I think he was referring to philosophical systems—Schopenhauer, Hegel. The impulse if you’ve got one is to fit everything into its structure, even if that means whacking square pegs into round holes and falsifying phenomena in an attempt at explaining everything
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Replying to @Meaningness @andy_matuschak
Interesting. I think of this as a very productive impulse in science! Eg you learn about gravity on earth and nearby... then use that explanation to try to explain everything everywhere with it (galaxy rotation curves! the Big Bang! etc). Very revealing.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @andy_matuschak
Yes... ish... I think maybe it works better in fundamental physics than elsewhere. Most other sciences are masses of small overlapping theories without big general principles
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Replying to @Meaningness @andy_matuschak
Ah, I should have said what I meant more clearly: both Newtonian gravity & general relativity break badly in those situations. That's why they're so revealing. Ditto black holes.
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There are some thing in biomed that fit the bill, too. Learning about the genetic basis if inheritance and trying to apply that to everything, or for a more contemporary example, Fristonian free energy.
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Definitely genetics/evolution. What I’ve read about Friston seems like forcing a few facts to fit a theory and ignoring anything that doesn’t… is there a source you would recommend that I might find more persuasive?
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@slatestarcodex has written about it a bunch and I think it definitely fits as a "unified theory that people try to apply to everything" Overview: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/ … Psychedelics (trigger warning, Bayesianism): https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relaxed-beliefs-under-psychedelics-and-the-anarchic-brain/ … Depression: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/12/toward-a-predictive-theory-of-depression/ …1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @mrgunn @michael_nielsen and
Thanks, yes, I mostly only know it from the
@slatestarcodex write-ups. It appears to be Kalman filters, and when that doesn’t fit, epicycles of Kalman filters on Kalman filters. Kalman filters are an instance if what I call “rationalist pit-traps”...1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Meaningness @mrgunn and2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
David Chapman Retweeted David Chapman
With this thread for context:https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1083805073950400514?s=20 …
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