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An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

wolframphysics.org

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Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#41

Post by mellosouls »

jereees wrote: post #27
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Are there any well respect physicists or research groups independent of Wolfram's group who are taking this seriously or collaborating with Wolfram Physics project? I would expect something like "an here is Max Planck Institute for Physics collaborating with Wolfram Physics research project on ...". Or something of that nature. At least after all these years.

Yes, Jonathan Gorard is a Wolfram Physics alumni https://x.com/getjonwithit

Unfortunately a quick Google indicated difficulty finding clarity on his importance outside his Wolfram association.

I think the comment you replied to is asking for groups or individuals of note and independent but working with Wolfram on the merits of his/their research. Your link didn't shed more light I think.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#42

Post by jiggawatts »

Certhas wrote: post #12
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Are there any well respect physicists or research groups independent of Wolfram's group who are taking this seriously or collaborating with Wolfram Physics project? I would expect something like "an here is Max Planck Institute for Physics collaborating with Wolfram Physics research project on ...". Or something of that nature. At least after all these years.

I used to work close to people who were actually somewhat close to the stuff contained in the papers. The consensus was that there is nothing of substance to engage with. Edit: When the technical papers appeared in 2020, I personally went through them in some detail. Tl;dr there are almost no novel ideas of substance in there. Specifically I looked at the "launch documents" provided here: https://wolframphysics.org/t…

(Disclaimer: I have a physics degree but I’m not a practicing physicist.)

I think the above comment perfectly summarises the situation.

There has been a lot of fanfare but no action coming from Wolfram’s research.

It’s even more disconnected from physical reality than the more abstract mathematical corners of string theory.

The hard part of a TOE is showing how it maps to reality, how the theory constrains what we can measure in future experiments, etc… This is the part that Wolfram keeps skipping over.

I’ve had an interest in theories of everything (TOEs) and I’ve read through hundreds of papers from serious publications to gibberish put out by mentally ill cranks. I’ve developed a checklist to filter out the noise. Wolfram’s theories don’t tick any boxes! Even crazy rants on some personal blog written in random fonts with ten text colors do better.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#43

Post by mo_42 »

As a computer scientist who got in touch with quite some theoretical computer science, I find Wolfram's approach appealing. I suppose this approach resonates quite well in CS departments as our minds already know about things like fractals, cellular automata, hypergraphs, etc.

What's not so present in CS (at least where I studied) is philosophy of science. Falsifiability and how theories are created and tested is less grounded in my mind than the topics already mentioned. Though, in physics, this is really important.

Last time I checked, his approach was not able to make real predictions about our world. So it's not yet a real theory. Of course, this doesn't mean people should stop working on this. It also took humans a long time to develop the mathematics to describe gravity correctly.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#44

Post by mellosouls »

drdeca wrote: post #35
Certhas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a citation or more information on that, I'd be curious. Numerical relativity is outside my area of expertise. It doesn't seem likely to me, but I couldn't rule it out...

I believe this is what I was thinking of : https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07508 The author is Jonathan Gorard, who is one of the people associated with “The Wolfram Physics Project”, and checking the references, it does cite at least one document/paper that is part of the “wolfram physics project”, But I don’t know for sure whether it exactly uses the central framework of the project.

Well the problem is that's then essentially people involved in the project making claims about the project.

That's obviously not satisfactory as a positive independent assessment, which is what this thread is calling for.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#45

Post by mellosouls »

andrewflnr wrote: post #19
Certhas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work close to people who were actually somewhat close to the stuff contained in the papers. The consensus was that there is nothing of substance to engage with. Edit: When the technical papers appeared in 2020, I personally went through them in some detail. Tl;dr there are almost no novel ideas of substance in there. Specifically I looked at the "launch documents" provided here: https://wolframphysics.org/t…

Is it just because it hasn't gotten as far as making physical predictions yet? To put it charitably it's very abstract, but I wonder exactly where the holes are that real physicists see.

A "theory" without predictions is just a bunch of words and numbers hanging out together.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#46

Post by throwaway81523 »

dakiol wrote: post #18

Despite all the negativity towards Wolfram, he’s one of the few out there whom I’m jealous about. He gets to work on his own products, gets time to develop his own theories about important stuff and using his own tools. That’s basically my dream. Who cares if at the end, his findings have “no substance”, he’s living the (nerd) dream.

You might also like meeting Chuck Moore, inventor (or as he says, "discoverer") of Forth. He has done pretty much the same thing. It's a great way to be if you buy into the Forth vision, but for most of us, Forth has too many shortcomings. Roger Levy on Usenet:

> The problem with comparisons with Chuck Moore's philosophy of perfection is that we're trying to do things he has no interest in. We're trying to live in the real world. ... for the time being the rest of the world isn't content to tinker tiny programs into perfection in a cabin in the woods, barely able to articulate their value in a universally cogent way.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#47

Post by thewanderer1983 »

Certhas wrote: post #12
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Are there any well respect physicists or research groups independent of Wolfram's group who are taking this seriously or collaborating with Wolfram Physics project? I would expect something like "an here is Max Planck Institute for Physics collaborating with Wolfram Physics research project on ...". Or something of that nature. At least after all these years.

I used to work close to people who were actually somewhat close to the stuff contained in the papers. The consensus was that there is nothing of substance to engage with. Edit: When the technical papers appeared in 2020, I personally went through them in some detail. Tl;dr there are almost no novel ideas of substance in there. Specifically I looked at the "launch documents" provided here: https://wolframphysics.org/t…

> The consensus was that there is nothing of substance to engage with.

The safety boat of scientific consensus is pulled out a lot in today's environment. One should remember that many of our great scientific discoveries had a scientific consensus that it replaced. That boat won't always steer you in the right direction, sometimes you have to read the paper and come to your own conclusion.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#48

Post by Scarblac »

K0balt wrote: post #33
stouset wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if ransomware, money laundering, pump and dump schemes, and tax evasion weren’t enough, now cryptocurrency can be used to support pseudoscience! Will the wonders never cease? Sorry, I know this is a bit snark-heavy for HN but I can’t help but feel impressed by the way cryptocurrency has somehow succeeded in associating itself with so many ills of modern society.

For all the various ills it is sometimes associated with, cryptocurrency remains the only frictionless, 100% transparent, publicly accessible international monetary and payment system. That seems like something we would want, the ability to freely transfer payment from one individual to another, internationally, contractually, and transparently. The only interests that I would think would want that gone are those tha…

> For all the various ills it is sometimes associated with, cryptocurrency remains the only frictionless, 100% transparent, publicly accessible international monetary and payment system.

Its insane energy use, slow speed, high transaction costs, and structural inability to have any legal oversight (for eg reversing fraudulent payments) amount to a huge amount of friction.

And the existence of unknown entities with huge wallets that could pump or crash the price of a coin on a whim also means its not 100% transparent.

Is it money? I would say no, but opinions on that can differ.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#49

Post by throwaway81523 »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #38
mathinaly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paradigm he's using is too open ended. In quantum mechanics the mathematics is based on Hilbert spaces and unitary evolutions of state vectors. You might ask why this is the case and it is because of conservation principles. Unitary evolution preserves "information" in the state vector throughout its physical evolution. This is not the case for Wolfram's theories. There are no conservation principles in cellular…

>. Turing machines specifically are not required to preserve anything about the initial state and so information can be destroyed and created ex nihilo, violating the main principle of physics which requires that all matter and energy be conserved. The equations have to balance out at the beginning and the end, whatever you start with can not be greater or less than what you end with (at least in physics). can you ex…

I think something like this. Imagine a computer with two memory cells x and y, and a program that maintains the invariant x+y=5. That is information about the program and about the state of the machine: if x=2 then y=3, if x=20 then y=-15, etc.

Now replace that program with an arbitrary Turing machine that can do pretty much anything with those memory cells, like set both of them to zero. You no longer have the information encoded in the former invariant. I.e. That information has been destroyed.

The machinery of quantum mechanics (the standard kind with Hilbert spaces) maintains certain invariants that you can compute things from, but Wolfram's stuff can do pretty much anything. Thus, same idea.

Re: An approach to the fundamental theory of physics

#50

Post by throwaway81523 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #42
Certhas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work close to people who were actually somewhat close to the stuff contained in the papers. The consensus was that there is nothing of substance to engage with. Edit: When the technical papers appeared in 2020, I personally went through them in some detail. Tl;dr there are almost no novel ideas of substance in there. Specifically I looked at the "launch documents" provided here: https://wolframphysics.org/t…

(Disclaimer: I have a physics degree but I’m not a practicing physicist.) I think the above comment perfectly summarises the situation. There has been a lot of fanfare but no action coming from Wolfram’s research. It’s even more disconnected from physical reality than the more abstract mathematical corners of string theory. The hard part of a TOE is showing how it maps to reality, how the theory constrains what we ca…

I remember looking at the hypergraph stuff a while back and thinking "this can't possibly handle the double slit experiment". I looked through the different pages and found no references to it. I shrugged and moved on. A few years later another blog post by one of the members went up saying "of course we can explain the double slit experiment, from the beginning. We left it out of the early posts on purpose so someone else could do it and get some credit, but nobody took us up on it, what a sad world". It went on with some further hand waving that I didn't understand. It all just felt like a sure sign of brokenness.
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