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I can just say that Deutsch is another victim of what being good at theoretical physics tends to do to one's mind. The amount of intellectual hubris and arroga

by nzp 13y ago

I can just say that Deutsch is another victim of what being good at theoretical physics tends to do to one's mind. The amount of intellectual hubris and arrogance we can develop is staggering. Sheldon Cooper is not really a parody, it's what many theoretical physicists actually think (but are to socially adapted to say out loud), as in: "Penny - I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains." Deutsch may think he knows things about "the mind" but he shows in this article that, like many who like to speculate wildly about the mind, he's basing his claim mostly on armchairing about how he feels about certain phenomena. Things he says about behaviourism are indicative that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Or he does but is extremely bad at communicating his ideas. It would just take too long to comment on each and every empty claim this article makes. It's mostly a rehash of same old boring arguments about how special we are, this time because of our "creativity". Yawn, there is nothing special about "creativity", it's an active area of research, has been for decades, and it's actually very boring. He does make a few good points, like the one that quantum phenomena do not give rise to mental processes, but that is trivial in the sense it's obvious to anyone with some knowledge of quantum mechanics on one hand, and what neurons are and how they work on the other.

ArbitraryLimits 13y ago
Speaking as someone with a physics degree, I like to quote Peter Thiel (for once): > This is why physics Ph.D’s are notoriously difficult to work with; because they know fundamental things, they think they know all things. - http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-11-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-...
- mathattack 13y ago
  Perhaps also why physicists can be dangerous in Finance. They have all the math skills, but they can also have a little too much faith in those skills.
- tcgv 13y ago
  This kind of discussion always brings J. B. S. Haldane to my mind: - Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.[1] [1] Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286
ssivark 13y ago
XKCD: Physicists -- http://xkcd.com/793/ http://xkcd.com/793/ :-) EDIT: I linked to XKCD here... cuz never miss an opportunity for xkcd! Also, I just finished reading the article, so I'll add my comments on the content. The parent post (for this comment) contains a rant about physicists but has no specific rebuttal of the article. David Deutsch's arguments seem very sensible to me, in a completely non-mystical sort of way. I feel he asks questions pointing to the heart of AI. Regarding moving goalposts and stuff, you might like to read Freeman Dyson's (excellent and insightful) article on 'Birds and frogs' where he comments on such things. Deutsch is approaching the problem like a bird, typical AI researchers are approaching the problem in a frog-like manner. And oh, to state possible biases on record: I'm a physicist :-)
- nzp 13y ago
  I actually catch myself sometimes saying or thinking the tooltip text. :) But what Deutsch writes here is somewhat opposite in approach to the problem of how to be annoying--he's trying make a non-physics research area seem fundamentally more complicated than it likely is. I'm willing to say it borders on mysticism, and the only reason I can think of for such behaviour in an otherwise fine scientist is a strong emotional attachment to some romantic idea of what it is to be a human being. There is zero (AFAIK) theoretical or empirical evidence for his grand claims about creativity, and he's playing the old game in AI: goalpost moving. Whenever AI does something that was previously thought to be only achievable by humans, the critics immediately jump and say: "Ah, but that's not really intelligent, is it?"
- nzp 13y ago
  > The parent post (for this comment) contains a rant about physicists but has no specific rebuttal of the article. It's not a rant about physicists (I am one, for the record), it's just that this is what I noticed--whenever there's an otherwise good scientist giving misguided proclamations on how some research field other than his should proceed, it's always the physicist. Maybe I'm biased in that I take extra notice of what physicists say, but anyway it's anegdotal and not the main point. What matters is: whoever you are, if you're going to seriously opine on a subject, beyond general methodological remarks (which are extremely important), you better have in depth knowledge of the subject matter. Example claim: "behaviourism is abandoned by mainstream psychology". I'll avoid discussing what he means by "mainstream" here (there could be all sorts of ugly dragons lurking behind this statement), and just say that this is false. The term behaviourism is not used anymore (it's not useful anymore to use it), but a huge deal of behavioural theory and results are still alive and well in psychology of cognition. His central point, that "creativity" is the key to AGI, is meaningless the way he talks about it. Creative thinking is not a mysterious process, there is a lot of empirical work dealing with it. He further postulates that we need philosophical (of all things) breakthroughs. I can't help but think this is some sort of Chinese room style argument all over again. Having stated, multiple times, that philosophical/epistemological breakthroughs are needed, he speculates that maybe better understanding of genetic diffs between humans and other higher primates hold the key. It's all over the place. It's hard to give specific rebuttals to extremely vague ideas. Thanks for the pointer to Dyson's article, found it and stashed it for later reading. > And oh, to state possible biases on record: I'm a physicist :-) Have you read Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? This discussion is starting to feel like it, just do a %s/anarchists/physicists/g :)
varjag 13y ago
> He does make a few good points, like the one that quantum phenomena do not give rise to mental processes, but that is trivial in the sense it's obvious to anyone with some knowledge of quantum mechanics on one hand, and what neurons are and how they work on the other. This didn't prevent Penrose (surprise, another physicist) from establishing his little cult with Quantum Theory of Mind.
- nzp 13y ago
  Right, I remembered him after I posted. I don't know what to think of that. He obviously knows quantum theory. He can open any undergraduate textbook on neurophysiology and read all about how neurons work. So is he merely crazy, filling some emotional void religion might had filled in the old days, or something else? I don't know.
  - maaku 13y ago
    Consciousness and free will seem mysterious, so he posits the only mystery he knows in the universe at that scale. Predictable human bias not unique to physicists. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_...
  - ScottBurson 13y ago
    Do you really believe we know all there is to know about how neurons work? I don't. I think there are lots of surprises lurking.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      So is this a "Quantum Mind of the Gaps" argument?
    - nzp 13y ago
      I am not sure we positively know every single detail there is to know about neurons, but we know an excruciating amount of details. At the level of a single neuron, it's physiology and connections to neighbouring neurons, we know everything we need to know that it has absolutely nothing to do with QM. There are no mysterious phenomena here, nothing outside biochemistry and physiology.
simonhughes22 13y ago
Could not agree more. He states a lot of statements as if they are proven facts, where they are really speculation and opinion, which is the opposite of an objective scientific argument. And he seems to fundamentally miss-understand machine learning

by nzp 13y ago

ArbitraryLimits 13y ago

Speaking as someone with a physics degree, I like to quote Peter Thiel (for once): > This is why physics Ph.D’s are notoriously difficult to work with; because they know fundamental things, they think they know all things. - http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-11-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-...

mathattack 13y ago
Perhaps also why physicists can be dangerous in Finance. They have all the math skills, but they can also have a little too much faith in those skills.
tcgv 13y ago
This kind of discussion always brings J. B. S. Haldane to my mind: - Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.[1] [1] Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286

ssivark 13y ago

XKCD: Physicists -- http://xkcd.com/793/ http://xkcd.com/793/ :-) EDIT: I linked to XKCD here... cuz never miss an opportunity for xkcd! Also, I just finished reading the article, so I'll add my comments on the content. The parent post (for this comment) contains a rant about physicists but has no specific rebuttal of the article. David Deutsch's arguments seem very sensible to me, in a completely non-mystical sort of way. I feel he asks questions pointing to the heart of AI. Regarding moving goalposts and stuff, you might like to read Freeman Dyson's (excellent and insightful) article on 'Birds and frogs' where he comments on such things. Deutsch is approaching the problem like a bird, typical AI researchers are approaching the problem in a frog-like manner. And oh, to state possible biases on record: I'm a physicist :-)

nzp 13y ago
I actually catch myself sometimes saying or thinking the tooltip text. :) But what Deutsch writes here is somewhat opposite in approach to the problem of how to be annoying--he's trying make a non-physics research area seem fundamentally more complicated than it likely is. I'm willing to say it borders on mysticism, and the only reason I can think of for such behaviour in an otherwise fine scientist is a strong emotional attachment to some romantic idea of what it is to be a human being. There is zero (AFAIK) theoretical or empirical evidence for his grand claims about creativity, and he's playing the old game in AI: goalpost moving. Whenever AI does something that was previously thought to be only achievable by humans, the critics immediately jump and say: "Ah, but that's not really intelligent, is it?"
nzp 13y ago
> The parent post (for this comment) contains a rant about physicists but has no specific rebuttal of the article. It's not a rant about physicists (I am one, for the record), it's just that this is what I noticed--whenever there's an otherwise good scientist giving misguided proclamations on how some research field other than his should proceed, it's always the physicist. Maybe I'm biased in that I take extra notice of what physicists say, but anyway it's anegdotal and not the main point. What matters is: whoever you are, if you're going to seriously opine on a subject, beyond general methodological remarks (which are extremely important), you better have in depth knowledge of the subject matter. Example claim: "behaviourism is abandoned by mainstream psychology". I'll avoid discussing what he means by "mainstream" here (there could be all sorts of ugly dragons lurking behind this statement), and just say that this is false. The term behaviourism is not used anymore (it's not useful anymore to use it), but a huge deal of behavioural theory and results are still alive and well in psychology of cognition. His central point, that "creativity" is the key to AGI, is meaningless the way he talks about it. Creative thinking is not a mysterious process, there is a lot of empirical work dealing with it. He further postulates that we need philosophical (of all things) breakthroughs. I can't help but think this is some sort of Chinese room style argument all over again. Having stated, multiple times, that philosophical/epistemological breakthroughs are needed, he speculates that maybe better understanding of genetic diffs between humans and other higher primates hold the key. It's all over the place. It's hard to give specific rebuttals to extremely vague ideas. Thanks for the pointer to Dyson's article, found it and stashed it for later reading. > And oh, to state possible biases on record: I'm a physicist :-) Have you read Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? This discussion is starting to feel like it, just do a %s/anarchists/physicists/g :)

varjag 13y ago

> He does make a few good points, like the one that quantum phenomena do not give rise to mental processes, but that is trivial in the sense it's obvious to anyone with some knowledge of quantum mechanics on one hand, and what neurons are and how they work on the other. This didn't prevent Penrose (surprise, another physicist) from establishing his little cult with Quantum Theory of Mind.

nzp 13y ago
Right, I remembered him after I posted. I don't know what to think of that. He obviously knows quantum theory. He can open any undergraduate textbook on neurophysiology and read all about how neurons work. So is he merely crazy, filling some emotional void religion might had filled in the old days, or something else? I don't know.
- maaku 13y ago
  Consciousness and free will seem mysterious, so he posits the only mystery he knows in the universe at that scale. Predictable human bias not unique to physicists. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_...
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  Do you really believe we know all there is to know about how neurons work? I don't. I think there are lots of surprises lurking.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    So is this a "Quantum Mind of the Gaps" argument?
  - nzp 13y ago
    I am not sure we positively know every single detail there is to know about neurons, but we know an excruciating amount of details. At the level of a single neuron, it's physiology and connections to neighbouring neurons, we know everything we need to know that it has absolutely nothing to do with QM. There are no mysterious phenomena here, nothing outside biochemistry and physiology.

simonhughes22 13y ago

Could not agree more. He states a lot of statements as if they are proven facts, where they are really speculation and opinion, which is the opposite of an objective scientific argument. And he seems to fundamentally miss-understand machine learning