4 ms·

I (OP) am not a physicist but still a scientist. I’m not gonna say the theories it said are solid. It’s quite clear to me that they’re not. But they are better

I (OP) am not a physicist but still a scientist. I’m not gonna say the theories it said are solid. It’s quite clear to me that they’re not. But they are better theories than what I (who knows the fundamentals of physics for the most part) can come up with. So it’s not a subject matter expert but better than the average joe. For what it is, (and given I asked it to imagine theories), its output looks impressive to me. And I can attest to its abilities to do this in biology as well, and I’ll say it does a better job than most biology professors in fact. I just didn’t publish those chats here. Maybe it did a better job in biology because I was able to correct it at an expert level (which I was not able to here). Given the demonstrably (like right here in these comments) myopic unimaginative nature of physics as a science today, it’s possible not a single physicist would try to entertain this system as a hypothesis generation machine. I mean we have discovered everything already right?

whatshisface 4y ago
I think you asked it some of the right questions, but even then it was able to slip past your skepticism by being really good at sounding like an intelligent human being that was saving you the trouble of the details. There's no hypothesis in there. You would have to be an insanely skeptical person, one who would drive anybody nuts to talk to, to approach a ChatGPT session in a field you're not an expert in or maybe even one you are, and evaluate it right... The only normal human perspective that fits what ChatGPT is actually like is the one we take on people we think are terrible, so that is why I say it's awful, although it's just a machine.
logifail 4y ago
> a hypothesis generation machine Is anyone claiming there's a market niche for hypothesis generation in the natural sciences? Full disclosure: I have a science PhD and a couple of published papers as a result. It was a long, slow, frustrating grind, but generating hypotheses wasn't even close to being the hard bit.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I too have a PhD and a few papers. If you think generating a good hypothesis wasn’t the hard bit then in my opinion you never did get what science was about. In my opinion. Which is the minority among todays scientists. It’s like People dont even know what they’re doing wrong.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > If you think generating a good hypothesis wasn’t the hard bit then in my opinion you never did get what science was about [..] Is a good hypothesis important? Sure. Is it easy to get that bit wrong? Yes, and lots of people do. I'm reminded of one of Paul Graham's quotes: "I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas. They think creating a startup is just a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And since a successful startup is worth millions of dollars, a good idea is therefore a million dollar idea [..] startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."[0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html
    - ramraj07 4y ago
      I love PGs insights and I generally agree with his ideas article. But think about it, is a startup idea a hypothesis or something more than that? To the market each startup is perhaps a hypothesis, but for you as a founder the idea shouldn’t just be a hunch. It can be in initial stages but you need to validate it asap and iterate on it. Which is the message I took from his writing. And this doesn’t even touch the question of what’s different between basic science and entrepreneurship.

whatshisface 4y ago

I think you asked it some of the right questions, but even then it was able to slip past your skepticism by being really good at sounding like an intelligent human being that was saving you the trouble of the details. There's no hypothesis in there. You would have to be an insanely skeptical person, one who would drive anybody nuts to talk to, to approach a ChatGPT session in a field you're not an expert in or maybe even one you are, and evaluate it right... The only normal human perspective that fits what ChatGPT is actually like is the one we take on people we think are terrible, so that is why I say it's awful, although it's just a machine.

logifail 4y ago

> a hypothesis generation machine Is anyone claiming there's a market niche for hypothesis generation in the natural sciences? Full disclosure: I have a science PhD and a couple of published papers as a result. It was a long, slow, frustrating grind, but generating hypotheses wasn't even close to being the hard bit.

ramraj07 4y ago
I too have a PhD and a few papers. If you think generating a good hypothesis wasn’t the hard bit then in my opinion you never did get what science was about. In my opinion. Which is the minority among todays scientists. It’s like People dont even know what they’re doing wrong.
- logifail 4y ago
  > If you think generating a good hypothesis wasn’t the hard bit then in my opinion you never did get what science was about [..] Is a good hypothesis important? Sure. Is it easy to get that bit wrong? Yes, and lots of people do. I'm reminded of one of Paul Graham's quotes: "I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas. They think creating a startup is just a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And since a successful startup is worth millions of dollars, a good idea is therefore a million dollar idea [..] startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."[0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I love PGs insights and I generally agree with his ideas article. But think about it, is a startup idea a hypothesis or something more than that? To the market each startup is perhaps a hypothesis, but for you as a founder the idea shouldn’t just be a hunch. It can be in initial stages but you need to validate it asap and iterate on it. Which is the message I took from his writing. And this doesn’t even touch the question of what’s different between basic science and entrepreneurship.