2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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gedanken
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/g@dahnkn/ , adj. Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried;
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untested. Gedanken is a German word for thought. A thought experiment is one
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you carry out in your head. In physics, the term gedanken experiment is used
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to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to
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consider because it can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken
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experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator
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accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in
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physics, but must be used with care. It's too easy to idealize away some
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important aspect of the real world in constructing the apparatus. Among
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hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. It is typically
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used of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research, that
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is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever
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being implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated
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by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or
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are just in a hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious lack
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of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what does
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and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. See also
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AI-complete , DWIM.
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