Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• Predicting vs Explaining

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Predicting vs Explaining

Predictive power is useful, but explanatory power is what drives progress.

Today, we have oracles like Google and ChatGPT that can answer any question, as long as the answer is already known. I don’t mean that the exact answer has to be known, but that some explanations or equations that can determine the answer already exist. With the right equations, these oracles explanatory power is unmatched. But, these oracles do not know anything that we can not already explain. That is exactly where their limitation lies—at the edge of our current knowledge.

They cannot design or create better theories or experiments to try to understand new and novel things. They can be prompted into discovering new things. But by prompting them, humans are lending some predictive power. This power is based on our intuition about what should be true.

This is when humans are at our best: using our predictive power to increase the breadth and span of our understanding. Creating things that do not already exist. Our biggest strength in one word: creativity.

Random Thought

When you get a haircut, you lose the hair that has been with you the longest. You are being separated from something that has been a part of you for years.

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Thanks for reading!

Lucas