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We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#321

Post by leephillips »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #311
leephillips wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.

String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)

No. That’s why I said that people “challenge it to show that it’s science.” Why are you bringing up string theory as if I’m defending it?

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#322

Post by biomcgary »

underdeserver wrote: post #148
DantesKite wrote: post #73

Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…

My problem with Wolfram is that every time I hear him talk or read him, I end up spending 15-20 minutes and come out the other end confused. I studied physics in my undergrad, I have a graduate degree in math, I've shipped large features on planet-scale systems. I'm no genius, certainly nowhere close to Dr. Wolfram, but I don't think I'm far from your average HN reader in reading comprehension ability. I've read 35 p…

I really appreciated the concept of "epistemic legibility" as a virtue. Arguments are most valuable when they are clear and concise. It makes them easier to refute if wrong and easier to extend/apply if correct.

As far as I know, the phrase was coined here: https://acesounderglass.com/2022/02/07/epistemic-legibility/

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#323

Post by dudeinjapan »

leephillips wrote: post #321
dudeinjapan wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)

No. That’s why I said that people “challenge it to show that it’s science.” Why are you bringing up string theory as if I’m defending it?

I'm just suggesting that Wolfram's "theory" belongs in the same category as string theory. On some level it is probably a useful tool to understand something about science, say, beyond Deepak Chopra-esque woo-woo ("We are all energy, we are all vibrations", etc.) But it's not currently obvious that there's a there there.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#324

Post by leephillips »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #323
leephillips wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That’s why I said that people “challenge it to show that it’s science.” Why are you bringing up string theory as if I’m defending it?

I'm just suggesting that Wolfram's "theory" belongs in the same category as string theory. On some level it is probably a useful tool to understand something about science, say, beyond Deepak Chopra-esque woo-woo ("We are all energy, we are all vibrations", etc.) But it's not currently obvious that there's a there there.

I think it’s worse in the sense that I alluded to when I mentioned “relativistically correct.”

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#325

Post by convexfunction »

copperx wrote: post #298
daneelsan wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's nothing more than noodling cellular automata in ways that have had no effect whatsoever on chemistry, physics, or biology. I mean, you could at least read a bit about what his Multicomputation stuff is really studying. CA are not being noodled there.

For those of us that are not going to read Wolfram's papers, what is multicomputation?

Seconded -- I don't have much interest in reading the guy's own writing at this point, but I'll gladly read a concise summary that leaves out all the boasting since I assume there might be some actual "content" buried in there.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#326

Post by thwayunion »

posix_me_less wrote: post #276
thwayunion wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO all of the comments about Wolfram as a topic are low quality, including this one. The topic of the post is the "Wolfram Institute". I'm happy to see more investment in R&D, period. Good on Wolfram. I will probably never seek out a job at the Wolfram Institute because I believe the title is true -- there is an abundance of scientific opportunity. Working on Wolfram's agenda would not be the best use of my time, in…

> computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s What do you mean?

Computer algebra systems and so on in particular. The sort of stuff Wolfram made is fortune on.

I also think "pure software" entering adulthood. The peak might last decades to come, but it's definitely not 1990 or 2010 anymore. CS still has lots of exciting things in the fire, but most of them involve more than "pure software". If that makes sense.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#327

Post by throwaway81523 »

m12k wrote: post #135
throwaway81523 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is he makes a bunch of apparently empty claims about his hypergraph stuff being related to physics. The pictures are pretty and the hypergraph stuff is perhaps interesting in its own right, but with all the hand waving about QM and GR, I looked pretty hard a couple of years ago and couldn't find any explanation of the most familiar QM phenomena like the double slit experiment. It's almost like free associat…

> I looked pretty hard a couple of years ago and couldn't find any explanation of the most familiar QM phenomena like the double slit experiment I was following links from the OP, and while reading his Wolfram Physics one year update[1] I came across this: https://www.wolframphysics.org/bulletins/2020/08/a-short-not... [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys...

Thanks, that helps, I haven't made sense of it yet but at least it shows that the issue isn't being ignored.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#328

Post by dannykwells »

michael_j_ward wrote: post #300
dannykwells wrote: post #277

I came across this today: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/all/ "Note: Since 1987, Stephen Wolfram’s intellectual efforts have not primarily been reported in academic articles." To be clear - no serious scientist believes that a scholarly output which is composed predominantly of non-peer reviewed publications is a serious or valid output. Essentially, Wolfram is a glorified blogger who runs a tec…

Ideas being subjected to peer review != the institutionalized "Peer Review Process(TM)"

Ideas being subjected to peer review \approx the institutionalized "Peer Review Process(TM)"

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#329

Post by wenc »

DantesKite wrote: post #73

Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…

Exactly. Why can’t we focus on the ideas and not the person?

(Unless the person is relevant to the idea but in most cases this is not true).

Everyone is so eager to pile on. It lowers the quality of the discussion.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#330

Post by throwaway81523 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #163
throwaway81523 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't see how to implement QM as a computer program while preserving basic complexity invariants of Turing machines. That is the point of quantum computing: that the complexity classes for quantum computers are different than those for Turing machines. If you take the view that that the whole Universe is one gigantic entangled quantum state, the cellular automaton simulation would get pretty bogged down.

Quantum Computers are no more powerful than Turing Machines, complexity has little to do with this. Quantum Mechanics, being a linear theory (if we exclude measurement) is actually relatively easy to describe computationally. The computations are incredibly slow, but otherwise they are perfectly in line with any other formulation of the theory.

> Quantum Computers are no more powerful than Turing Machines

They are more powerful in the sense that P-time for quantum computers (aka BQP) is hypothesized to be larger than P-time for Turing machines. That is different from every classical model of computation (RAM machines, etc.) that we usually talk about. It's hard to call something a cellular automaton if it has to expand exponentially in size as it evolves. Thus, 't Hooft concretely predicts that if his CA model is right, then quantum computers can't work. Idk whether Wolfram addresses this issue.

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