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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_is9yf8p wrote

>Two baseballs X and Y are released from rest at the same height.
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>X is heavier than Y.
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>Which baseball will fall to the ground faster?

Isn't Mind's eye the ONLY wrong answer?

Acceleration due to gravity is constant, but the opposing force from air resistance is roughly proportional to the air displaced and does not change with mass.

I mean, this is the whole point of Apollo 15's test on the moon.

All of them have wrong explainations, but Mind's eye is the only one that incorrectly claims they will fall at the same rate under normal real world conditions.

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Proof : Brian Cox visits the world's biggest vacuum | Human Universe - BBC

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Even_Tangerine_800 t1_is9zy95 wrote

This is what I got: GPT-3 Answer.

Apparently, the model arrives at the wrong answer without mentioning the air resistance. I have tried many times the results are consistent.

Considering the free fall rules should be encoded in some text books (which should have been included in the pre-training datasets), these results are even more striking to me.

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isa0dvo wrote

The heavier baseball falling to the ground faster is the correct answer. Maybe you misread my post?

It is a shame none of them mention air resistance.

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Even_Tangerine_800 t1_isa18wf wrote

Are the questions as simple as a = F/m = mg / m = g?

Anyways. If humans put effort into optimizing a tool for accurate simulation, we can treat it more like an alignment problem rather than pure scientific judgment.

You can update the knowledge in the physics engine if you want.

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isa1gbn wrote

Oh I agree 100%. This paper is fantastic! (and it's an easy fix)

I definitely want to see further research in this, but the comparison they show here is probably not the comparison they wanted to show haha.

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Lajamerr_Mittesdine t1_isa34ib wrote

All the answers are incomplete because they don't provide the assumptions necessary to arrive at a complete solution.

A more complete answer would look like this.

>Assuming just gravitational forces both the lighter and heavier baseballs both would fall at the same rate and then reach the surface at approximately the same time. This can be impacted however by additional forces that may be present such as an atmosphere providing additional resistances based on the surface area, density, and total mass of each object.

Though even that is an incomplete answer.

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isa44ws wrote

>because they don't provide the assumptions necessary to arrive at a complete solution.

I agree, but when atmosphere it not mentioned, the default should be updated to STP (0°C temperature and 101.325 kPa pressure) in future.

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eigenlaplace t1_isa6z73 wrote

It’s a simple question, no mention of air anywhere… The correct answer is they fall at the same rate.

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isa7e7b wrote

I live on the planet earth where most places have air. It is assumed that there is air if it is not mentioned otherwise.

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eigenlaplace t1_isa7xzy wrote

I live on planet Question where most places have no air. Where is your god now?

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isa8g7i wrote

>current language models (LMs) miss the grounded experience of humans in the real-world -- their failure to relate language to the physical world causes knowledge to be misrepresented and obvious mistakes in their reasoning.

That is my whole point. This paper trying to avoid "planet Question" and make language models work in the real world instead.

I'm not interested in arguing over this. The paper is good, it just needs a minor correction in a future revision.

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AskMoreQuestionsOk t1_isb66lb wrote

Actually, I think you make a good point. If you think about understanding conversations and stories and problems like this, you need a model understanding of what it is that you are talking about to even begin to make an accurate assumption about what the prediction of the next state will be. - we make an incredible number of assumptions from our own experience when we make those internal models. How do we know if air friction is important to this problem?

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master3243 t1_isc3kp7 wrote

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_isc5m6k wrote

>But what about the basketball and the bowling ball? Shouldn't they have different accelerations? Technically, yes.
>
>[...]
>
>it turns out that there are many situations where a heavier object does indeed hit the ground before a lighter object (because of air resistance).

Your link says the heavy baseball and the light baseball would fall at different rates.

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master3243 t1_iscb9mu wrote

My link also says that heavier objects can fall slower than light objects. As in the styrofoam board that was heavier than the small ball yet it fell slower.

In the absence of more detail such as the dynamics of the shapes and the inclusion of air drag or not, it is fair to say that the most correct answer to the "which" question is "both". I would only count the "heavy first" answer as correct IF it included the discussion on air drag, otherwise the correct answer is "both". But that's my opinion and not objectively the only way to interpret this.

Especially given a model that has so many physics articles/material included in it's dataset, it's a pretty big fail that it can't answer this properly.

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Co0k1eGal3xy t1_iscd0no wrote

>In the absence of more detail such as the dynamics of the shapes

Baseball's have a standard diameter and shape.

It's theoretically possible that the heavier baseball has a "furry" surface or something like that, but it's such an unlikely case I didn't consider it when reading the paper.

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>it's a pretty big fail that it can't answer this properly.

I emailed the authors and they said "there could be some pre conditions we have not presented in the screenshot" and that they would address it when they released a dataset.

Sounds like it's all sorted out now. No harm done.

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