It's as much an approx as any physical measurement is. As for "real world" implications, Hinton probably deserves the physics Nobel more than (the) Hofstadter

It's as much an approx as any physical measurement is. As for "real world" implications, Hinton probably deserves the physics Nobel more than (the) Hofstadter who predicted this phenom (as a grad student) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_butterfly#:~:text=This%20discontinuity%20is,of%20finite%20size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_butterfly#:~:te...