21–30 of 342 posts
Wolfram’s header image apart from the article is available in light and dark variants that can be pinch-zoomed more easily: http://www.wolframphysics.org/visual-summary/ Based on this image alone, having not yet read the article, it looks like he’s taken his prior insights on cellular automata (Conway’s Game type stuff) and advanced them forward to quarks and Feynman diagrams. I typically have a very rough time with…
But a graph has nodes and edges. Nodes, in this case, can be particles.. I guess? But what are the edges? When a "simple rule" is applied to a collection of particles, what is the force that connects them after the interaction? I read some of the material in detail and skimmed some of the rest, but there was a lot of setup and cool graph visualizations and not a lot speaking to this core question.
Disclaimer: I'm not a theoretical physicist but I have read "Quantum Physics for Babies" at least 50 times.
If I have to read through so much of the article context disguised as bragging without anything resembling something new then maybe this Fundamental Theory is less important than Stephen Wolfram showing how many Important Things he's done
His company was running accelerated calculus experiments at universities built around Mathematica. There’s a reason your teacher doesn’t want you using a graphing calculator for your algebra homework. I know that now.
Ever since I’ve been carrying around a block of salt for Mr Wolfram and get a lot of schadenfreude out of him showing what a mad scientist he is.
Does anyone remember that self obsessed book he wrote about fifteen years back? Hell I can’t even remember the title. Sure changed the world, didn’t it.
If I have to read through so much of the article context disguised as bragging without anything resembling something new then maybe this Fundamental Theory is less important than Stephen Wolfram showing how many Important Things he's done
That is the reason we love Stephen Wolfram.
Anybody who has coded Game of Life can draw a parallel to this. Simple rules can lead to arbitrarily complex systems. I'm all on board with this concept. Graph theory is amazing and useful in many ways we don't understand yet. I'm all on board with this concept as well. But a graph has nodes and edges. Nodes, in this case, can be particles.. I guess? But what are the edges? When a "simple rule" is applied to a collec…
Save your time, just read More is Different: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393
The article suggests that working out the theory of something like rule production systems, and then figuring out how that theory relates to existing insights from physics, is the best path toward a Fundamental Theory of Physics.
My primary source of skepticism stems from the fact that the theory of rule production systems is not exactly a new area of study. It's been well-developed at various points in time and from various perspectives by the theoretical CS, programming language theory, automated theorem proving, and mathematical logic communities. That theory addresses most of Stephen's "big difficult questions" about the non-physics side of things. For example, his "emulation cones" are a new name for a very old and extremely well-studied idea. The term "rulial space", similarly, is a new name for an idea that's well-developed in programming language theory.
I sympathize with Stephen. In fact, he sounds a bit like I did early in my scientific career. Unfortunately, though, I just don't see how these old well-understood ideas from computer science are going to result in a new fundamental theory of physics.
After a few iterations, I think I understand the point of this piece. It was a bit difficult to hone in on, though. The article suggests that working out the theory of something like rule production systems, and then figuring out how that theory relates to existing insights from physics, is the best path toward a Fundamental Theory of Physics. My primary source of skepticism stems from the fact that the theory of rul…