
Quirks of the arXiv - JohnHammersley
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/quirks-of-the-arxiv
======
Houshalter
I know absolutely nothing about physics. But I still found this paper
enjoyable to read, because it's written in the format of a discussion between
fictional characters: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-
th/0310077v2.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0310077v2.pdf)

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
Accessibility is almost certainly a large part of the reason that the greeks
tended to write in dialogues. The greek dialogues tend to be very
approachable, due to the way they have to step through issues.

~~~
tpeo
I'm on the opposite camp. Nothing makes me groan so deeply as dialogues. And I
know I'm not alone either: plenty of people are bored out of Plato because of
the dialogic writing, specially because every other line amounts to nothing
more than "Why, indeed Socrates...".

Don't get me wrong. I like Plato (quite a bit). But dialogues seem as
approachable to me as poetry. They might be approachable in the sense that,
since they simulate a conversation between two people who might not know
eachother, they necessarily lead to a much clearer exposition of whatever is
the topic at hand. It's indeed as if you were reading two people try to make
their ideas across when they're complete strangers eachother. But it takes
completely different kind of "reading" from the one a person might use when
reading prose or when reading a pure exposition.

Two cents.

------
drngdds
Another fun one: On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10987](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10987)

~~~
backpropaganda
This comes off as snarky and towards a strawman position. Only a very small
(possibly religious) fraction of AI researchers believe that superhuman
intelligence is not possible.

~~~
tgb
That's not true. Even in a survey done by Nick Bostrom which was probably
biased towards researchers who believed in possible superhuman intelligence,
41% of researchers thought it would never be achieved.

[http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf)

~~~
skj
Note that "impossible" and "will never be achieved" are two entirely different
propositions.

~~~
tgb
And on the other hand the question was asking a milder thing than super
intelligence, just that we would be able to simulate all aspects of human
intelligence, particularly learning. 18% said that no line of research (eg
cognitive science, artificial neural networks) would even _contribute_ to the
aim of human level machine intelligence. Moreover, the paper quotes one
researcher who was against even taking the survey since they believed that
even asking these questions was inherently 'misguided'.

It's interesting that we're even having this discussion: it wasn't so many
years ago that the exact opposite discussion was common, i.e. that the actual
AI researchers that think this is even a possibility are such a minority and
are generally side lined that we shouldn't take their view much into account.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that Bostrom's survey was done in part just to give
evidence that there were real researchers who thought that human level AI was
possible in the not-that-distant future.

~~~
backpropaganda
I hope people stop citing that survey. NIPS and ICML authors are AI
researchers, not attendees of PT-AI, AGI, or EETN (who are likely to be AI
philosophers and singularists) or TOP100 authors who are likely to be be old,
uninformed of current research. And anyone who agrees to such a survey is
likely to have an extreme/controversial opinion (yes, surveyors were self-
selected).

------
pasbesoin
This is a bit OT, but it reminds me of the much under-reported aspect of Aaron
Schwartz's document collecting:

As I understand it, he intended to analyze the resulting data set for
patterns. Meta-analysis of said scientific literature, so to speak.

Of value in itself, for several reasons. Scientific. Personal interest --
interesting language and rhetoric.

One very important one -- that can be lumped under the important work of
science as well as that of understanding human endeavor in all its aspects:
Fraud detection.

We all have been reading about both mistakes and deliberate mis-representation
in scientific publications. Including in some very influential works,
subsequently retracted.

ArXiv is a step in the right direction. When we have all these scientific
results locked up to the point where such meta-analysis and subsequent
_science_ is impossible, we've greatly shackled the process of scientific
research and our own human endeavor and progress.

By the way, with respect to recent public conversation with respect to
economics, some view this as another form of rent-seeking. People who don't
produce but rather gather the "rights" to the results of production, and then
divert as much as they can of its value into their own pockets -- often
diverting it away from investment in the actual work from whence it comes.

Or, eating your seed corn.

------
quaz3l
I really enjoy how most of the abstracts in these papers are more like ELI5s,
or just plain understandable. I think having an understandable abstract would
be valuable for many papers to have to make large complex sciences
understandable for people not in the field. Would there be any downside? The
only one I can think of is that conclusions could sound more convicting in a
simplified summary.

~~~
adrianN
Having understandable abstracts is indeed very important for the success of a
paper and scientists try very hard to come up with good abstracts. Writing the
abstract is one of the harder parts of writing the paper. However, what you
find understandable and what an expert in the field finds understandable is
often very different.

------
kronos29296
The first one was really to the point in its abstract while another tells
stories in it. Made me grin incessantly when I saw it.

------
evanb
Here's a similar list from 2006 (some papers in common):

[http://backreaction.blogspot.de/2006/07/stupid-title-
list.ht...](http://backreaction.blogspot.de/2006/07/stupid-title-list.html)

------
jesuslop
Nice, it left me wondering how the dialog of Rovelli continued.

~~~
rhaps0dy
Well then read the paper! I'm in your same position. Also with "Would Bohr be
born if Bohm were born before Born?".

EDIT: I started reading it and it gets into reeeally good stuff:

Simp – There are predictions from string theory as well.

Sal – Like?

Simp – Like large extra dimensions. Supersymmetry. Transitions that cannot
happen in the standard model.

Sal – You mean that if we do not find the experimental consequences of large
extra dimensions we conclude string theory is wrong?

Simp – Of course not, large extra dimensions exist only in very special
models.

Sal – So, the experiments on extra dimensions cannot kill string theory?

Simp – No they cannot.

Sal – And if supersymmetry is not found at the scale we expect, we do not
abandon string theory?

Simp – No we don’t. It will be at a higher scale.

Sal – So, which experiment could kill string theory, in principle?

Simp – Nothing I could think off. The theory is very strong.

Sal – Seems to me is very weak. A good scientific theory is a theory that can
be falsified.

Simp – I am not a philosopher ...

I'm rooting for Sal!

~~~
ouid
The author was pretty clear about who the protagonist was supposed to be...

~~~
ahazred8ta
Sal – I am reading a book, written long ago, where I just found this phrase:
“perch`e i nostri discorsi hanno a essere sopra un mondo sensibile, e non
sopra un mondo di carta.” Roughly: “our arguments have to be about the world
we experience, not about a world made of paper”.

