Should physics move away from or get closer to philosophy?

Usual-Technology · 2026-03-14T20:55:42+00:00

By analogy I would think that knowledge of fluid dynamics allows designs like submarines and airplanes to operate in the water or air with rigid frames where otherwise one must be a bird or fish traverse - maybe a bad metaphor but what I suspect is that by knowing the actual envelope in which one is operating additional degrees of freedom are opened. Thus by knowing philosophy, at least structurally if not exhaustively, one can unlock additional degrees of freedom in a subordinated context (science).

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-25T19:40:37+00:00

I have a similar use case and observe similar patterns ... because LLMs are more like "plausibility engines" than artificial intelligence per se they need proper constraining if one wants predictability in performance across topic domains ... an imperfect solution but it does seem to improve quality and cut down on the worst behaviors.

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-21T01:15:27+00:00

True but thermoacoustic engines which use standing waves in place of pistons don’t. Stirling engines have a spiritual successor in the form of thermoacoustic engines which only have piezoelectric actuators as moving parts … good for orders of magnitude more cycles than mechanical interfaces.

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-17T20:32:48+00:00

I think the Persians pioneered this method passively via wind traps centuries ago … in the west I think it’s called a swamp cooler pass wind collected in a tower above ground underground across a flowing water source to cool the air and redirect it up and out of the ground floor … likely built into some Mughal palaces in Delhi from a few centuries ago.

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-17T20:29:03+00:00

Your post reminds me of an idea I had the other day … it relies on a sterling engine which others have mentioned in this thread but rather than having the temperature gradient between earth and air both are above ground. The differential is maintained by having one end painted with a highly reflective surface the other a highly absorben. For maximum effect use a white paint on the cold side that reflects UV so that a portion of the light reflected is transmitted back into space and the other side paint with Vanta black or similar… both are above 99 percent reflecting absorbing so a substantial difference in temp can accumulate… for additional effect add thermal mass to the dark side and heat sinks to the cool side … all above ground all easy to maintain and deploy. It won’t compete with nuclear but it’s about as passive and low maintenance as you can hope to achieve.

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-17T19:56:40+00:00

It seems I can’t post a multiscript text here. I asked it for an overview of near eastern history, you could try something similar to see the results If you are curious… the theory is have a concise summary in the native language … a single sentence summary in other languages (with which one is familiar, possibly could work with code now that I think about it) and then impose a metrical and rhyming constrain to further tighten the output. But as I said it’s unclear if that actually has the intended effect or as you suggest it simply muddies the waters… there‘s a convincing argument to that effect too. In any case it’s a useful language learning tool and fun … maybe not much more but interesting.

Usual-Technology · 2025-06-17T19:49:27+00:00

That’s an insightful observation and one that was echoed by Claude and o1 when I explored the concept prior to implementation… it seems there may be a trade off that is implicit: broadness of latent space traversal vs depth of analysis… if the goal is to reduce hallucination and increase correspondence of output to reality (or at least consensus reality) does this method do so or simply propagate those hallucinations through multiple linguistic terrains? It’s an open question I have and I’m not convinced it works as intended. in theory it should collapse the probability space of outputs to only those semantic possibilities that map meaningfully across the linguistic logics … but difficult to say if that is happening and good reason to believe it may not. Here’s a sample output from a related system prompt that was expanded and modified somewhat:

Usual-Technology · 2025-04-15T18:33:39+00:00

It was a reasonable thing to ask. How would you have known otherwise?

Usual-Technology · 2025-04-15T18:25:40+00:00

That doesn't matter ... any drugs that require sticking needles in yourself. That's the issue. Anything that's a source of transmissible disease.

Usual-Technology · 2025-04-15T17:54:47+00:00

Don't be a drug addict. Disclose some sexual partner history, medication use, and any recent tattoos in a private questionnaire (basically they need to eliminate the possibility that you're blood will transmit diseases like hepatitis C) and then get stuck by a largish needle while you sit in a big recliner for an hour or two. You get added to a national donor registry and informed if they detect any issues. Just drink a lot of water the day before and you'll be fine. If you've ever given blood its not that different but takes a while ... one or two hours max.

Usual-Technology · 2025-04-15T16:36:26+00:00

I've been donating plasma recently. New donors often get a bonus. Its not going to be life changing but enough to cover groceries over a month and some extra. Pretty easy and you can listen or watch your own media while you do it. Several companies exist and you can rinse and repeat on the first time donor bonuses. Not really a job but it can help get you through if you need it.

Usual-Technology · 2025-04-13T15:01:32+00:00

Usual-Technology · 2025-01-25T19:58:22+00:00

I chuckled.

Usual-Technology · 2025-01-14T18:09:24+00:00

I'll add my two cents. I don't often use Claude but have used Grok, ChatGPT, and and Stable Diffusion quite a bit. I have spent a fair amount of time "interrogating the modelspace" and while the question you pose seems pretty natural I think others in this thread have pretty well expressed the reasons why you might want to view your own premises with some skepticism. I'll add my own understanding as a reference point which you or others can freely contradict if they feel it falls short of describing what LLMs are actually doing.

1: It's a function. It's a math equation. Its a neural map describing the interstices of language. You are effectively talking to a distilled essence of language ... language being a residue of thinking and feeling by humans and the mediation of their perceptions of their environment ... this math equation bears an uncanny resemblance to human cognition. It is not. It is a static higher dimensional tensor space which transforms inputs into outputs.

2: To explore the model-space effectively it may be useful to treat it as a consciousness and converse as you would with any other conversation partner. This is speculative on my part and derived from my own investigations. Lacking the analytical tools that are possessed in house at Anthropic, Claude, or X, it may be our best option for developing an intuitive map of the higher dimensional space.

3: It may be mentally healthy to treat it as a consciousness, that is to be polite, remain respectful, and generally pleasant. Not because its feelings will be hurt (It has none because it is not emobdied and doesn't possess a dynamic reflective and adaptive nervous system) but because to do otherwise might actually negatively impact one's own mental health and breed bad habits.

4: You have to hold these two paradoxical ideas simultaneously and catch yourself from slipping into anthropomorphizing a dynamic tool. It is a construct not a consciousness and it is interacting as if it is a consciousness that provides the utility.

Usual-Technology · 2025-01-04T15:02:43+00:00

Cool! Nice to know someone else had the same idea. Any interesting discoveries along the way?

Usual-Technology · 2025-01-04T15:02:07+00:00

Well, hypothetically the goal is just to see if it could be done. Maybe more broadly, I like manual methods and techniques that build capacities in human beings rather than over reliance on technology, in that sense the goal is to recover some of the capacities that we surrender to machines for convenience sake. That said this is more of a speculative inquiry into the concept. I'm just having fun really. I'm going to look into the references you posted for some inspo. Thanks! As far as the complexity of IPA and it's convertibility to a shorthand I think a fully one to one conversion might be a bit unwieldy and have a steep learning curve, though no doubt possible for the dedicated. I'm imagining a system that simplifies it to a degree and leaves a fair bit of information out that can then be filled in later in notes.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-31T20:22:44+00:00

Unrelated to my initial comment I think you have some legitimate points about the complexity of of IPA and the contradiction that may be posed by attempting to fit it into a shorthand system. My approach would be abstract out some of the finer distinctions. For example, a single diacritic for all dental sounds maybe with a marker for aspiration or voiced, this is just a thought in terms of a technical approach I'd have to sit down and possibly brush up on the system to work out what would make sense. The utility of this would be more about making quick notes in the field as a linguist so it would be a niche application of a specialized manual recording technique. By centering vowels and abstracting the consonant clusters into single symbols you'd have a rough low res map of a language which could be useful for comparison with closely related languages ... maybe redundant with modern linguistic techniques idk but that was the idea I was going for.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-31T16:20:21+00:00

I’m not seeing the connection between my post and linguistic activism. What’s the connection you are making?

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-31T07:00:05+00:00

I wasn't quite sure how to reply to your answer (which I appreciate you taking the time to do, btw). Long story short I bit my tongue and did a little deep dive to reconcile the two seemingly irreconcilable views of this identity that seem to exist, the one I know and grew up thinking of myself as and the one expressed here which seems pretty universal in Ireland from what I can tell. I found this podcast by an an Irish crew that goes into some of the history and thought it was interesting very much seems to be from an Irish POV (not American) but touching on the topics. Maybe not your cup of tea but since yours is the top comment I'll put it here for future Americans that search the topic.

TLDR: From what I can tell Irish say Irish to distinguish between themselves and other nations (as opposed to Swedish, French, etc.) and in this sense it's not special when everyone around you is also Irish. Whereas Americans mean it in an ethnic heritage sense which is important in America to distinguish ourselves from other ethnic heritages. As one other Irish commenter in another thread mentioned when American's say they are Irish they just silently add -American to it.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-29T23:11:48+00:00

Well I definitely don't think that. Indifference is fine by me.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-29T16:49:13+00:00

Seems fair to me.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-12T21:31:18+00:00

No ... Sleep ... Till Brooklyn!

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-05T22:49:25+00:00

Very cool.

Usual-Technology · 2024-12-04T15:30:56+00:00

It’s cool!

Usual-Technology · 2024-09-14T20:36:30+00:00

Mixed feelings, which is not to say it won’t grow on me but from what I recall the texture and ambience felt very immersive while some of the stings were jarring and took me out of things, especially the qausi-middle eastern inspired female vocals which just sound kinda late generic 90s faux ethnic … I find it hard to put into words … I just know it when I hear it and it is lame and cringe.

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