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The model for mathematics is something like a “good book” of once-entered, unchanging posable questions and theorems. More may be added, but once added there is
by meroes 4y ago
The model for mathematics is something like a “good book” of once-entered, unchanging posable questions and theorems. More may be added, but once added there is a sense of permanent definitiveness and relevance.
For your example and beyond-mathematics calculator analogy, maybe the dates of historical events are equally definitive, but I don’t see much beyond that being so. Science goes through transformations. Either the questions remain the same (what is there, what exists), but the answers to them change as science develops. Or, the questions change, and the answers don’t (what did plogiston, aether, or general relativity predict).
Your expanded “calculator” paradigm seems unfounded. It’s not analogous to math.
- sitkack 4y ago> Your expanded “calculator” paradigm seems unfounded. Please explain. GPT makes a utility out something that previously was not. The GP didn't say it was exact.
- meroes 4y agoThey didn't say exact. Exact isn't the concept I'm concerned about. There is something unique about mathematics in that its answers never change. And that static structure can be tapped into with calculators. A "calculator" outside this domain reeks of potential danger to me. Asking a question to some other field whose answers are open to revision doesn't give one transparent access to timeless knowledge. There is always going to be a caveat that the answers given by GPT are clouded by time and circumstance. You can't just copy the answers GPT gives you and call that knowledge, like calculator results do allow. I would hope GPT knowledge comes with the understanding that GPT v.XX, exposed to Y circumstances, produced Z results. We don't do that for calculators.