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The Wolfram Physics Project

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#41

Post by covidacct »

gfodor wrote: post #39
covidacct wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I doubt it, though. There has always been substantial cross-talk between CS/information theory and Physics. Even through the 1990s it was difficult to be a computer scientist without eventually coming into contact with a non-trivial number of physicists. Especially in industrial research labs. Bell Labs, PARC, and IBM Research were full of physicists. Bell Labs and PARC are dead, but AFAIK IBM Research still h…

I really think that cross-domain concepts are almost the only way to make huge leaps, so that's a precondition in my mind for any advancement. Check. In terms of "humility on both sides", it's such a common theme that this oft-cited assumption is taken as truth. Some of the greatest minds who had the most impact in our history were also insufferable assholes, who were stubborn and would not yield until people were fo…

Sure. The problem here is that exactly the ideas he's proposing to explore have already been explored. I've slightly edited my previous comment to point this out.

The problem, in the very particular case of this blog post, is that the cost for lacking intellectual humility is spending time reinventing other people's wheels. And those wheels won't get him as far as he thinks they will. We know because they've already been built by others.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#42

Post by gfodor »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #40
gfodor wrote: post #36

I'll just say it, I love Stephen Wolfram. The fact he gets under so many peoples' skins, and yet keeps leading teams producing amazing stuff (Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, etc) gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who puts so much energy into this stuff, which such ego, obviously wants to contribute in a real and meaningful way to ensure his own understanding and his legacy. A personality flaw? Sure. But we've seen bigge…

> theoretical physics is dead I'm genuinely not sure why you believe this especially as we live in an era when theoretical physics and experimental physics are becoming so entwined and the product is a fairly successful testing of our models of physics.

I believe it because it seems to be the consensus I gather whenever I read articles about theoretical physics' hunt for the unified theory. I'm talking about that problem specifically. The search for the unified theory sounds basically dead, and we have a generation of physicists who have spent their careers going down dead ends. The meme seems to be for the field to move past it and focus on more "productive" areas of physics that can have practical use.

I can only gather this from 2nd hand accounts in pop-sci articles and mainstream physics books, but the lack of falsifiability and experimentalism for these things, combined with a large surface area of failed attempts, seems to have left physics in a rut.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#43

Post by DantesKite »

gfodor wrote: post #36

I'll just say it, I love Stephen Wolfram. The fact he gets under so many peoples' skins, and yet keeps leading teams producing amazing stuff (Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, etc) gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who puts so much energy into this stuff, which such ego, obviously wants to contribute in a real and meaningful way to ensure his own understanding and his legacy. A personality flaw? Sure. But we've seen bigge…

I feel the same way. His book A New Kind of Science (the first chapters) have been revolutionary.

I think his work will lay down the foundations of science for centuries to come.

It is curious though. Nearly every criticism I’ve read hasn’t grappled with his ideas—just the man, out of insecurity and ego.

And he’s a lovely writer. I don’t sense ego from him. Just honesty about the work he’s done and contributed. You read him and get the sense his prose is calm—like light particles flowing down a river.

His stories about the remarkable scientists he’s met is some of the best writing I’ve ever read.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#44

Post by steve76 »

gunshai wrote: post #21
floatingatoll wrote: post #11

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…

What does that visual summary even communicate?

One thing makes two

leads to

one thing making another thing pushing back on one thing making another thing.

Group them together. Allow groups to connect back to themselves.

Run them in very high numbers. Try to find shortcuts. Relate shortcuts to real world.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#45

Post by [deleted] »

gfodor wrote: post #36

I'll just say it, I love Stephen Wolfram. The fact he gets under so many peoples' skins, and yet keeps leading teams producing amazing stuff (Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, etc) gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who puts so much energy into this stuff, which such ego, obviously wants to contribute in a real and meaningful way to ensure his own understanding and his legacy. A personality flaw? Sure. But we've seen bigge…

[deleted]

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#46

Post by gfodor »

covidacct wrote: post #41
gfodor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think that cross-domain concepts are almost the only way to make huge leaps, so that's a precondition in my mind for any advancement. Check. In terms of "humility on both sides", it's such a common theme that this oft-cited assumption is taken as truth. Some of the greatest minds who had the most impact in our history were also insufferable assholes, who were stubborn and would not yield until people were fo…

Sure. The problem here is that exactly the ideas he's proposing to explore have already been explored. I've slightly edited my previous comment to point this out. The problem, in the very particular case of this blog post, is that the cost for lacking intellectual humility is spending time reinventing other people's wheels. And those wheels won't get him as far as he thinks they will. We know because they've already…

That makes sense. I can't assess your argument given my lack of understanding. In my own experience though, deriving things from first principles, even if they've been re-invented countless other times, is a good way to build up the intellectual super structures necessary to think new thoughts.

I think we should separate:

- Wolfram acting as though he thought of the ideas first

- Wolfram being underinformed so as to undermine his own progress

People typically get bent out of shape on the former, which is in evidence, and is a problem of politics. The latter, we can't prove or disprove unless you see him drawing significant conclusions that are falsifiable via current understanding. If that is the case, then I'll yield. But I suspect Wolfram may be more well read than he lets on, but for whatever reason, has a dysfunctional personality trait where he sees his own wrangling with ideas already put forth as a form of authorship, when he incorporates it into his long chain of analysis that he's been doing for decades. A potential analogy is one of "re-branding" - but in this case it's re-branding as part of an internal narrative, one where in the final chapter, Wolfram sees himself as the grand author of the unified theory. In that mental model, each idea he draws from is not one he cobbles together into a unified form, but instead, ideas he incorporates and reinterprets in his own bespoke system and methods, leading him to forget that the core ideas are not his own. (I'm definitely reaching here, but trying to to highlight how the two things above could be in fact very materially divergent and consistent with the evidence.)

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#48

Post by lalaithion »

I'm pretty sure that this would violate Bell's theorem, and I'd love an explanation of why it wouldn't. It looks to me like a system of local, hidden variables, unless there's some sense in which changes in the hypergraph can propagate faster than the speed of light.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#49

Post by floatingatoll »

gunshai wrote: post #21
floatingatoll wrote: post #11

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…

What does that visual summary even communicate?

“What if the causality that led to the universe can be modeled using a form of Conway’s Game of Life automata built on Feynman diagrams?”

Note that I have no idea if Wolfram is right or not, but I’m glad I tried and failed to read New Kind of Science years ago. The mindset/approach were worth it and make it possible to follow along with today’s post.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#50

Post by gfodor »

DantesKite wrote: post #43
gfodor wrote: post #36

I'll just say it, I love Stephen Wolfram. The fact he gets under so many peoples' skins, and yet keeps leading teams producing amazing stuff (Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, etc) gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who puts so much energy into this stuff, which such ego, obviously wants to contribute in a real and meaningful way to ensure his own understanding and his legacy. A personality flaw? Sure. But we've seen bigge…

I feel the same way. His book A New Kind of Science (the first chapters) have been revolutionary. I think his work will lay down the foundations of science for centuries to come. It is curious though. Nearly every criticism I’ve read hasn’t grappled with his ideas—just the man, out of insecurity and ego. And he’s a lovely writer. I don’t sense ego from him. Just honesty about the work he’s done and contributed. You r…

One potential archetype for him that is consistent is he simply cannot recognize these political concerns. Many of us feel anxiety about the idea we may be interpreted as stepping on peoples' work, or failing to recognize their efforts and how they may have led to our own advancement. It may be that Wolfram, for whatever reason, simply doesn't have that - not out of malice, but just as a core deficiency in his ability to empathize. Any person like that would be viewed as a bull in a china shop, even if everything they wrote never directly attacked or diminished others - and that seems to be the case here. The problems people have with Wolfram are problems of "insult by omission" or "implicit bragging" - not about things that are on the page, but the things that aren't. Anyone who lacks this kind of empathy would simply not write them, and be confused as to why people react to their writing the way so many do.
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