I can’t see how this is true. It isn’t obvious to me that one could conclude anything from a video like that without a substantial prior knowledge of mathematical physics. Seeing a red, vaguely circular object, move across a screen tells me nothing unless I already know an enormous amount.
And it still doesn’t make any sense. Think about the motion of a helium balloon. Think about the motion of a charged particle in a magnetic field. There’s literally an infinite number of possible formal mathematical models that could include 12 frames of an apple falling. Thing about how enormous the leap of logic is to go from, “This one thing moved” to “All things must move the way that one thing does.” There’s quite simply not enough observations and not enough information in seeing something happen once to prove a theory. I feel like the reason people like this analogy is because an apple falling feels like something we understand, and so it’s easy to imagine something smarter than us understanding it too, but we only understand apples falling because we’ve seen so many things fall.
How much of physics can you generalize from this image? If you want to really get an idea of how hard this problem is, try and tell me how much physics you can learn from this sound clip. It’s the same information as the image, just presented in a format that doesn’t allow you to easily access all of the incredibly difficult learning you’ve already done that allows you to easily interpret images.
That comment you link to walks directly through a correct chain of reasoning, and it has AI-Einstein miraculously picking the correct needle out of an infinite haystack. But it’s a fiction story, and so horrendously improbably things are allowed to happen. The millions and billions of other possible theories that fit the data that tiny-boxed-Einstein could have also invented don’t warrant a mention. How many curves can you draw that correctly fit two data points? There are an infinite number of possible theories and no amount of intelligence is going to allow you count to infinity any faster than anyone else.
it’s a very obvious hypothesis to the right kind of Bayesian.
It’s not at all clear to me what this means given the existence of Aumann’s agreement theorem.
...it has AI-Einstein miraculously picking the correct needle out of an infinite haystack. But it’s a fiction story, and so horrendously improbably things are allowed to happen.
I’ve been making similar complaints for years. And the replies I get are along the following lines:
Skeptic01: X is a highly conjunctive hypothesis. There’s a lot of hand-waving, and arguments about things that seem true, but “seem true” is a pretty terrible argument.
LW-Member01: This is what we call the “unpacking fallacy” or “conjunction fallacy fallacy”. It is very easy to take any event, including events which have already happened, and make it look very improbable by turning one pathway to it into a large series of conjunctions.
Skeptic01: But you are telling a detailed story about the future. You are predicting “the lottery will roll 12345134”, while I merely point out that the negation is more likely.
LW-Member02: Not everyone here is some kind of brainwashed cultist. I am a trained computer scientist, and I held lots of skepticism about MIRI’s claims, so I used my training and education to actually check them.
Skeptic01: Fine, could you share your research?
LW-Member02: No, that’s not what I meant!
LW-Member03: Ignore him, Skeptic01 is a troll!!!
...much later...
Skeptic01: I still think this is all highly speculative...
LW-Member03: We’ve already explained to Skeptic01 why he is wrong. He’s a troll!!!
He elaborates on the claim a bit in this comment.
And it still doesn’t make any sense. Think about the motion of a helium balloon. Think about the motion of a charged particle in a magnetic field. There’s literally an infinite number of possible formal mathematical models that could include 12 frames of an apple falling. Thing about how enormous the leap of logic is to go from, “This one thing moved” to “All things must move the way that one thing does.” There’s quite simply not enough observations and not enough information in seeing something happen once to prove a theory. I feel like the reason people like this analogy is because an apple falling feels like something we understand, and so it’s easy to imagine something smarter than us understanding it too, but we only understand apples falling because we’ve seen so many things fall.
How much of physics can you generalize from this image? If you want to really get an idea of how hard this problem is, try and tell me how much physics you can learn from this sound clip. It’s the same information as the image, just presented in a format that doesn’t allow you to easily access all of the incredibly difficult learning you’ve already done that allows you to easily interpret images.
That comment you link to walks directly through a correct chain of reasoning, and it has AI-Einstein miraculously picking the correct needle out of an infinite haystack. But it’s a fiction story, and so horrendously improbably things are allowed to happen. The millions and billions of other possible theories that fit the data that tiny-boxed-Einstein could have also invented don’t warrant a mention. How many curves can you draw that correctly fit two data points? There are an infinite number of possible theories and no amount of intelligence is going to allow you count to infinity any faster than anyone else.
It’s not at all clear to me what this means given the existence of Aumann’s agreement theorem.
I’ve been making similar complaints for years. And the replies I get are along the following lines:
Skeptic01: X is a highly conjunctive hypothesis. There’s a lot of hand-waving, and arguments about things that seem true, but “seem true” is a pretty terrible argument.
LW-Member01: This is what we call the “unpacking fallacy” or “conjunction fallacy fallacy”. It is very easy to take any event, including events which have already happened, and make it look very improbable by turning one pathway to it into a large series of conjunctions.
Skeptic01: But you are telling a detailed story about the future. You are predicting “the lottery will roll 12345134”, while I merely point out that the negation is more likely.
LW-Member02: Not everyone here is some kind of brainwashed cultist. I am a trained computer scientist, and I held lots of skepticism about MIRI’s claims, so I used my training and education to actually check them.
Skeptic01: Fine, could you share your research?
LW-Member02: No, that’s not what I meant!
LW-Member03: Ignore him, Skeptic01 is a troll!!!
...much later...
Skeptic01: I still think this is all highly speculative...
LW-Member03: We’ve already explained to Skeptic01 why he is wrong. He’s a troll!!!
Yes, I’m sure that’s what it looks like from inside your head.