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The Wolfram Physics Project

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#191

Post by Koshkin »

mellosouls wrote: post #174
hobofan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What path is Eric Weinstein taking? I've heard about him for the first time yesterday, when a section of his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast was linked, where he talked much too confidently about a subject he probably shouldn't.

Weinstein rented a room in an Oxbridge college to lecture on his theory of everything. His recent campaign was for his brother who he feels was badly mistreated by a Nobel laureate who he alleges failed to credit him for important related work. You can hear the latter case on a recent edition of his podcast, The Portal.

> theory of everything

I've read a book with this title once, full of formulas. I do not remember who the author was, and the book (or the math in it) did not make sense to me.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#192

Post by chrisco255 »

knzhou wrote: post #184
chrisco255 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is pretty good at criticizing things.

Well yeah, but a lot of the criticism is baseless. For example, you have people downthread saying things like "this can't be right because it's discrete", or, "it's inherently impossible for a theory of everything to make predictions", and so on. These aren't true at all. Every physicist knows that if you want good criticism, you need to go to people with relevant expertise. That's what peer review is!

But they're doing that too. Given we live in the information age, why the hell not send it out in both a traditional research publication as well as a forum like this one? A lot of smart people out there in the world and if you can get 10,000 geniuses to look it over, who says it won't lead to either better criticisms or expansion of a potentially sound theory into other discoveries?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#193

Post by JoachimS »

jonathan_gorard wrote: post #130
knzhou wrote: post #102

I don't see anything of substance here, besides a lot of pretty graphs. Just like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", we have the problem that there is a vast gulf between what you need to make flashy popsci and what you need to make a real physical theory. In increasing order of difficulty, you need to: 1. make a set of dynamical rules that matches general relativity in the low energy limit, such as recovering Lorent…

(1) We certainly do have formal derivations of Lorentz covariance and the Einstein field equations, given in detail here: http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-re... (2) The article above already discusses the derivation of the matter contribution to the Lagrangian density, the derivation of energy-momentum tensor, and Lorentz transformations for elementary particles. (3) Both Hawking radiation an…

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 that P=BQP, where P and BQP denote the complexity classes of polynomial time and bounded error quantum polynomial time, respectively."

And:

"In other words, in order to maintain a causal invariant representation, the observer must perform a sufficient level of coarse-graining to ensure that any apparent advantage obtained through the use of a quantum computer over a classical one is effectively lost."

Am I missing something fundamental (most probably)? Are you predicting that quantum computers will not be able to, for example, factor RSA keys much faster than todays non-quantum machines?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#194

Post by thomashobohm »

dang wrote: post #138

I'm going to try to merge the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707 ) hither. Please stand by. Edit: that's done. I adopted the other title, in the hope that it will have less of a flamebait effect. All: 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. https:…

I have no stake in this at all and (I literally just learned what "Wolfram Derangement Syndrome" was by reading the comments that you linked to). It looks like you've said several times in the past that the people talking about Wolfram's self-obsession are practicing a "counterversion" of the same thing, but you've never explained why or how; to me, it seems obvious that being obsessed with another person who you don't personally know, like Wolfram, is the exact opposite of being obsessed with yourself.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#195

Post by danpalmer »

chrisco255 wrote: post #186
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…

Do you think the simulation uses Neo4J or JanusGraph?

It’s probably implemented in Mathematica, so probably not.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#196

Post by mellosouls »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #189
dang wrote: post #138

I'm going to try to merge the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707 ) hither. Please stand by. Edit: that's done. I adopted the other title, in the hope that it will have less of a flamebait effect. All: 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. https:…

> 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.

I agree with this. These theories would not get any traction whatsoever were it not for the entirely-physics-unrelated fame of their author.

It's important that that is pointed out, not everybody reading them will be aware and may invest time they wouldn't grant to the hundreds of other people promoting their pet Theories of Everything without the benefit of credit with programmers and startup followers.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#197

Post by knzhou »

jonathan_gorard wrote: post #130
knzhou wrote: post #102

I don't see anything of substance here, besides a lot of pretty graphs. Just like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", we have the problem that there is a vast gulf between what you need to make flashy popsci and what you need to make a real physical theory. In increasing order of difficulty, you need to: 1. make a set of dynamical rules that matches general relativity in the low energy limit, such as recovering Lorent…

(1) We certainly do have formal derivations of Lorentz covariance and the Einstein field equations, given in detail here: http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-re... (2) The article above already discusses the derivation of the matter contribution to the Lagrangian density, the derivation of energy-momentum tensor, and Lorentz transformations for elementary particles. (3) Both Hawking radiation an…

Thanks, this is much better than the incredibly vague Wolfram documentation.

Skimming through it, the links between the specific physics and the general statements about graphs seem to me to be rather weak. A typical section looks like setting up a bunch of very general definitions about graphs, and then suddenly jumping into a standard physics derivation in standard physics notation without even using the definitions you set up a page earlier. In other words, the graph stuff seems to not be doing much of the work!

But I do admit that I only skimmed. This could be an unfair assessment. I hope your papers get a good, thorough peer review.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#198

Post by knzhou »

dang wrote: post #138

I'm going to try to merge the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707 ) hither. Please stand by. Edit: that's done. I adopted the other title, in the hope that it will have less of a flamebait effect. All: 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. https:…

There's a pernicious effect going on, though. You can see on the Twitter threads about this that people are asking physics professors what they think -- and they're all weaselling out, saying stuff like "No comment." Why? Because from decades of experience they know that nothing is going to stop the hype train: at best they'll be ignored and at worst they'll be tarred in some articles as hidebound reactionaries.

But if the real experts can't be bothered to say anything, then the only criticism will be from laypeople, and they can only argue based on Wolfram's personality and record -- in other words, Wolfram Derangement Syndrome. If you discourage this, we are left with no criticism at all!

(In reality the situation isn't totally lost, but only because there are "half-experts", i.e. grad students like me, who know just enough to criticize substantively, and just little enough to waste time doing it.)

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#199

Post by jjoonathan »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #189
dang wrote: post #138

I'm going to try to merge the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707 ) hither. Please stand by. Edit: that's done. I adopted the other title, in the hope that it will have less of a flamebait effect. All: 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. https:…

> 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.

Agreed. Not talking about it sends a very clear message of implicit endorsement and agreement.

In contrast, talking about it teaches those who haven't encountered him before how he works. Without that knowledge, one is liable to either get swept up in his aggressive, self-centered reality distortion field or reject him outright as blogspam. Neither response is appropriate. He deserves positive attention for his ideas and negative attention for the reality distortion field, and these discussions serve that purpose.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#200

Post by kleer001 »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #47
aaron-santos wrote: post #35

Graph grammars are Turing complete so I don't see why they couldn't express the fundamental theory of physics, but it seems like a weird way of going about the problem.

A turing machine cannot produce randomness, non-determinism.

No, but it can produce something that's unpredictable from the original code. And that's spitting distance from random.
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