AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Andrew Dalke]

Michele Simionato:
> I would qualify myself as an expert on renormalization theory and I would
> like to make an observation on how the approach to renormalization has
> changed in recent years, since you raise the point.

Feel free.  I started a field theory course in '93 but didn't finish it
as I decided to do computational biophysics instead.  So not only is
my knowledge dated but it wasn't strong to begin with.

(Plus, I was getting sick of SHOs ;)

> only seems similar). Now, one can prove that the arbitrarity is
> extremely small and has no effect at all at our energy scales: but
> in principle it seems that we cannot determine completely an observable,
> even in quantum electrodynamics, due to an internal inconsistency of the
> mathematical model.

How small?  Plank scale small?

> Yes, and still a lot of science is done without computers. I never
> used a computer for my scientific work, expect for writing my papers
> in latex ;)

Whereas I went into computer simulations.  Then again, I
wrote my first simulation program in ... 9th grade? .. for simulating
orbits, and tested it out by hand.  Too bad I didn't know that I
should decrease the timestep, as my planets jumped all over the
place, and I didn't know about using a symplectic integrator,
nor about atan2, nor ...

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com