We haven’t seriously tried to have physics-like theories of intelligence! Only a few people (various academics, MIRI) have done something close to trying. Compare to how much effort has been put into optimizing deep learning.
Maybe physics was also confusing and weird until we understood it.
Aristotle’s physics is the correct approximation of Newtonian physics in a particular domain, which happens to be the domain where we, humanity, conduct our business. This domain is formed by objects in a spherically symmetric gravitational field (that of the Earth) immersed in a fluid (air or water) and the main celestial bodies visible from Earth.
For a student who has learned physics in a modern school it may sound strange to start physics by studying objects in a fluid. But for somebody who hasn’t it may sound strange not to: everything around us is immersed in a fluid. Aristotle’s physics is a highly nontrivial correct description of these phenomena, without mistakes, and consistent with Newtonian physics, in the same manner in which Newtonian physics is consistent with Einstein physics in its domain of validity.
Aristotelian physics is less constrained than Newtonian physics. That’s the main reason it works. Anything you can explain with Newtonian physics, you can explain with Aristotelian physics too.
(...for the most part. I haven’t done a thorough logical check that this statement is strictly true. But it’s true enough. Both theories can explain why the path of a projectile is a parabola for instance.)
The “Anything you can explain with X, you can also explain with Y” thing is also true of more accurate or general theories. Anything Newtonian physics explains, so does Einsteinian physics.
The key thing (IMO) that makes Aristotelian physics inferior is that it also can explain false things.
For instance, it’s a priori possible that the arc of a thrown rock is a segment of a circle. If so, we could explain that in Aristotelian terms: motion is naturally circular, as demonstrated by the heavens (the sphere of quintessence), so of course the way something thrown away from its natural sphere would return to it via a circular motion.
But had thrown rocks formed arc segments instead of parabolic segments, that would have invalidated Newtonian (and Einsteinian) physics.
So the key thing that makes Newtonian physics a better theory than Aristotelian is that it’s more constrained and still survives experimentation. The theory literally has more Shannon information in it. That’s why Newtonian mechanics let us build the Iron Bridge in one shot whereas Aristotelian physics couldn’t: it wasn’t constrained enough to tell us what would happen with different bridge designs even after knowing everything about iron’s physical properties.
It’s a case where science made advancement without directly falsifying a theory.
So sure, Aristotelian physics was mostly right, in the sense that it was and is a fit to how the world works. It’s just that Newtonian physics also fits, and is more constrained, which means it’s the more useful fit to our world.
(This message brought to you by, taking a break from coding with LLM agents, and sadly noticing that some of their cadences have affected my way of talking. Alas. I just need to write more of my own stuff I suppose.)
I’ve heard this before, and it still seems trivially wrong about everyday experience. When was the last time that you saw an object falling at terminal velocity, vs the last time you saw an object fall much slower than it? Most of the time that I deal with stuff moving through air, it’s following Newtonian parabolas, because air is thin enough that air resistance is often irrelevant!
In air? Papers I’ve dropped, feathers from my clothes. But, most items I drop don’t seem to accelerate that much beyond the initial period of “violent acceleration,” which Aristotle sort of describes but lacks the mathematical language to calculate. I think it’s more or less true that heavy objects fall faster than light objects due to air resistance; if it wasn’t, it would’ve been discovered long before Galileo.
From the paper:
it was already pointed out as early as by Philoponus in the VIth century, that the speed of fall is not proportional to the weight: a ball of lead doesn’t reach ground from a specific height in half the time of ball of half its weight.
There’s a reason why you can sometimes get people with the whole “what’s heavier? A pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?” gag.
(Also consider items in water: basically anything I’ve ever dropped in water either reaches “terminal velocity” or begins to float almost instantly.)
My formative experiences with projectile motion was throwing/kicking/hitting various balls as a kid, and those definitely go in parabolas. Most items that I notice myself dropping are objects at least as massive as a pen, and so it definitely matters that they continuously accelerate, even if it indeed looks as if they only do so briefly at the beginning.
Aristotle claiming that heavier objects fall faster,(especially with the observation that the relationship isn’t proportional, and more bonus points if other qualitative features were discovered) is fine. Failing to describe football is the real problem
Also, are you sure the Greeks didn’t have the math? They knew what parabolas were. Sure, they didn’t have calculus—but nor did Galileo!
I think the paper answers most of these questions and recommend you read it! It’s short and hard to summarize without losing what gives its arguments force
We haven’t seriously tried to have physics-like theories of intelligence! Only a few people (various academics, MIRI) have done something close to trying. Compare to how much effort has been put into optimizing deep learning.
Maybe physics was also confusing and weird until we understood it.
Counterpoint: Aristotelian physics was mostly right.
In the same way, the persona model of alignment may turn out ‘mostly right’, but still not give you enough precision to do what you want to do.
As long as we’re going to do this tangent:
Aristotelian physics is less constrained than Newtonian physics. That’s the main reason it works. Anything you can explain with Newtonian physics, you can explain with Aristotelian physics too.
(...for the most part. I haven’t done a thorough logical check that this statement is strictly true. But it’s true enough. Both theories can explain why the path of a projectile is a parabola for instance.)
The “Anything you can explain with X, you can also explain with Y” thing is also true of more accurate or general theories. Anything Newtonian physics explains, so does Einsteinian physics.
The key thing (IMO) that makes Aristotelian physics inferior is that it also can explain false things.
For instance, it’s a priori possible that the arc of a thrown rock is a segment of a circle. If so, we could explain that in Aristotelian terms: motion is naturally circular, as demonstrated by the heavens (the sphere of quintessence), so of course the way something thrown away from its natural sphere would return to it via a circular motion.
But had thrown rocks formed arc segments instead of parabolic segments, that would have invalidated Newtonian (and Einsteinian) physics.
So the key thing that makes Newtonian physics a better theory than Aristotelian is that it’s more constrained and still survives experimentation. The theory literally has more Shannon information in it. That’s why Newtonian mechanics let us build the Iron Bridge in one shot whereas Aristotelian physics couldn’t: it wasn’t constrained enough to tell us what would happen with different bridge designs even after knowing everything about iron’s physical properties.
It’s a case where science made advancement without directly falsifying a theory.
So sure, Aristotelian physics was mostly right, in the sense that it was and is a fit to how the world works. It’s just that Newtonian physics also fits, and is more constrained, which means it’s the more useful fit to our world.
(This message brought to you by, taking a break from coding with LLM agents, and sadly noticing that some of their cadences have affected my way of talking. Alas. I just need to write more of my own stuff I suppose.)
I’ve heard this before, and it still seems trivially wrong about everyday experience. When was the last time that you saw an object falling at terminal velocity, vs the last time you saw an object fall much slower than it? Most of the time that I deal with stuff moving through air, it’s following Newtonian parabolas, because air is thin enough that air resistance is often irrelevant!
In air? Papers I’ve dropped, feathers from my clothes. But, most items I drop don’t seem to accelerate that much beyond the initial period of “violent acceleration,” which Aristotle sort of describes but lacks the mathematical language to calculate. I think it’s more or less true that heavy objects fall faster than light objects due to air resistance; if it wasn’t, it would’ve been discovered long before Galileo.
From the paper:
There’s a reason why you can sometimes get people with the whole “what’s heavier? A pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?” gag.
(Also consider items in water: basically anything I’ve ever dropped in water either reaches “terminal velocity” or begins to float almost instantly.)
My formative experiences with projectile motion was throwing/kicking/hitting various balls as a kid, and those definitely go in parabolas. Most items that I notice myself dropping are objects at least as massive as a pen, and so it definitely matters that they continuously accelerate, even if it indeed looks as if they only do so briefly at the beginning.
Aristotle claiming that heavier objects fall faster,(especially with the observation that the relationship isn’t proportional, and more bonus points if other qualitative features were discovered) is fine. Failing to describe football is the real problem
Also, are you sure the Greeks didn’t have the math? They knew what parabolas were. Sure, they didn’t have calculus—but nor did Galileo!
I think the paper answers most of these questions and recommend you read it! It’s short and hard to summarize without losing what gives its arguments force