You're confusing two meanings of world "understanding": 1. Finding a comprehensive explanation 2. Having a comprehensive explanation which is usable 99.999%

You're confusing two meanings of world "understanding": 1. Finding a comprehensive explanation 2. Having a comprehensive explanation which is usable 99.999% people on Earth do not discover any new laws, so I don't think you use #1 as a fundamental deficiency of LLMs. And nobody is saying that just training a LLM produces understanding of new phenomena. That's a strawman. The thesis is that a more powerful LLM together with more software, more models, etc, can potentially discover something new. That's not observed yet. But I'd say it would be weird if LLM can match capabilities of average folk but never match Newton. It's not like Newton's brain is fundamentally different. Also worth noting that formulas can be discovered by enumeration. E.g. `m * v` should not be particularly hard to discover. And the fact that it took people centuries implies that that's what happened: people tried different formulas until they found one which works. It doesn't have to be some fancy Newton magic.