[dekhn]

I read that as a teenager, thought it sounded nice, went to grad school and did molecular dynamics simulations (like folding at home) for a decade, then went to google and built the world's largest simulation system (basically, the largest group of nodes running folding at home). Eventually we shut the system down because it was an inefficient way to predict protein structure and sample folding processes (although I got 3-4 excellent papers from it).

The idea is great, it was a wonderful narrative to run my life for a while, but eventually, the more I learned, the more impractical using full atomistic simulations seem for solving any problem. It seems more likely we can train far more efficient networks that encapsulate all the salient rules of folding in a much smaller space, and use far less CPU time to produce useful results.

[sva_]

Yeah, I think the idea of Laplace's Demon is mostly just useful to make a philosophical argument about whether or not the universe is deterministic, and it's implication on free will.

[dekhn]

I dunno, I wonder what Laplace would have made of the argument over the meaning of wavefunction collapse. It took me a very long time to come to terms with the idea of a non-deterministic universe.

[sva_]

That's peculiar. Most people probably struggle more with the idea of a deterministic universe, as it'd leave no room for free will, which would make everything kind of meaningless.

I'm also more in the camp of "quantum effects making the universe non-determinstic." It's a nicer way to live.

[dekhn]

I've evolved over the years from "determinism implies no free will" to roughly being a compatibilist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism, see also Daniel Dennett). I don't particularly spend much time thinking that (for example) a nondeterministic universe is required for free will. I do think from an objective sense the universe is "meaningless", but that as humans with agency we can make our own meaning.

However, most importantly, we simply have no experimental data around any of this for me to decide. Instead I enjoy my subjective life with apparent free will, regardless of how the machinery of the actual implementation works.

[mensetmanusman]

It’s interesting that many things are deterministic to human-relevant time/length scales. If the small stuff is non-deterministic, it’s interesting that large ensembles of them are quite deterministic.

It’s maddening :)