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The Wolfram Physics Project

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#231

Post by zwaps »

Can someone tell me how this relates to the hype of, well it must be some decades back, chaos theory in dynamical systems?

The idea then was the following: We do not need "randomness" and probability theory in our models, once we realize that deterministic systems, even simple ones, can produce arbitrarily complex outcomes.

For example, this was all the rage in economics in the 90's. Surely, those are dynamical systems and besides having an actual proper reason for probabilistic reasoning, one wanted to at least consider that modeling deterministic systems without any randomness could fit reality.

I also make this point because in this instance, graph based discrete models often have a continuous equivalent and it depends on the case which of those offers more useful outcomes.

If I remember correctly, the hype about chaotic systems died down in part because while we could formulate substantively powerful foundations, it was extremely difficult to "get something useful out of it" and it all seemed to go more or less nowhere.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#232

Post by dTal »

covidacct wrote: post #213
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What are the names for these old, well-studied things in programming language theory, so we can look them up?

Oy, I've been dreading having to answer this question since I pressed "post" :) I've decided that I do not have the time or interest in writing the Related Work section for a paper-length blog post touching on an enormous number of fields, some of which I know well and some of which I haven't thought about in a decade. (As an aside, one real and substantive problem with trying to build a research program without taki…

I would like the PL theory analogue of "emulation cones" and "rulial space" please :)

If these concepts don't have a single name that you can just rattle off, and that we can Google - if describing them in terms of existing theory would take serious effort - then surely identifying and naming them is a major contribution?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#233

Post by philosopher1234 »

igravious wrote: post #219
jonathan_gorard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have, as I said in response to your other version of the same question :)

"Perhaps the single most[0] significant idea conveyed within Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science , and the initial intellectual seedling from which the contents of the book subsequently grow, is the abstract empirical discovery that the “computational universe” - that is, the space of all possible programs - is far richer, more diverse and more vibrant than one might reasonably expect. The fact that such intricat…

I think the way you nitpicked his phrasing was mean and unconstructive.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#234

Post by wolfgke »

gexaha wrote: post #212
jdjrirkfkfk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We dont know if physical randomness truly is so. It could be pseudo random with a seed (superdeterminism)

how about Conway-Kochen's Free Will Theorem? is it compatible with superdeterminism?

If you are interested in such topics, read

't Hooft, Gerard: The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6

Reference number 23.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#235

Post by CamperBob2 »

GuiA wrote: post #83
ur-whale wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, let's force one of the most creative dude of this century back into the rigid pen others are allowed to play in, just in case he does something crazy and interesting. What a lame idea, truly worthy of a mandarin.

The guy pretty much single handedly built a profitable company that enables him to pursue whatever research interests he want, and that’s been going for over 30 years. They hate him cause they ain’t him.

I'm not sure how well that argument stands on its own, though. Doesn't this sound a bit like what you might read on /r/AskTrumpSupporters?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#236

Post by hutzlibu »

crazygringo wrote: post #103

As much as the guy can be annoying, the associated "Project Announcement" is a fascinating 20,000-word-ish article. [1] I've long assumed that the basic structure of the universe must be some kind of graph, simply because it's the most elementary structure there seems to be, and so easily gives rise to dimensionality. So seeing someone try to tackle this bottom-up and see if it can ultimately give rise to quantum mec…

"I've long assumed that the basic structure of the universe must be some kind of graph, "

Do you mean this literally, or rather: "the basic structure of the universe CAN BE DESCRIBED by some kind of graph"?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#237

Post by SuperTachyon »

I briefly read through the article. As a PhD student in theoretical physics, I can see that some basic ideas of gr and qm can be interpreted out of these graphs. But I’m not convinced why these graphs have to be generated by a single rule. I don’t see any motivation in restricting to a single rule or even procedural generation at all.

It also reminds me of the casual set theory that I heard briefly from a professor a few years ago. I was told that it re-creates vacuum gr just well.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#238

Post by h91wka »

jjoonathan wrote: post #202
covidacct wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The substance a good dsl for implementing rewrite/string substitution systems, as well as (likely high-quality) implementations of algorithms causal invariants, knuth-bendix completion, graph isomorphism, etc. [1]. A lot of that pre-existed the Wolfram Physics Project. The new thing appears to be: 1. a rebranding with improved documentation / learning resources for using those features (hey, documentation is hard! di…

Seconded! Nothing beats Mathematica at mapping the concepts of mathematics into software. In certain verticals, sure, but overall? Wolfram has been spinning this flywheel for decades, and it shows.

Maplesoft Maple is more powerful. hides

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#239

Post by mnemonicsloth »

dang wrote: post #206
mnemonicsloth wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no more Wolfram Derangement Syndrome comments, please. They're off topic because they're always the same, and they compose into a weird counterversion of the very thing they're deriding. If you really can't stand it then kill the thread. But Wolfram is a bad actor in a discipline that runs on reputation. He needs to be talked about.

He doesn't need to be talked about for the thousandth time in the way he always gets talked about—not on HN, at least, and it's easy to see why: this is a site for intellectual curiosity. Curiosity withers under repetition and fries under indignation. What happens to it under the combo? exercise for the reader. This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have a single thing you're optimizing and for and to…

An environment full of misleading information doesn't satisfy intellectual curiosity. It penalizes it. And a one-sided discussion about Stephen Wolfram is highly misleading -- even worse than no discussion at all. So I stand by what I said earlier. If you can't stand to hear the case against Stephen Wolfram then kill this thread.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#240

Post by alecdibble »

gazzini wrote: post #226
JoachimS wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through the paper in (3) above. If I understand the text on page 26 correctly, you predict that quantum computers will not be more efficient than classical computers: "The class of problems that can be solved efficiently by quantum computers should be identical to the class of problems that can be solved efficiently by classical computers: More precisely, we predict in this appropriately coarse-grained case t…

In your last sentence, you compare future quantum computers to “today’s” non-quantum computers, which might be a false dichotomy. [warning: uninformed tangent] A more optimistic interpretation could be that quantum & non-quantum machines will be similar because we have huge leaps to make in non-quantum computer architecture. This is strictly a theoretical thought-experiment for me, but it has always intrigued me that…

What you are describing is an analog computer or circuit. These definitely exist, I had to build a circuit to model the physics of a bouncing ball in a Circuits class in college. However, I don't know how often analog computers are used in professional/practical applications these days. Here is some more info: https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/not-your-father...
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