at all (in analogy to a scientific theory being unable to predict results entirely).
sidlls 4y ago
The charitable framing is that the author contends the arguments are from a position of such thorough ignorance about the field as to be unworthy of giving them more time than outright dismissal. They're so bad, in fact, that even constructing an argument showing how bad would itself be fundamentally wasteful: the person presenting the argument isn't going to understand the rebuttal, and the audience is likely to end up either confused or also to have had its time wasted.
benreesman 4y ago
People usually mean that a statement or question is sufficiently ill-posed that it or any answer to it can't be right or wrong: it's tautological, or paradoxical, or otherwise doesn't clear the bar for something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic. Or perhaps it relies on such a degree of hypothetical presupposition that conclusions are of no practical value outside of a bull session after work (see: Kurzweil). I don't know if that's what Pauli meant by it, but it's how it gets used today. It's especially useful in the setting of people talking about "Artificial Intelligence", because that phrase doesn't mean anything except to certain people in certain contexts. "artificial" is a pretty tricky word, "intelligence" is a really tricky word, and together they're basically impossible to define. Professional machine learning researchers talk about "performance" on "tasks". This is usually much better defined. Loosely: "Hey we got a machine to top-5 classify ImageNet pictures correctly X% more often than graduate students". That statement is right or wrong. Likewise winning at Chess or Starcraft or Go. Ditto protein folding at CASP. But "we got a machine to be intelligent/conscious"? How do you measure that? We can't even agree about what level of sophistication in an organism qualifies as "conscious", let alone "human". We can't even agree at what point an embryo becomes conscious! People really enjoy talking about AI relative with an implicit understanding that "intelligence" is "what I am", and fair play, if it's fun to talk about people can have fun talking about it. But when people start getting alarmist in an effort to generate either buzz or money and stir up a bunch of controversy around it, some of us think that "dismissive" is exactly the right attitude.
gammarator 4y ago
I interpret it as meaning that the statement referred to is not falsifiable: it is thus beyond the reach of science.
sdwr 4y ago
It means so misguided it's not even in the conversation. I'd take it easy on him though, my interpretation is he's using anger at a vague "other" as a ramp and fuel to dive into the topic. Talking about vague philosophical terms for no reward is a hard thing to convince yourself to do.

anyonecancode 4y ago

Don't know if this makes it better, worse, or no change, or if you already knew the origin of the phrase, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

bombcar 4y ago
Basically shorthand for >Mr. Madison, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  In the words of Martin Luther: "Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them."

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

zmgsabst 4y ago

I think it’s saying that the model used can’t conclude anything about the topic they purport to examine. You don’t reach the wrong conclusion from the premises (in analogy to a scientific theory making a wrong prediction) — you don’t reach any conclusion at all (in analogy to a scientific theory being unable to predict results entirely).

sidlls 4y ago

The charitable framing is that the author contends the arguments are from a position of such thorough ignorance about the field as to be unworthy of giving them more time than outright dismissal. They're so bad, in fact, that even constructing an argument showing how bad would itself be fundamentally wasteful: the person presenting the argument isn't going to understand the rebuttal, and the audience is likely to end up either confused or also to have had its time wasted.

benreesman 4y ago

People usually mean that a statement or question is sufficiently ill-posed that it or any answer to it can't be right or wrong: it's tautological, or paradoxical, or otherwise doesn't clear the bar for something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic. Or perhaps it relies on such a degree of hypothetical presupposition that conclusions are of no practical value outside of a bull session after work (see: Kurzweil). I don't know if that's what Pauli meant by it, but it's how it gets used today. It's especially useful in the setting of people talking about "Artificial Intelligence", because that phrase doesn't mean anything except to certain people in certain contexts. "artificial" is a pretty tricky word, "intelligence" is a really tricky word, and together they're basically impossible to define. Professional machine learning researchers talk about "performance" on "tasks". This is usually much better defined. Loosely: "Hey we got a machine to top-5 classify ImageNet pictures correctly X% more often than graduate students". That statement is right or wrong. Likewise winning at Chess or Starcraft or Go. Ditto protein folding at CASP. But "we got a machine to be intelligent/conscious"? How do you measure that? We can't even agree about what level of sophistication in an organism qualifies as "conscious", let alone "human". We can't even agree at what point an embryo becomes conscious! People really enjoy talking about AI relative with an implicit understanding that "intelligence" is "what I am", and fair play, if it's fun to talk about people can have fun talking about it. But when people start getting alarmist in an effort to generate either buzz or money and stir up a bunch of controversy around it, some of us think that "dismissive" is exactly the right attitude.

gammarator 4y ago

I interpret it as meaning that the statement referred to is not falsifiable: it is thus beyond the reach of science.

sdwr 4y ago

It means so misguided it's not even in the conversation. I'd take it easy on him though, my interpretation is he's using anger at a vague "other" as a ramp and fuel to dive into the topic. Talking about vague philosophical terms for no reward is a hard thing to convince yourself to do.