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I haven't read the original paper, but (speaking as a physicist) I'm always skeptical when physicists leap into extremely different disciplines and claim to hav

by Steuard 14y ago

I haven't read the original paper, but (speaking as a physicist) I'm always skeptical when physicists leap into extremely different disciplines and claim to have a grand insight that its specialists have never considered before. It could always be true: physics really does have a lot to contribute in many areas! But the burden of proof is very, very much on the physicists to justify the relevance of their approach. In this case, based only on this little summary, I have to wonder whether they are really explaining intelligence or whether they are identifying some broader natural principle for which intelligent behavior is just one manifestation. There may be something quite deep here, but I'm holding off on deciding what exactly it is.

cscurmudgeon 14y ago
Welcome to modern physics, where physicists do unfalsifiable and imprecise things based on bad philosophy. Anything goes as long as it gets you attention anywhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562156 HNers need to more critical of Science articles. This is where we need good criticism not on some poor hacker's pet project. Edit 1 "Additionally, a company he founded is exploring commercial applications of the research in areas such as robotics, economics and defense." That is a major red flag when people posit a universal AI theory and try to sell to the hapless government tech based on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation
- javert 14y ago
  > Welcome to modern physics, where physicists do unfalsifiable and imprecise things based on bad philosophy. Anything goes as long as it gets you attention anywhere. Thank you! I've been saying that for a long time, but much less eloquently.
- wamatt 14y ago
  It's turtles all the way down, until you reach Philosophy
  - pjscott 14y ago
    ... At which point it's still turtles, but nobody can really agree on what a turtle is, or what it means for something to be turtles, or what it means for something to be anything, including (but not limited to) turtles, or what it means for something to mean something. By the time the subject is settled -- if it ever is settled -- the turtle is dead. And so is God. (For some definitions of "turtle", "dead", "God", and most especially "is".)
    - solistice 14y ago
      Wasn't arguing about the definition of "is" a topic when the Linguists got bored and tried to invade the Philosophy Departments?
- Steuard 14y ago
  Your comments seem strangely insensitive, given that I already said that I'm a physicist (and presumably a modern one). As I've already indicated, there's reason to be skeptical when physicists stretch past the usual boundaries of the discipline. (Though it still could make important contributions.) But modern physics as modern physics is, by and large, solid science.
  - cscurmudgeon 14y ago
    I am also a physicist doing AI. The comment was not aimed at you! I did not mean modern physics (QM,Relativity etc)! That is rock solid! What I meant was physics which is closer to the Time Cube theory than rock solid mathematics on a spectrum of math and science. "As I've already indicated, there's reason to be skeptical when physicists stretch past the usual boundaries of the discipline." There is reason to be skeptical when anybody proposes a grand unifying theory for something as grand and difficult as intelligence!! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! This has been going since 1957 with so many young lives lost (sometimes literally) due to techniques bordering on charlatanism. Sorry to be harsh, I love AI and want it to succeed. It won't succeed if people mix pursuing knowledge with pursuing fame and $. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimyst...
coldtea 14y ago
>I haven't read the original paper, but (speaking as a physicist) I'm always skeptical when physicists leap into extremely different disciplines and claim to have a grand insight that its specialists have never considered before. That's bad, because the most interesting breakthroughs came from cross-disciplinary work.
- thibauts 14y ago
  Most likely, an unifying framework of nature would come from cross-disciplinary work. That's almost a tautology. Unfortunately we're stuck in a world where isolated people playing with narrow albeit very detailed views of nature, try to capture the big picture all on their own. I'm glad physicists can try their luck at AI. I'd be glad other disciplines, even remote, do too. Foreign concepts often bring with them new outlooks on problems that are very fertile and rejuvenating. A little bit more humility wouldn't hurt though.
- brg 14y ago
  I'm curious as to the basis of your statement. I believe the opposite to be true. Gene theory, the general theory, anti-biotics, the structure of DNA, the function of neurons, and the transistor all came from specialists. Is it not the rare breakthrough that comes from cross-disciplinary work? The cross-disciplinary breakthrough is often characterized as unifying, and hence rightfully celebrated. But they are neither the norm nor the most influential.
  - lambdaphage 14y ago
    the structure of DNA, the function of neurons Crick, Hodgkin and Huxley were all physicists poaching in other fields. In fact, relatively few of the people who laid the foundations in molecular biology were trained as biologists.
    - carbocation 14y ago
      > Crick, Hodgkin and Huxley were all physicists This recollection is incorrect across the board. Crick had only a bachelors in physics (which does not a physicist make), and his postgraduate training was in medical research. Huxley, an autodidact, had his background in medicine. I'm not sure about Hodgkin but I suspect he was also not a physicist.
wavesounds 14y ago
Agreed "My proposal is that intelligence is a process that attempts to capture future histories" 'future histories' is just ... the future! .... so his great proposal is 'intelligence predicts the future'? Well duh!
- jinfiesto 14y ago
  Errr no. His proposal is that intelligence is a process that maximizes the number of available future histories. Just capturing future histories is meaningless. The example he gives of an upright rod clearly illustrates the difference. Really what he's saying is that intelligence seeks to maintain maximum possibilities for the future.
  - wavesounds 14y ago
    He just set a goal of keeping the potential energy maximized for the rod, just like a big blue set a goal of winning at chess 30 years ago, both by 'predicting the future'. I don't see anything new here except the phrase 'future histories' which is not even defined because it just means 'the future'. As soon as I saw it claiming it can win at the stock market I knew it was BS.
    - svachalek 14y ago
      It's not "predicting" the future, it's "maximizing" the number of potential futures. In chess, the more moves you have available the better you are doing, generally. But another measure (probably better although I'm not a chess expert) is how few moves your opponent has available. Strictly speaking it sounds like this strategy would emphasize keeping future moves available for both you and your opponent. This is a more idealistic future for many real-world situations but I'm not sure I'd call it the definition of "intelligence".
      - klipt 14y ago
        Yeah, seems to me their idea can be summarized as "in the absence of a specific goal, keep options open". Which is generally good advice, but only "in the absence of a specific goal".
phillmv 14y ago
It sounds like crazy nonsense but there's just enough in it to sound crazy awesome. I've got like, an undergraduate understanding of how this works. Does anyone have a link to an ungated copy?
- alexwg 14y ago
  Yes: http://alexwg.org/ http://alexwg.org/
  - phillmv 14y ago
    Whelp, that's completely unreadable to me. Undergraduate computer science fail. I got as far as "the model of this physical process of entropy can act as a search function for lower entropic states, which given some poking, can resemble problem solution states". It's the poking part that is problematic. >To better understand this classical-thermal form (11) of causal entropic forcingwe simulated its effect [12,13] on the evolution of the causal macrostates of a variety of simple mechanical systems: (i) a particle in a box, (ii) a cart and pole system, (iii) a tool use puzzle, and (iv) a social cooperation puzzle I am wildly unqualified to comment on this paper, but it's suspicious that you would jump to a "tool use puzzle" and a "social cooperation puzzle". It yields a really fun result and a fun way of talking about cognition, but it seems unsurprising to say that once you describe a problem in the physical terms of this framework, your framework can then solve the problem, as in, >We modeled an animal as a disk (disk I) undergoing causal entropic forcing, a potential tool as a smaller disk (disk II) outside of a tube too narrow for disk I to enter, and an object of interest as a second smaller disk (disk III) resting inside the tube The notion that currently understood physical models can act as a learning system, given the right parameters, is really cool and exciting, and there's a great simplicity and metaphoric appeal to it.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - solistice 14y ago
      phill, this is hacker news, and if someone finds you're wildly unqualified to comment on something, don't worry, he'll be vocal about it and explain exactly why he thinks you're unqualified to comment about it. That's why I love this site. On any similar site aggregator, I'd get cat pictures and people telling me my opinions are stupid because my face is stupid. More towards the topic, I'd say these kind of articles have to be taken with a grain of something, preferably salt or cynism, depending on taste. I'm usually more of a material science/electronics technology buff, and news articles in that area will not hestitate to present a relatively minor paper as a breakthrough in battery technology that will solve all our energy problems in the next 5 years. But then you read on, compare it against the existing technologies and you realize that they just did something funny to the diodes that increases power density at the cost of usuage time. Somewhat handy in some applications, but not a game changer. PS: You're certainly not the youngest here.
DennisP 14y ago
Physicists are doing quite well in economics, according to economist Steve Keen in his book Debunking Economics.

by Steuard 14y ago

cscurmudgeon 14y ago

Welcome to modern physics, where physicists do unfalsifiable and imprecise things based on bad philosophy. Anything goes as long as it gets you attention anywhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562156 HNers need to more critical of Science articles. This is where we need good criticism not on some poor hacker's pet project. Edit 1 "Additionally, a company he founded is exploring commercial applications of the research in areas such as robotics, economics and defense." That is a major red flag when people posit a universal AI theory and try to sell to the hapless government tech based on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation

javert 14y ago
> Welcome to modern physics, where physicists do unfalsifiable and imprecise things based on bad philosophy. Anything goes as long as it gets you attention anywhere. Thank you! I've been saying that for a long time, but much less eloquently.
wamatt 14y ago
It's turtles all the way down, until you reach Philosophy
- pjscott 14y ago
  ... At which point it's still turtles, but nobody can really agree on what a turtle is, or what it means for something to be turtles, or what it means for something to be anything, including (but not limited to) turtles, or what it means for something to mean something. By the time the subject is settled -- if it ever is settled -- the turtle is dead. And so is God. (For some definitions of "turtle", "dead", "God", and most especially "is".)
  - solistice 14y ago
    Wasn't arguing about the definition of "is" a topic when the Linguists got bored and tried to invade the Philosophy Departments?
Steuard 14y ago
Your comments seem strangely insensitive, given that I already said that I'm a physicist (and presumably a modern one). As I've already indicated, there's reason to be skeptical when physicists stretch past the usual boundaries of the discipline. (Though it still could make important contributions.) But modern physics as modern physics is, by and large, solid science.
- cscurmudgeon 14y ago
  I am also a physicist doing AI. The comment was not aimed at you! I did not mean modern physics (QM,Relativity etc)! That is rock solid! What I meant was physics which is closer to the Time Cube theory than rock solid mathematics on a spectrum of math and science. "As I've already indicated, there's reason to be skeptical when physicists stretch past the usual boundaries of the discipline." There is reason to be skeptical when anybody proposes a grand unifying theory for something as grand and difficult as intelligence!! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! This has been going since 1957 with so many young lives lost (sometimes literally) due to techniques bordering on charlatanism. Sorry to be harsh, I love AI and want it to succeed. It won't succeed if people mix pursuing knowledge with pursuing fame and $. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimyst...

coldtea 14y ago

>I haven't read the original paper, but (speaking as a physicist) I'm always skeptical when physicists leap into extremely different disciplines and claim to have a grand insight that its specialists have never considered before. That's bad, because the most interesting breakthroughs came from cross-disciplinary work.

thibauts 14y ago
Most likely, an unifying framework of nature would come from cross-disciplinary work. That's almost a tautology. Unfortunately we're stuck in a world where isolated people playing with narrow albeit very detailed views of nature, try to capture the big picture all on their own. I'm glad physicists can try their luck at AI. I'd be glad other disciplines, even remote, do too. Foreign concepts often bring with them new outlooks on problems that are very fertile and rejuvenating. A little bit more humility wouldn't hurt though.
brg 14y ago
I'm curious as to the basis of your statement. I believe the opposite to be true. Gene theory, the general theory, anti-biotics, the structure of DNA, the function of neurons, and the transistor all came from specialists. Is it not the rare breakthrough that comes from cross-disciplinary work? The cross-disciplinary breakthrough is often characterized as unifying, and hence rightfully celebrated. But they are neither the norm nor the most influential.
- lambdaphage 14y ago
  the structure of DNA, the function of neurons Crick, Hodgkin and Huxley were all physicists poaching in other fields. In fact, relatively few of the people who laid the foundations in molecular biology were trained as biologists.
  - carbocation 14y ago
    > Crick, Hodgkin and Huxley were all physicists This recollection is incorrect across the board. Crick had only a bachelors in physics (which does not a physicist make), and his postgraduate training was in medical research. Huxley, an autodidact, had his background in medicine. I'm not sure about Hodgkin but I suspect he was also not a physicist.

wavesounds 14y ago

Agreed "My proposal is that intelligence is a process that attempts to capture future histories" 'future histories' is just ... the future! .... so his great proposal is 'intelligence predicts the future'? Well duh!

jinfiesto 14y ago
Errr no. His proposal is that intelligence is a process that maximizes the number of available future histories. Just capturing future histories is meaningless. The example he gives of an upright rod clearly illustrates the difference. Really what he's saying is that intelligence seeks to maintain maximum possibilities for the future.
- wavesounds 14y ago
  He just set a goal of keeping the potential energy maximized for the rod, just like a big blue set a goal of winning at chess 30 years ago, both by 'predicting the future'. I don't see anything new here except the phrase 'future histories' which is not even defined because it just means 'the future'. As soon as I saw it claiming it can win at the stock market I knew it was BS.
  - svachalek 14y ago
    It's not "predicting" the future, it's "maximizing" the number of potential futures. In chess, the more moves you have available the better you are doing, generally. But another measure (probably better although I'm not a chess expert) is how few moves your opponent has available. Strictly speaking it sounds like this strategy would emphasize keeping future moves available for both you and your opponent. This is a more idealistic future for many real-world situations but I'm not sure I'd call it the definition of "intelligence".
    - klipt 14y ago
      Yeah, seems to me their idea can be summarized as "in the absence of a specific goal, keep options open". Which is generally good advice, but only "in the absence of a specific goal".

phillmv 14y ago

It sounds like crazy nonsense but there's just enough in it to sound crazy awesome. I've got like, an undergraduate understanding of how this works. Does anyone have a link to an ungated copy?

alexwg 14y ago
Yes: http://alexwg.org/ http://alexwg.org/
- phillmv 14y ago
  Whelp, that's completely unreadable to me. Undergraduate computer science fail. I got as far as "the model of this physical process of entropy can act as a search function for lower entropic states, which given some poking, can resemble problem solution states". It's the poking part that is problematic. >To better understand this classical-thermal form (11) of causal entropic forcingwe simulated its effect [12,13] on the evolution of the causal macrostates of a variety of simple mechanical systems: (i) a particle in a box, (ii) a cart and pole system, (iii) a tool use puzzle, and (iv) a social cooperation puzzle I am wildly unqualified to comment on this paper, but it's suspicious that you would jump to a "tool use puzzle" and a "social cooperation puzzle". It yields a really fun result and a fun way of talking about cognition, but it seems unsurprising to say that once you describe a problem in the physical terms of this framework, your framework can then solve the problem, as in, >We modeled an animal as a disk (disk I) undergoing causal entropic forcing, a potential tool as a smaller disk (disk II) outside of a tube too narrow for disk I to enter, and an object of interest as a second smaller disk (disk III) resting inside the tube The notion that currently understood physical models can act as a learning system, given the right parameters, is really cool and exciting, and there's a great simplicity and metaphoric appeal to it.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - solistice 14y ago
    phill, this is hacker news, and if someone finds you're wildly unqualified to comment on something, don't worry, he'll be vocal about it and explain exactly why he thinks you're unqualified to comment about it. That's why I love this site. On any similar site aggregator, I'd get cat pictures and people telling me my opinions are stupid because my face is stupid. More towards the topic, I'd say these kind of articles have to be taken with a grain of something, preferably salt or cynism, depending on taste. I'm usually more of a material science/electronics technology buff, and news articles in that area will not hestitate to present a relatively minor paper as a breakthrough in battery technology that will solve all our energy problems in the next 5 years. But then you read on, compare it against the existing technologies and you realize that they just did something funny to the diodes that increases power density at the cost of usuage time. Somewhat handy in some applications, but not a game changer. PS: You're certainly not the youngest here.

DennisP 14y ago

Physicists are doing quite well in economics, according to economist Steve Keen in his book Debunking Economics.