AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Michele Simionato]

"Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<Yw3pb.1660$qh2.190 at newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> Michele Simionato wrote:

> > Now, one can prove that the arbitrarity is
> > extremely small and has no effect at all at our energy scales: but
> > in principle it seems that we cannot determine completely an observable,
> > even in quantum electrodynamics, due to an internal inconsistency of the
> > mathematical model.
> 
> How small?  Plank scale small?

Actually it is much *smaller* than that: this is the reason why it is
not significant at all from a physical perspective. I was adopting there
a purely mathematical POV. In practice, only at absurdely high
energy scales, where certainly QED does not apply, the effect is relevant: 
so physicist don't need to worry at all. The number I find in my Ph. D. thesis
(http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~micheles/dott.ps, unfortunaly it is in
Italian since they give the freedom to write the dissertation in English 
only the year after my graduation :-() is 10^227 GeV (!) BTW, it seems 
too large now, I don't remember how I got it, but anyway I am sure the 
number is much much larger than Plank scale (10^19 GeV).
 
In my post I was simply saying that there are issues of principle:
in practice quantum electrodynamics is the most successful physical
theory we ever had, with incredibly accurate predictions. No doubt
about that ;)