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A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#41

Post by michaelmrose »

BucketSort wrote: post #28
stupidcar wrote: post #19

A real shame that Wolfram gives credence to "handwriting analysis" pseudoscience in what is otherwise an interesting piece. > “The writing style is entirely different. Personality-wise, the writer of sample B has a quicker, more intuitive thinking style than the one of sample A.” How can anybody of Wolfram's intelligence unquestioningly accept this nonsense?

I write a lot. I can tell from my own experience that what I'm feeling when I write translates into my handwriting in subtle ways. You may object to some particular method that I'm unaware of, but I don't think "handwriting analysis" in general is absurd. It's data and so there are models of it and inferences.

Personal feelings are not how we evaluate a scientific discipline. It's phrenology level nonsense.

A coworker once told me that his chiropractor told him he could help him with hemroids. This not only made me dubious about her ability to cure hemroids. It made me dubious that she could do anything about back pain. Capable people don't spew nonsense within the scope of their capabilities.

The second his analyst registered an opinion about the personality of the writer I became dubious that she could even tell who wrote it.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#42

Post by jacobolus »

masteranza wrote: post #3
codezero wrote: post #2

When I was studying quantum mechanics, I quite often went to this book for a very different perspective on a lot of the details. I found it to be exceptionally well written and had a seemingly different approach from the typical college or graduate level quantum mechanics textbook. We had a copy in one of our department libraries, if you can get your hands on one, I recommend giving it a read when you want a new pers…

Indeed. Not only can one get a glance of a unique perspective of one of the founding fathers, but also a lot of important facts not covered in many other textbooks. One of such facts are the low heat capacities of atoms that do not fit any classical theory. This fact alone is able to kill most of the "alternative" interpretations of quantum mechanics that the popular media sell-off as "science" nowadays.

> "alternative" interpretations of quantum mechanics that the popular media sell-off as "science" nowadays

What does this mean?

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#43

Post by api »

tlb wrote: post #16
scottlocklin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I think it's pretty easy to judge the value of not easily testable wacky conjectures. I don't think much of Penrose's idea that brains are quantum gravitic computers either, and that is vastly more close to being testable, and Penrose's achievements and track record in actual science are also vastly more impressive. Putting that aside; computer guys seem to think "computability" is important in physics. I do…

The conjecture that our universe is isomorphic to a CA is absolutely testable. When we find a CA that behaves just like the universe, we'll know it's true. If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. Computable physics would be extremely useful. Even with coarse approximations you can only integrate the Schrödinger equation among hundreds of particles. So you…

Wouldn't a truly non-quantized field or dimension falsify this idea? AFAIK there are none known yet, though there are some (like time) where we don't know.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#44

Post by api »

schwurb wrote: post #25
tlb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conjecture that our universe is isomorphic to a CA is absolutely testable. When we find a CA that behaves just like the universe, we'll know it's true. If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. Computable physics would be extremely useful. Even with coarse approximations you can only integrate the Schrödinger equation among hundreds of particles. So you…

> If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. This is wrong. You would have to additionally prove that the other thing is the only alternative. Also, CA is not testable in the sense that the theory of relativity is testable. The latter makes measurable predictions that can be satisfied, the former does not. I can imagine any model - unicorns and fairies inclu…

> This is wrong. You would have to additionally prove that the other thing is the only alternative.

A CA theory of physics would just be math, right? Wouldn't it end up being isomorphic with some mathematical representation, albeit perhaps easier to understand or evaluate in its CA form?

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#45

Post by baddox »

galonk wrote: post #35

I know SW is famous for his arrogance/egotism, but it still kills me how he always discusses everything in terms of Mathematica's programming language, instead of mathematical notation or pseudo-code. It's like giving a linguistics lecture using the made-up language you invented with your twin.

I don't think your criticism is very accurate here. Wolfram Language code doesn't show up until the second half of the (very long) article, in the sections where he is explaining how to represent the mathematical concepts in the Wolfram Language. In fact, in several cases he mentions the traditional mathematical notation and follows it with the Wolfram Language notation. What's strange or arrogant or egotistical about this? Yes, he's the founder and CEO of the company that created the language, but that doesn't strike me as a problem. It's a good language for doing this sort of thing, and it's pretty clear that he's genuinely interested in both the mathematical concepts and how to create a programming language to represent them. This is hardly just content marketing blogspam.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#47

Post by tlb »

api wrote: post #43
tlb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conjecture that our universe is isomorphic to a CA is absolutely testable. When we find a CA that behaves just like the universe, we'll know it's true. If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. Computable physics would be extremely useful. Even with coarse approximations you can only integrate the Schrödinger equation among hundreds of particles. So you…

Wouldn't a truly non-quantized field or dimension falsify this idea? AFAIK there are none known yet, though there are some (like time) where we don't know.

Yes. But it's hard to prove something is non-quantized. All you can do is measure precisely and say that the quantization must be smaller than X.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#48

Post by tlb »

api wrote: post #44
schwurb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. This is wrong. You would have to additionally prove that the other thing is the only alternative. Also, CA is not testable in the sense that the theory of relativity is testable. The latter makes measurable predictions that can be satisfied, the former does not. I can imagine any model - unicorns and fairies inclu…

> This is wrong. You would have to additionally prove that the other thing is the only alternative. A CA theory of physics would just be math, right? Wouldn't it end up being isomorphic with some mathematical representation, albeit perhaps easier to understand or evaluate in its CA form?

Currently, we only know continuous mathematical models of physics. A CA model would be discrete, so not isomorphic to anything we know.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#49

Post by ukj »

galonk wrote: post #35

I know SW is famous for his arrogance/egotism, but it still kills me how he always discusses everything in terms of Mathematica's programming language, instead of mathematical notation or pseudo-code. It's like giving a linguistics lecture using the made-up language you invented with your twin.

Have a look at this page [1]. Mathematica is exceptionally powerful and has a very rich vocabulary. In so far as expressing ideas across the computational paradigms - you will struggle to find a match.

It's just a pity that its grammar/syntax is unintuitive to people who come from conventional programming languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_multi-paradigm_p...

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#50

Post by sg0 »

SW has a tendency to describe features of a person which I find utterly fascinating (for eg: 'Turing used to giggle a lot', now compare that with the somber depiction of Turing in 'The Imitation Game'). In the write up on Ramanujam, SW mentions that he was stocky, apart from many personal tidbits.
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