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Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

blog.wolfram.com

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Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#21

Post by earthboundkid »

yters wrote: post #16

So if our universe is essentially computational, what are the implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem? Doesn't this mean there must be an infinite number of axioms our universe is generated from?

If Wolfram is right, our universe would be a mathematical "function" not a mathematical "system". Godel showed that every system of sufficient complexity has facts about it that can't be proven. There is no reason to think though that every function within a complex goes back on itself. x = y, for example, doesn't loop around no matter how far out you go.

For my part however I don't believe it's possible for the universe to be "pure math" (that is, its reality comes from an equation and nothing else besides it) in the sense that we understand "math". Nevertheless, it might be that there is an equation that can predict everything we experience. We may as well search for it.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#22

Post by DanielBMarkham »

earthboundkid wrote: post #21
yters wrote: post #16

So if our universe is essentially computational, what are the implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem? Doesn't this mean there must be an infinite number of axioms our universe is generated from?

If Wolfram is right, our universe would be a mathematical "function" not a mathematical "system". Godel showed that every system of sufficient complexity has facts about it that can't be proven. There is no reason to think though that every function within a complex goes back on itself. x = y, for example, doesn't loop around no matter how far out you go. For my part however I don't believe it's possible for the univ…

Wolfram's a lot smarter than I am, but I believe he also believes the function is discrete and not continuous. In fact, he makes the point in NKS that we may have went off the rails with Newton and the calculus. It may turn out that the universe is discrete and that our understanding of it as continuous is just an artifact of not having the computational power to see how discrete functions can effectively look continuous at a much larger scale (sort of a reverse proof of the integral)

It blows my mind. But if you're a genius, might as well have a hobby, right? I'm just glad he took this up instead of bowling.

Just thought I would add that clarification in there, because I know the word "function" has a lot of meanings to people.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#23

Post by ivankirigin »

pg wrote: post #11
kcl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also had a quite a large marketing campaign behind it. Last I checked most objective scientific writing didn't come with a hype machine attached.

Citations seem a far more reliable positive indicator of quality than hype is a negative one.

People citing work would indicate that work's quality, but the complaint about "A New Kind Of Science" was weak citations, an indication of poor quality. I don't know much about the details. Nor do I know how much people have sited Wolfram's work since.

I think what upsets a lot of people is the attitude. But a bad attitude can still accompany good work, so I excuse Wolfram for his quirks. That acceptance is essential when dealing with people who know they are much smarter than the average person.

While at NYU, I saw Wolfram speak while on his big book tour. There were a few big brains at the Courant Institute that leveled major criticisms at the book. Unfortunately, there was another talk about nonlinear PDEs that most of the critics elected to attend in place of watching Wolfram. Wolfram started the talk by saying, "well, the important people aren't here to see this, but I suppose I'll continue anyway".

As one of the hoi polloi, I found the remark amazingly conceited, probably correct, and a bit charming at the same time.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#25

Post by yters »

earthboundkid wrote: post #21
yters wrote: post #16

So if our universe is essentially computational, what are the implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem? Doesn't this mean there must be an infinite number of axioms our universe is generated from?

If Wolfram is right, our universe would be a mathematical "function" not a mathematical "system". Godel showed that every system of sufficient complexity has facts about it that can't be proven. There is no reason to think though that every function within a complex goes back on itself. x = y, for example, doesn't loop around no matter how far out you go. For my part however I don't believe it's possible for the univ…

The problem I see is 'truth' that is not generated by the system the universe is a function within. To then maintain truth is that which corresponds to reality gets hard. Kinda trippy.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#26

Post by yters »

forgotmylastone wrote: post #17
yters wrote: post #16

So if our universe is essentially computational, what are the implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem? Doesn't this mean there must be an infinite number of axioms our universe is generated from?

Maybe, but maybe it just means our universe is full of real contradictions.

Science makes progress by assuming there are not real contradictions.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#27

Post by Kaizyn »

puppetsock wrote: post #20
henning wrote: post #15

Wow, he's turning into a crackpot: long, rambling articles with no introduction or conclusions that have no math or results to speak of, furtive mentions of how the rest of the physics community can't grasp how brilliant and far-out his remarkable work is (which could be because he doesn't publish, doesn't collaborate, doesn't go to conferences, and basically doesn't actually participate in the research community).

John Baez has developed an index for quantitatively judging revolutionary discoveries in physics: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html Doesn't look like Wolfram scores very high on Baez's index, although Wolfram does get the 50 point item.

He gets the 30 point question #30 too.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#28

Post by andyn »

amichail wrote: post #9
kcl wrote: post #7

How can this guy STILL be that full of himself even after all the shit he took for writing A New Kind of Science?

The book has quite a few citations: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=31...

From the reports I can read on that page, the citations refer to sentences of the form:

    CA produce complex/unpredictable results[n]

    [n] Wolfram, S. NKoS
So yes, it's referred to a lot but I don't see anything very deep.

I think the problem people have with this book is that it was hailed as the second coming before it came out and that SW had been in his basement for the past 5 years discovering CAs that ran the universe.

What it actually turned out to be was a thousand pages of examples/cataloguing CAs and the /suggestion/ that this is how the universe works rather than anything to prove it.

Re: Wolfram On Hunting For Our Universe

#29

Post by eru »

jey wrote: post #3

Why should it be this network thing? He doesn't back up his assertion that the universe is described by one of these networks. Juergen Schmidhuber lays out an interesting idea that our Universe is just one Turing machine, generated by an enumeration of all Turing machines (generating all possible Universes). http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/everything/html.html

"Conclusion. By stepping back and adopting the Great Programmer's point of view, classic problems of philosophy go away."
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