Eliezer: Excellent post, but I wonder if what you’re saying is related to impressionist painting or the French Revolution? :-)
Seriously, I constantly meet people who ask me questions like: “could quantum algorithms have implications for biomechanical systems?” Or “could neural nets provide insight to the P versus NP problem?” And I struggle to get across to them what you’ve articulated so clearly here: that part of being a successful researcher is figuring out what isn’t related to what else.
People who work on the theory of neural nets have created a lot of mathematical theorems. It’s plausible that some of those theorems are helpful when you want to solve P versus NP.
Econophysics is a fairly established field. I think everyone involved understands that money is something different than atoms who interact with other atoms. That doesn’t invalidate the field of Econophysics.
You can make a pretty decent living as scientifist by using insight generated in field A to solve the problems of field B.
Research into quantum algorithms is likely to produce knowledge that’s useful for people who work in other fields such as biomechanical systems.
Eliezer: Excellent post, but I wonder if what you’re saying is related to impressionist painting or the French Revolution? :-)
Seriously, I constantly meet people who ask me questions like: “could quantum algorithms have implications for biomechanical systems?” Or “could neural nets provide insight to the P versus NP problem?” And I struggle to get across to them what you’ve articulated so clearly here: that part of being a successful researcher is figuring out what isn’t related to what else.
The answer to both “could-questions” is yes.
People who work on the theory of neural nets have created a lot of mathematical theorems. It’s plausible that some of those theorems are helpful when you want to solve P versus NP.
Econophysics is a fairly established field. I think everyone involved understands that money is something different than atoms who interact with other atoms. That doesn’t invalidate the field of Econophysics.
You can make a pretty decent living as scientifist by using insight generated in field A to solve the problems of field B.
Research into quantum algorithms is likely to produce knowledge that’s useful for people who work in other fields such as biomechanical systems.