Comment by godelski
5 days ago
> Critique of absolute time and space of Newtonian physics was already well underway
This only means Einstein was not alone, it does not mean the results were in distribution.
> Many of the phenomena that relativity would later explain under a consistent framework already had independent quasi-explanations hinting at the more universal theory.
And this comes about because people are looking at edge cases and trying to solve things. Sometimes people come up with wild and crazy solutions. Sometimes those solutions look obvious after they're known (though not prior to being known, otherwise it would have already been known...) and others don't.
Your argument really makes the claim that since there are others pursuing similar directions that this means it is in distribution. I'll use a classic statistics style framing. Suppose we have a bag with n red balls and p blue balls. Someone walks over and says "look, I have a green ball" and someone else walks over and says "I have a purple one" and someone else comes over and says "I have a pink one!". None of those balls were from the bag we have. There are still n+p balls in our bag, they are still all red or blue despite there being n+p+3 balls that we know of.
> I am not a [...] physicist
I think this is probably why you don't have the resolution to see the distinctions. Without a formal study of physics it is really hard to differentiate these kinds of propositions. It can be very hard even with that education. So be careful to not overly abstract and simplify concepts. It'll only deprive you of a lot of beauty and innovation.
To be clear, I don't think coming up with relativity was "in distribution" based on the results of the time. I would be exceedingly surprised if an LLM trained on all of the physics up until that point and nothing else would come up with the framework that Einstein did, from such elegant first principles at that. Without handholding from a prompter, I expect an LLM (or non-critical human thinker) would only parrot the general consensus of confusion and non-uniformity that predominated in that era.
I only believe that (1) if it hadn't been Einstein, it would very soon have been someone else using very similar concepts and evidence, (2) "completely novel idea" is a stricter criterion than "not in distribution," and (3) better examples of completely novel ideas from history exist as a benchmark for this sort of things.
> Without a formal study of physics it is really hard to differentiate these kinds of propositions. It can be very hard even with that education. So be careful to not overly abstract and simplify concepts. It'll only deprive you of a lot of beauty and innovation.
I agree, but with the caveat that I think ancestor worship is also an impediment to understanding our intellectual and cultural heritage. Either all of human creativity deserves to be treated sacredly, or none of it does.
This is difficult to infer from the context of the conversation.
I also agree, but am unsure of your point.
Sorry, I used a looser word. If you have a strong definition of what "in distribution" means I'll be happy to adapt.
Sure. Maybe? I can't judge. I think determining how novel something is really requires domain expertise. I only have an undergraduate degree in physics so I am not really qualified on determining the novelty of relativity, but it appears fairly novel to me fwiw. (And I am an enjoyer of scientific history. I'd really recommend Cropper's The Quantum Physicists: And an Introduction to Their Physics as it teaches QM in a more historical progression. I'd also recommend the An Opinionated History of Mathematics podcast which goes through a lot of interesting stuff, including Galileo)
I'm in full agreement here (I have past comments on HN to support this too tbh. Probably best to search for things related to Schmidhuber since that's when ancestor worship frequently happens in those topics). It's good to recognize people, but we over emphasize some and entirely forget most. I don't think this is malicious but more logistical. Even Cropper's work misses many people but I think it is still a good balance considering the audience.
I think the best way to avoid the problem is to remember "my understanding is limited" and always will be. At least until we somehow become omniscient, but I'm not counting on that ever happening.