“Maybe Insensitive Functions are a Natural Ontology Generator?” by johnswentworth

episode

LessWrong (30+ Karma) not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Claude Opus 4.5 Achieves 50%-Time Horizon Of Around 4 hrs 49 Mins” by Michaël Trazzi 3 min · 20 Dec 2025

All episodes from LessWrong (30+ Karma) →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded25 Nov 2025

Publisherfeeds.type3.audio ↗

Handlerec:10653760

Show notes

The most canonical example of a "natural ontology" comes from gasses in stat mech. In the simplest version, we model the gas as a bunch of little billiard balls bouncing around in a box. The dynamics are chaotic. The system is continuous, so the initial conditions are real numbers with arbitrarily many bits of precision - e.g. maybe one ball starts out centered at x = 0.8776134000327846875..., y = 0.0013617356590430716..., z=132983270923481... . As balls bounce around, digits further and further back in those decimal representations become relevant to the large-scale behavior of the system. (Or, if we use binary, bits further and further back in the binary representations become relevant to the large-scale behavior of the system.) But in practice, measurement has finite precision, so we have approximately-zero information about the digits/bits far back in the expansion. Over time, then, we become maximally-uncertain about the large-scale behavior of the system. ... except for predictions about quantities which are conserved - e.g. energy. Conversely, our initial information about the large-scale system behavior still tells us a lot about the future state, but most of what it tells us is about bits far back in the binary expansion of the future [...] ---Outline:(03:31) Emphasizing Insensitivity(06:56) Characterization of Insensitive Functions/Predictions? --- First published: November 24th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6xpKc7yJBSppdN83H/maybe-insensitive-functions-are-a-natural-ontology-generator --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.