Neutrinos and black holes

I agree with you: whatever we are perceiving, and our intuitions, have been useful to us; otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. If we assume that we can trust that the past actually existed (a very useful assumption for getting any further!), then “survival of the fittest” would have made sure that we are well-equipped to handle the everyday-level. Of course, we’re now delving much deeper than the situations for which evolution has prepared us.

Take statistics. Most statistics are quite easy computationally, yet almost everyone gets bogged down in even the simplest tasks. The Monty Hall problem and the Birthday problem are both examples of our intuition giving us a very strong but incorrect view of the world. Oddly enough, most people can catch a thrown ball easily, even though computationally it’s a much more difficult problem.

Apparently statistics is just not that useful if you are hunting and gathering; of course, QM shines a whole new light on just how useful stats might be!

Yes, I think this is fair. We try to keep the assumptions as few as possible, as simple as possible, as obvious as possible, but at the end of it all, they are still assumptions. The more we can derive from those assumptions, the more confidence we have in their usefulness.

I know I’m repeating myself, but: even with the starting assumptions, in any system of interesting complexity, we will never be able to say with certainty that our assumptions are consistent. We still might find out that our most basic assumptions in mathematics are not consistent with each other. I don’ t think that will happen, but it’s not certain. What is certain is that if the assumptions are consistent with each other, then they will not be complete. Some truths will slip through the cracks.

Being a cynic I observe that one interpretation of the Monty Hall problem involves him being malevolent, and only ever giving you the choice to switch when he knows you have picked the prize. In which case evolution is probably guiding your intuition well :smiley: But indeed, people (including me) have a lot of trouble with it the first time they hear the problem. Learning to count in order to get proper probabilities isn’t easy.

My usual answer to anyone going the wishy washy belief path is to simply ask if they are prepared to bet on it. People do seem to be able to get probabilities at the level of betting on things pretty well. Offer someone a 1000:1 bet on the sun not coming up tomorrow, and they won’t take it. Even if you put $1000 on the table and all they have to do is put up a dollar.

There are unequivocal facts that everyone from a child to an adult can emphatically agree on. Universal (as in all of humanity) concensus on these things are imperative, and also, quite easy to establish, if not a posteriori or even a priori anyhow.

*The sun is bright.

The sun is hot.

There exists a sun.

The moon has phases.

the earth is spherical.*

Once the proper perspective and observation has been established, (while also being self-evident), at least to how our brains, forged from reality in reality, perceive it; from there we can go deeper and wider in understanding insanely abstract functions of physics/nature, and hypothesize on the parts we seem to be missing. That we can even perform this level of cognition is mind-blowing, so to speak.

Had our brains stopped evolving past the proto-hominids, we probably couldn’t even grasp such things like 2+7=9. But we’d sure as hell have a lot of sex.

Anyhow, the above “facts” are the “axioms” of physics. The principal observations. From these building blocks, we’ve been able to work out computer science, sending men to the moon, satellites, GPS (which relies on GR), chemistry, television, batteries, Jenga™, etcetera etcetera.

It doesn’t require faith, so much as at some point accepting what we know, don’t know, and what we know we don’t know or can’t know.

Haha, good one.

Quote: “It doesn’t require faith, so much as at some point accepting what we know, don’t know, and what we know we don’t know or can’t know.”

If you don’t believe in Quantum mechanics you shouldn’t be allowed to use a cellphone :eek:

Or rather maybe ‘If your cellphone brakes, this is because you lack believe in QM’

Stick with me on this one Bremidon :smiley:

The less you believe in quantum mechanics, the more you’re not allowed to use cellphones. Or something.

AKA: AT&T’s Uncertainty Principle.

Greetings, all. This is Michael Holmes, program director of IBM’s Watson Solutions group. I’m late to the party but glad to be here now. Glad to respond to any questions you have about Watson. Probably too many comments posted already to hit them all at once but I will say that while we do see cognitive systems such as Watson playing a game-changing role in the way we use business technology in all kinds of industries, we are at the very early stages of a long journey. We are excited to be working right now on high-impact areas like working with Memorial Sloan Kettering on training Watson to help oncologists make more informed, evidence-based decisions in the diagnosis, testing, and treatment protocols for cancer patients.

Mr. Holmes, delighted to see you here.

As you can see, the discussion of AI and consciousness drifted from the original topic. People who have not been following this thread would probably not expect to encounter you in a discuss of “neutrinos and black holes.”

I’d suggest that you start a new thread. We have many threads of the Ask the [expert] style and an “Ask Michael Holmes, program director of IBM’s Watson Solutions group” title would draw the teeming millions.

I hope you’ve set aside plenty of free time for the coming deluge.

I’m not sure how many people even know what Watson is. Every time I’ve mentioned it on a forum I’ve rarely gotten any kind of response indicating recognition, which is odd since I would have suspected that just from the Jeopardy challenge alone there would have been greater awareness.

Of course as someone who has contributed to the World Community Grid for several years, I suppose I have a heightened awareness of such things. WCG is an IBM run project and some of the winnings from the challenge went to WCG.

That’s just great, now we’ll see even more old folks walking in the way.

All we need now is someone like Ron Hubbard explain it to the common people.

Dear Mr. M Holmes, If Watson is all that good with search, then how come IBM isn’t a search engine?

I don’t know how simple it would be for IBM to license the technology without revealing proprietary information about the system. Assuming that would be possible, I think that you will in fact see Watson or some pared down version of it being used in a wide variety of end user facing systems like search engines.

However from the article in New Scientist, the second application being worked right now is a financial adviser expert system for Citibank. So it may be that IBM has chosen to pursue the specialist system that it helps to co-develop for the time being. If so, hopefully Mr. Holmes can give us some insight as to the company’s strategy.

I heard that Watson moves beyond keyword searches and queries of structured data to asking questions and accessing and assessing unstructured data to find the best answer.

Also, as much as 90% is said to be unstructured meaning that it does not sit in database rows and columns and is therefore off limits to most traditional computing systems.

It’s nice talking about Watson but it would be even nicer if we had a link to Watson’s sandbox :wink:

I am still wondering, is there a correct theory of everything?
And if so, which one is true? Maybe Garrett Lisi is onto something?

Or not. From your own link:

Maybe you should read more Duff and less popular press.

Surely people like Duff writing an odd 3-page rant about Garrett Lisi’s work and the attention it has gotten, should be trusted. Lisi’s work has just about nothing to do with string theory. :rolleyes:

The following is Garrett Lisi’s response to the Duff article:

Michael Duff’s article is full of deceptive half-truths. To attack the commentary on Lee’s book, while avoiding Lee’s actual arguments, is just one example of this fundamentally dishonest tactic. A similar example is his reference to Peter as “Computer Administrator and Senior Lecturer in Discipline,” as if Peter was not also a very knowledgeable mathematical physicist. Duff then launches an attack on my work, once again focusing on a large volume of commentary by others rather than on my actual arguments. Also, Duff refers only to my first paper, saying it’s never been peer-reviewed and published, avoiding the fact that I’ve since published papers on the theory, including “An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8.”

Scouring Duff’s rhetoric, baseless statements, and ad hominem attacks in search of some factual argument supporting his attack on my work, I can find only this:

“Nature (and the standard model of particle physics) has three chiral families of quarks and leptons. ‘Chiral’ means they distinguish between left and right, as they must to account for such asymmetry in the weak nuclear force. But as rigourously proved by Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi, Lisi’s construction permits only one non-chiral family.”

This is, once again, a misleading half-truth, avoiding the fact that a chiral family of quarks and leptons can be part of a non-chiral representation space, as is the case in E8. I cannot credit Duff alone for this deception, as its source is Jacques Distler — a master of the half-truth — but I can blame Duff for supporting it.

For anyone who actually cares about the state of E8 theory, I would recommend my recent papers. Apparently Duff considers the work sufficiently threatening to the string program that he needs to attack it in this dishonest manner. If string theory models are as twisted and misleading as the statements in Michael Duff’s paper, it’s no wonder they’re dying.