quantum_mcts

"The Principles of Deep Learning" paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.10165 has a rather rigorous (based on Quantum Field Theory (QFT) mathematical apparatus) analysis of modern deep learning with the similar insight. They suggest that the learning happens in the critical regimes. And use running couplings, renormalization group and other fancy OFT math to derive some insights in the DL field. Here's a HN thread, by the way, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051540.

I thought that would be a language for sampling from the LM. Why no one created one btw?

Quantum algorithms are nonlinear. If someone is saying "quantum mechanics is a linear theory" as a counterargument to anything QC related. Then that person has no idea what they are talking about. Because they likely never cared to learn event the basics of QC.

> weather is a non-linear system whereas quantum mechanics is a linear theory

This lady have no idea what she is talking about.

> S-Matrix was the beginning of fifty years of string and SUSY

S-Matrix is a scattering matrix - a basic notion in QFT. S-Matrix theory is an attempt of axiomatization of particle physics with S-Matrix analyticity axioms as a basis. It still makes sense to this day - and still at the brink on unresolved questions in QFT, like QCD vacuum and/or confinement. A popular notion that S-Matrix theory was "replaced" with QCD is bogus (not to mention that bulk of publications by Gell-Mann was on S-Matrix theory). String theory is just a thing that was inspired by S-Matrix theory. And SUSY has almost nothing to do with it.

> I would disagree with the idea that the theoretical community decides where efforts should be focused - who ever is paying the bills ultimately makes that decision.

It is a very naive view of how research works. It is like saying that who ever pays the bills gets to decide what startup is going to succeed.

I'd suggest you read on scientific outputs of collider experiments. They do perform precision experiments and detailed measurements of particle properties and fundamental parameters of the settled fundamental models. The picture you are painting of "some theorists come up with crazy ideas and then we spend billions on colliders and then nothing" - is completely bogus. And that is very illustrative of the harm that Dr. Hosssenfelder does as a popularizer.

I think you are confusing Big Bang Cosmology with theory of cosmic inflation.

How would you disprove Big Bang cosmology by an experiment?

> S-Matrix theory

I don't get it. You have something against S-Matrix theory? Why do you call it an "industry"?

> funding agencies are largely to blame for the current situation in HEP and how/where research efforts are focused

Current situation in HEP is fine. The whole theoretical physics community decides where research efforts should be focused. No one else can do that even if he wanted to.

> for the past ~50 years, theoretical physics has been engaged in a process that is rewarding people creating theories that cannot ever be proven true or false.

This is not true on several levels. First of all, there is a place for studying mathematical abstractions (strings and such) and there is nothing wrong with doing mathematics. Second, theoretical physics rewards theories that can be falsified - there is a huge subarea called "phenomenology" that in engaged in linking theoretical abstractions and experiments. Third, there is no "process" to the contrary and in the last ~50 a number of fundamental new discoveries was performed.

> hamster-wheel of experiments producing theories that produce more experiments

That makes no sense. Are you, like, rejecting collider experiments altogether?

> She did publish her criticisms

Yes. And, by her own admission, nobody cared. Scientific community decided that her publications don't actually contribute much to fundamental physics.

As everyone with overinflated ego - she decided that that's because everyone else is wrong and she is right. So she decided to go to twitter and blogs and do the twitty-bloggy scandal thing. Now people are talking about her. I guess, that's what she wanted?

> how is slamming the lady in an HN comment any different

I'm not complaining about it being personal and unconstructive.

> it led me to realize that I had no idea what a differential equation is

I remember how I realized that I had no idea what a differential equation is when reading W.L.Burke book "Applied differential geometry" (highly recommended). Modern differential geometry turned out to be the strict mathematical bedrock for a lot of undergrad math. I was even more surprised to learn that a lot of my former teachers wasn't really aware of that.

In my view, the introductory math courses are supposed to just introduce the basic vocabulary, show the big picture and demonstrate the usefulness of the subject by showing algorithms for solving typical problems. It is not supposed to make sense on deeper inspection - and, I believe, teachers should be candid about it.

Would O(ln n) be "sublinear", though?

By the way, the symmetry breaking is U(1)*SU(2) -> U(1). Originally, U(1) is hypercharge generated.

And electromagnetic U(1) appears after the electroweak symmetry breaking. So that one is wrong too.

Also, how in Earth did he count 18 particles?

> Srinivasa Ramanujan

So, about a century ago. That'd be my estimate as well. And only if are on the "otherworldly genius" level as Ramanujan was.

> Dismissing this author for a lack of affiliation is probably accurate

I'm not really dismissing him just for lack of affiliations. That's just one of several "smells" that point towards the crackpotedness of the whole thing: single author, personal self-promoting website, lack of peer-review, vague non-mainstream-academia language, selling own ideas as generally scientifically accepted ones, and, yeah, lack of affiliations. To me, that's too many strikes to dismiss the whole thing outright.

> to improve the public discourse with engagement with ideas that arrive in it

I would really like to improve the public discourse here. The problem with your proposed approach is that it doesn't account for Brandolini's law. People with overinflated egos can and will generate bullshit faster than actual experts would be able to disprove it.

How about the first sentence in the body of the paper?

> In nature, all motion can be described by the principle of least action: motion minimizes action.

It is wrong. The actual principle is that the trajectories are stationary points of the action - not minima.

(Edit: It is wrong even with the "locality" caveat that the author later adds.)

The article is about a guy who was a university professor for decades.

I'd bet that the author did try to publish that in a peer-reviewed journal. He just doesn't want to show the review he got.

I wonder what was the last fundamental scientific breakthrough made not by a member of academia...

Am physicist. First of all - this paper was never peer-reviewed. (And I suspect will never be.) The "summary table" looks weird and all over the place: both in levels of abstraction and in cause-effect relationships. The rest of the contents of the paper reek of "non-mainstream unrecognised genius" stuff.

PS. Oh, and author is not affiliated with any actual research institution.

> quality

What do you mean by that? Good writing? Good rigor? Good research work? Have a fundamental discovery? There are not as correlated as one expects.

I generally disagree with the premise that scientists are becoming less productive. (To me, the complaints that there are no more grand fundamental discoveries is alike to complaining that we are not discovering any new continents on Earth...)

On the subject of incentives in academia - reflecting on my academia run, I've noticed that I was the most creatively productive when I had a longer planning horizon in front of me. It was either at the beginning of a several-years position. Or at the very end when I knew that I'm leaving and didn't care anymore. The least productive was the sequence of one-year postdocs - when I was constantly worrying about the next one.

Stopped reading when saw "Windows" to check the comments. Here it is.

Curious how this work relies a lot on the mathematical language of Quantum Field Theory. Wick theorem. Criticality. RG flows. As someone with background in Physics I had a permanent deja-vu reading this.

> when I reread it 20 years later it sounded like a description of contemporary employment

Here is my problem with it: It is not something that "appeared in the last 20 years". It was always like that.

You just from a group that was completely shielded from it.

Now the protective shield that you so used to starts to dissolve.

You start to realize how the real world works. Not so perfect. Not so happy.

And think that it is some new ill destroying your perfect happy world.

Yes, it is a metaphor. I know that because I speak Russian and read the original. Indeed, that's a weird metaphor even for a Russian ear.

No, literally "meteorite" in original text. It is used as an example of a completely implausible event.

1. The original text in Russian is much more chaotic - translator imposed his own structure on it and tweaked clumsy phrasing all over the place.

2. They say that the latest Putin's video is green screened

Farm household. Just Ukrainian official name for a "farm".