3 Dec
2023
3 Dec
'23
11:13 p.m.
Mike, James, Alex, and anybody who claims that GPT is a dependable source of information,
Analogies are very useful for abduction (Peirce's word for educated guesses). They
must be checked for internal consistency by deduction, and they must be tested for
consistency with the subject matter by deduction from currently established theories, and
induction with observations that are not adequately explained by current theories.
The best that can be said about comparing quantum mechanics to pointilism is that that it
is a clever idea that supports some interesting comparisons. But there is an enormous
amount of work required to develop a detailed mathematical theory of that comparison,
check it for internal consistency of the parts of the theory and external consistency with
the well established theories of QM. If both of those checks are OK, the idea would be an
interesting example for teaching QM.
But those checks would not add anything to existing theory. They just add new ways of
talking about it. It those ways lead to simpler math and better teaching methods, then
they would be a very useful addition to current explanations of QM.
But to make new contributions to QM. the new theory must make further predictions that go
beyond current theories. That requires induction to test the applicability of the theory
beyond what is already known.
From the current evidence, the pointillist theory hasn't yet reached the first step.
It's possible that it might be developed into a good teaching tool for current QM, but
there's a huge amount of work to be done.
As far as the new theory leading to totally new discoveries, that is an enormously
difficult issue. Since over a century of research by the best physicists in the world
have gone into the current theories, I strongly doubt that the new version would go beyond
what is currently known.
Note that the above comments are written by somebody (me) who took some courses in QM and
advanced QM theories and applications in the 1970s. I have done a fair amount of reading
of popular source, such as the Scientific American since then. But I have not done any
detailed R & D on QM since them. But note that I was able to give a far more detailed
analysis of the issues than anything that GPT could produce.
Conclusion: Wikipedia (which is updated by leading professionals in every branch of
science) is a far, far better source for answers (with reliable references for further
study) than anything produced by GPT. If you're searching for solid advice on an
advanced topic in any field, Wikipedia (and more advanced reference documents on the WWW)
are much, much more trustworthy than anything you get from GPT.
And that is true of every advanced topic in any branch of science, philosophy,
engineering, etc. Don't trust anything generated by generative AI without doing at
least a Wikipedia search.
John
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From: "Alex Shkotin" <alex.shkotin(a)gmail.com>
BINGO!
сб, 2 дек. 2023 г. в 12:33, 'James Davenport' via ontolog-forum
<ontolog-forum(a)googlegroups.com>om>:
See also, from
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/ask-ex…
Sometimes I think about the quantum world as a pointillism painting. When you look at the
painting from a distance, of course, it just looks like an ordinary painting. But as you
start to zoom in to it on smaller and smaller scales, you start to notice that there's
more structure there. And, in fact, rather than it being a continuous object, you start to
notice that it's actually made up of individual points. And as you zoom in further and
further, you can see the individual points, the quanta, that make up that painting. And
that's what we do in particle physics. We're zooming in on smaller and smaller
structures, smaller and smaller scales.
James Davenport
Hebron & Medlock Professor of Information Technology, University of Bath
National Teaching Fellow 2014; DSc (honoris causa) UVT
Former Fulbright CyberSecurity Scholar (at New York University)
Former Vice-President and Academy Chair, British Computer Society
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