2.0. Deblurring
Blurring of reality is happening on a personal every day level, and up to the full depth of science.
Being approached by a stranger one quickly reads myriads of facial features ahead, and instantly groups the readings of the curved eyebrows, the tight lips, and squinting eyes into a single reading: threat. This reading is then processed by the brain along with some other parameters to conclude on a course of action. The human brain cannot relate to myriads of facial features ahead and extract all the inferential message therein. Time is of the essence, processing capacity is limited (compared to information acquisition capacity), so grouping takes place. The myriad of facial details are lost, left is the summary reading: a very angry and threatening face was there to be dealt with.
Similar examples of data grouping to match processing capacity are plentiful as we go along on our day. However, in this presentation I wish to focus on the other end of this Darwinist grouping: how science is developed.
In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell suggested [
13] that there are classes of phenomena affected by influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being but which may produce results of the highest importance. Maxwell might have been the pioneer of the notion of inherent blurriness.
If one feeds a supervised learning AI program with sufficient number of cases where in each case one throws a rock in stationary air at a given temperature, in an arbitrary, but recorded direction and speed, and is also specifying the weight, the shape, and the surface of the rock, and for each such case the flying trajectory will be specified, then the AI program would accurately predict the landing place and even the trajectory of any rock for which the AI program would be given the pre-throwing parameters that have been recorded for the reference cases.
What is of interest in this AI capability is that it was not given Newton’s laws of motion. It applies generic learning techniques and it performs in a way that would deny an observer the knowledge of whether the AI machine relied on Newton’s law or not.
A strong argument in favor of the “Newton way” is that these equations were derived from one set of observations (say, throwing rocks) and then were applied over a completely different set (say, cosmology). AI can’t do it! That is true, but AI is a young solution, give it time. When steam engines made their appearance they lagged behind fast horses. But people did not focus on improved equestrian diet, rather they tinkered with the new machine.
The tacit premise of modern science is that if a finite number of observations appears consistent to the degree of measurement accuracy with a certain mathematical equation, then it indicates that reality obeys this formula, which we were smart enough to discover. Newton’s laws served humanity remarkably well: roads, bridges, houses, ships, trains, airplanes -- all designed and built under this almost ‘religious’ belief that reality reads and obeys Newton’s “Bible”. Imagine how cumbersome it would have been to try and test countless constructions and arrangements until we build a bridge that does not collapse. As things happen, we trust our simple equations and make life so much easier with it.
Indeed, as far as survival is the point, the ability to ignore countless random configurations until building a stable bridge is a great advantage. Albeit, when we indulge our aspirations to learn the reality we live in, we must admit the possibility of blurry vision. In fact, Newton’s formula was proven “blurry”. Centuries later Albert Einstein has pointed to Newtonian blurry vision at its contours. It did not change much in construction practice, but it enlightened us as to the reality we find ourselves in.
Come to think about it, Einstein too used a concise mathematical formula that relates to Newtonian math as a private case, and much like we did with Newton, we build a daring picture of space, reality, galaxies, the big bang, all on the new equations we now regard as the “law of the land”.
Formulas and mathematical equations offer by their nature a blurry vision of reality they describe. They summarize the raw data that gave them birth, and ignore some measure of inferential content they carry.
What is more alarming is that many scientists, tend to regard the equations we carve, much the same way our ancestors regarded the big wooden or stone statues they carved. Men of antiquity danced around their overpowering handiwork, regarding them as God. Our most brilliant scientists are saying about one mathematical framework or another: the beauty here is so compelling that it is without a doubt that the universe surrenders to this beauty and complies with its dictates.
It is easy to understand this sentiment. Come to think about it, the simplicity of Newton’s laws united heaven and earth, past and future, large and small. It was so dramatically useful, so broadly applicable. We can’t but be thankful to the math that described reality for us. In fact many people of note are claiming that the universe is nothing but a mathematical entity [
2] The entire body of physics is searching for the ‘lost ark’ -- the single simple formula for ‘everything’.
Equations represent grouping of the raw data that we may read in reality. Grouping is lossy in terms of information content, so, to the extent that we wish to extend beyond survival concerns and aspire to understanding the world we live in, we must seek to undo grouping, avoid information loss, abandon our beloved equations, and do what the AI machine did in the beginning of this section: ignorant of any so called natural law it predicted the behavior of a thrown rock by inferring directly from the raw relevant data.
The attitude of hanging on to the natural law equations is attractive because it seems to seal the deal. Once we have inked out the elegant equation we believe we have nothing more to glean from experimental data. Maxwell’s equations, for example, say everything worth saying about electromagnetic phenomena. No need to measure them any longer, at least not for the purpose of gaining more fundamental insight. The psychological attachment to the notion that the natural law equation is a dictum that cannot be deviated from is so strong that no researcher will secure funding for a project to keep measuring electromagnetic phenomena for either (i) hidden refined behavior, or (ii) for a quick passing wave of deviation from the equations. Neither would one is likely to get funded for suggesting that a given set of natural laws are valid only under certain conditions, yet unknown.
It is anathema for a scientist to contemplate a law of nature that ‘takes a break,’ disappears for a very brief moment in which a new, yet undiscovered formula comes into play. Einstein famously assumed that laws of nature look the same everywhere. All these assumptions come from a psychological sense of natural harmony, symmetry, beauty. It is so gratifying to expect that the universe is operated in ways consistent with what we, the evolvers, call beautiful.
Isn’t it a tad suspicious that nature rolls out according to formulas that incorporate a sufficiently small number of parameters which we humans can be cognizant of in parallel?
A modern imperative over nature is the notion of symmetry. Evolution has driven us humans to be partial to symmetry so we readily assume that nature will respect symmetry because we do. Our brightest scientists are left undaunted by lack of scientific evidence; they hail and promote a super symmetry view of reality.
We did not have an alternative to theories and simple equations until recently but with the rise of AI, we can aspire to minimize the blurriness and use the ungrouped, raw data as the input for our inference engines.