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The Wolfram Physics Project

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#51

Post by Zhyl »

ForHackernews wrote: post #16
caleb-allen wrote: post #4

If I have to read through so much of the article context disguised as bragging without anything resembling something new then maybe this Fundamental Theory is less important than Stephen Wolfram showing how many Important Things he's done

Relevant: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ "A New Kind of Science: A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity" (2002)

Ah this line I think summarises everything perfectly:

>As the saying goes, there is much here that is new and true, but what is true is not new, and what is new is not true; and some of it is even old and false, or at least utterly unsupported.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#54

Post by meowface »

covidacct wrote: post #27

After a few iterations, I think I understand the point of this piece. It was a bit difficult to hone in on, though. The article suggests that working out the theory of something like rule production systems, and then figuring out how that theory relates to existing insights from physics, is the best path toward a Fundamental Theory of Physics. My primary source of skepticism stems from the fact that the theory of rul…

> For example, his "emulation cones" are a new name for a very old and extremely well-studied idea. The term "rulial space", similarly, is a new name for an idea that's well-developed in programming language theory.

Can you go into a little more detail about the other versions of these ideas? What are they called in other theories?

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#55

Post by aaron-santos »

lalaithion wrote: post #48

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.

It doesn't rule out superdeterminism.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#57

Post by Koshkin »

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…

As a foundation for computational methods, 99.9% of theoretical physics is very much alive.

Re: The Wolfram Physics Project

#58

Post by meowface »

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.

It's not dead in the sense that we've done a better job of experimentally confirming things like general relativity and aspects of quantum mechanics, due to being able to accurately perform more precise observations (like with LHC and LIGO). I'd say this is a triumph of advances in experimental physics, though, rather than theoretical physics.

There doesn't seem to have been any widely accepted fundamental theoretical breakthrough like general relativity or quantum mechanics for a long time, nor has there been any widely accepted way to unify the two theories. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I and many others have.

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