[gmarx]

The success of these ML models has me wondering if this is what Quantum Mechanics is. QM is notoriously difficult to interpret yet makes amazing predictions. Maybe wave functions are just really good at predicting system behavior but don't reflect the underlying way things work.

OTOH, Newtonian mechanics is great at predicting things under certain circumstances yet, in the same way, doesn't necessarily reflect the underlying mechanism of the system.

So maybe philosophers will eventually tell us the distinction we are trying to draw, although intuitive, isn't real

[kolinko]

That’s what thermodynamics is - we initially only had laws about energy/heat flow, and only later we figured out how statistical particle movements cause these effects.