Technical Intro: A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics

Praise the Lord.

so they’ve reinvented lambda calculus ¿

SCIENCE said:

so they’ve reinvented lambda calculus ¿

Having read the name of the author, the name of the person whose work he is describing, and the first couple of paragraphs, I’d say it was more a case of reinventing self-promotion.

Cymek said:

Technical Intro: A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics

reading that, quite interesting

transition said:

Cymek said:

Technical Intro: A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics

reading that, quite interesting

I thought so, something different to read

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Back when I used do theoretical physics for a living, I must admit I didn’t think much about trying to find a fundamental theory; I was more concerned about what we could figure out based on the theories we had. And somehow I think I imagined that if there was a fundamental theory, it would inevitably be very complicated.

But in the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that 

Fuck me dead, can someone just give me a link to the paper? I don’t need this guy’s life story.

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

so they’ve reinvented lambda calculus ¿

Having read the name of the author, the name of the person whose work he is describing, and the first couple of paragraphs, I’d say it was more a case of reinventing self-promotion.

that too, we did get that feeling

https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/

Cymek said:

https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/

Thanks

dv said:

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Back when I used do theoretical physics for a living, I must admit I didn’t think much about trying to find a fundamental theory; I was more concerned about what we could figure out based on the theories we had. And somehow I think I imagined that if there was a fundamental theory, it would inevitably be very complicated.

But in the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that 

Fuck me dead, can someone just give me a link to the paper? I don’t need this guy’s life story.

Yes it’s not very inviting. Reads a bit like Elon Musk having a wank.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Back when I used do theoretical physics for a living, I must admit I didn’t think much about trying to find a fundamental theory; I was more concerned about what we could figure out based on the theories we had. And somehow I think I imagined that if there was a fundamental theory, it would inevitably be very complicated.

But in the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that 

Fuck me dead, can someone just give me a link to the paper? I don’t need this guy’s life story.

Yes it’s not very inviting. Reads a bit like Elon Musk having a wank.

Obv not a good sign that this is self-published and not peer-reviewed, even though the author is well-credentialed.

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Back when I used do theoretical physics for a living, I must admit I didn’t think much about trying to find a fundamental theory; I was more concerned about what we could figure out based on the theories we had. And somehow I think I imagined that if there was a fundamental theory, it would inevitably be very complicated.

But in the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that 

Fuck me dead, can someone just give me a link to the paper? I don’t need this guy’s life story.

Yes it’s not very inviting. Reads a bit like Elon Musk having a wank.

Obv not a good sign that this is self-published and not peer-reviewed, even though the author is well-credentialed.

Yeah, usually papers get submitted to various sites to get peer- reviewed

This is his own website which looks a bit disconnected from peer review

dv said:

Cymek said:

https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/

Thanks

2.1 Basic Structure
At the lowest level, the structures on which our models operate consist of collections of relations between identical (but labeled) discrete elements. One convenient way to represent such structures is as graphs (or, in general, hypergraphs).

2.2 First Example of a Rule
The core of our models are rules for rewriting collections of relations. A very simple example of a rule is:
{{x, y}} —> {{x, y}, {y, z}}

—

ok so they’ve rediscovered graph theory and lambda calculus, cool

There are 300+ pages in this motherfucker… I’m through 12 of them and so far it is “introduction to maths”.

dv said:

There are 300+ pages in this motherfucker… I’m through 12 of them and so far it is “introduction to maths”.

Yes I only read the original link and its not an easy read

Cymek said:

dv said:

There are 300+ pages in this motherfucker… I’m through 12 of them and so far it is “introduction to maths”.

Yes I only read the original link and its not an easy read

ugh… the introduction to the introduction doesn’t have much meat. I’m gonna have to read the whole thing.

Or wait for rebuttals…

dv said:

Cymek said:

dv said:

There are 300+ pages in this motherfucker… I’m through 12 of them and so far it is “introduction to maths”.

Yes I only read the original link and its not an easy read

ugh… the introduction to the introduction doesn’t have much meat. I’m gonna have to read the whole thing.

Or wait for rebuttals…

Sorry was wondering if it has any merit

dv said:

Cymek said:

dv said:

There are 300+ pages in this motherfucker… I’m through 12 of them and so far it is “introduction to maths”.

Yes I only read the original link and its not an easy read

ugh… the introduction to the introduction doesn’t have much meat. I’m gonna have to read the whole thing.

Or wait for rebuttals…

This: Or wait for rebuttals…

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

Michael V said:

dv said:

Cymek said:

Yes I only read the original link and its not an easy read

ugh… the introduction to the introduction doesn’t have much meat. I’m gonna have to read the whole thing.

Or wait for rebuttals…

This: Or wait for rebuttals…

well, to help y’al’, or to frustrate ‘u, we’ve skimmed 100 pages and in addition to the assessment so far (graph theory and lambda calculus and introduction to maths) we have

• iterated rules result in patterns
• some of which are recognisable
• some of which have complex behaviour despite simple rules

so apparently they’ve rediscovered fractals and chaos theory

sibeen said:

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

I am only 10% through it and I haven’t seen anything revolutionary yet…

sibeen said:

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

well, not necessarily, the PDF is dated 2020-04-11

dv said:

sibeen said:

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

I am only 10% through it and I haven’t seen anything revolutionary yet…

Wolfram put out a book called A New Kind of Science about 20 years ago. I just assumed it was related to that.

dv said:

sibeen said:

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

I am only 10% through it and I haven’t seen anything revolutionary yet…

don’t worry, we’re going to show you, you just need to get these basics first

let us tell you how amazing the revolution will be, it’s revolutionarily revolutionary

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

sibeen said:

Didn’t all this come out about 20 years ago?

I am only 10% through it and I haven’t seen anything revolutionary yet…

don’t worry, we’re going to show you, you just need to get these basics first

let us tell you how amazing the revolution will be, it’s revolutionarily revolutionary

OK well you finish it and tell me whether it is worth persisting

4.16 Functions on Graphs

Traditional Riemannian manifolds are full of structure that our hypergraphs do not have. Nevertheless, we are beginning to see that there are analogs of many ideas from geometry and calculus on manifolds that can be applied to our hypergraphs—at least in some appropriate limit as they become sufficiently large.

—

a revolution of sorts, as sibeen says, known at least 20 years ago and not just by Wolfram

rules in one area of mathematics, behave just like rules in other isomorphic* areas of mathematics

*: well, that’s what graph theory applied to general knowledge is, right, it’s just isomorphism

5.1 String Substitution Systems

The basic concept of our models is to define rules for updating collections of relations. But for a particular collection of relations, there are often multiple ways in which a given rule can be applied, and there is considerable subtlety in the question of what effects different choices can have.

To begin exploring this, we will first consider in this section the somewhat simpler case of string substitution systems (e.g. ). String substitution systems have arisen in many different settings under many different names , but in all cases they involve strings whose elements are repeatedly replaced according to fixed substitution rules.

As a simple example, consider the string substitution system with rules {A→AB,B→BA}. Starting with A and repeatedly applying these rules wherever possible gives a sequence of results beginning with:
{A, AB, ABBA, ABBABAAB, ABBABAABBAABABBA, ABBABAABBAABABBABAABABBAABBABAAB}

—

(we haven’t checked to confirm that the ABBA stuff copypasted correctly)

here’s another … set of rules (!!!)

they’ve discovered Turing Completeness ! ! !

rules that can completely generate behaviour, are able to generate as much behaviour as other rulesets that can completely generate behaviour !

dv said:

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

I am only 10% through it and I haven’t seen anything revolutionary yet…

don’t worry, we’re going to show you, you just need to get these basics first

let us tell you how amazing the revolution will be, it’s revolutionarily revolutionary

OK well you finish it and tell me whether it is worth persisting

sorry we’re only skimming — got COVID-19 analysis to write and the document is … not that informative to us

so we can only give an impoverished estimate

hey look on page 231 WOLFnostRadAMus predicted COVID-19

7.1 Correspondence with Other Systems
Our goal with the models introduced here is to have systems that are intrinsically as structureless as possible, and are therefore in a sense as flexible and general as possible. And one way to see how successful we have been is to look at what is involved in reproducing other systems using our models.

—

we have a Universal Turing Machine to sell you, anyone ¿

Does he explain the matter antimatter discrepancy, dark matter and dark energy?

OK we recommend starting at page 353 for some more interesting less “look what repeated application of rules gave us in terms of crazy line drawings”.

Just call them “mappings” or “analogies”, not “translations”, but whatever.

Maybe what their discovery is, is a comprehensive matching of {computational behaviours} to {physical concepts}.

Whether this is revolutionary, you be the judge!

(we’re not convinced, very much not convinced)

Tau.Neutrino said:

Does he explain the matter antimatter discrepancy, dark matter and dark energy?

it’s not mentioned…

within the structure of all possible computations, we’re sure it will appear at some stage

on the other hand, saying “Our theory of everything is… if you want to predict the evolution of the universe, just run the universe, and you’ll get the answer!” is probably inadequate

SCIENCE said:

Michael V said:

dv said:

ugh… the introduction to the introduction doesn’t have much meat. I’m gonna have to read the whole thing.

Or wait for rebuttals…

This: Or wait for rebuttals…

well, to help y’al’, or to frustrate ‘u, we’ve skimmed 100 pages and in addition to the assessment so far (graph theory and lambda calculus and introduction to maths) we have

• iterated rules result in patterns
• some of which are recognisable
• some of which have complex behaviour despite simple rules

so apparently they’ve rediscovered fractals and chaos theory

SWL (Screams with laughter).

Thanks for that summary, SCIENCE.

Let’s go back to the diagram at the top of the summary, and see if any of that has any similarity to, or looks better than, Causal Dynamical Triangulation.

In Causal Dynamical Triangulation, space-time is fundamentally 2-dimensional with one time and one space dimension. Macroscopic space is an emergent property curls up into three macroscopic space dimensions and one macroscopic time dimension.

In the Wolfram scheme, macroscopic space-time is also an emergent property from one time dimension (causality) and zero space dimensions (multiple points). Put enough zero-D points of Planck scale together and you get enough to make a macroscopic 3-D space.

Or you could see the Wolfram scheme as having one space dimension (multiway states graph at top right of diagram) and one time dimension (multiway causal graph at middle right of diagram) rolled up in the macroscale to three macroscopic space and one macroscopic time dimension.

But, and here’s a key point for me, Wolfram’s time dimension is essentially linear (or is it? I’ll come back to that) whereas his space grows essentially exponentially with the number of new graphs at each level. Space growing exponentially with linear time is OK for the inflationary epoch of the universe but fails thereafter. To overcome that, Wolfram would have to put some space-limiting constraints into his model, like some overcrowding factor, or alternatively ensure that his time becomes exponential growing less rapidly than space to the ratio of space to time ends up as space is proportional to the a small power of time.

Either way, dark energy doesn’t seem to be in there, yet, not in the visual summary.

My hope would be the merging of the Wolfram Physics scheme into classical Causal Dynamical Triangulation to make a single scheme. One advantage of the Wolfram Physics over Causal Dynamical Triangulation is that by moving spacially sideways in Wolfram Physics allows a calculation of the rate at which the universe changes beyond the visible horizon, something that is not possible with Causal Dynamical Triangulation. And further, assuming that Wolfram Physics has a limiter to stop space growing exponentially with linear time, the Wolfram Physics model can incorporate eternal inflation cosmology (by the simple expedient of allowing a probability in quantum mechanics to remove the limiter), whereas Causal Dynamical Triangulation can not.

mollwollfumble said:

Let’s go back to the diagram at the top of the summary, and see if any of that has any similarity to, or looks better than, Causal Dynamical Triangulation.

In Causal Dynamical Triangulation, space-time is fundamentally 2-dimensional with one time and one space dimension. Macroscopic space is an emergent property curls up into three macroscopic space dimensions and one macroscopic time dimension.

In the Wolfram scheme, macroscopic space-time is also an emergent property from one time dimension (causality) and zero space dimensions (multiple points). Put enough zero-D points of Planck scale together and you get enough to make a macroscopic 3-D space.

Or you could see the Wolfram scheme as having one space dimension (multiway states graph at top right of diagram) and one time dimension (multiway causal graph at middle right of diagram) rolled up in the macroscale to three macroscopic space and one macroscopic time dimension.

But, and here’s a key point for me, Wolfram’s time dimension is essentially linear (or is it? I’ll come back to that) whereas his space grows essentially exponentially with the number of new graphs at each level. Space growing exponentially with linear time is OK for the inflationary epoch of the universe but fails thereafter. To overcome that, Wolfram would have to put some space-limiting constraints into his model, like some overcrowding factor, or alternatively ensure that his time becomes exponential growing less rapidly than space to the ratio of space to time ends up as space is proportional to the a small power of time.

Either way, dark energy doesn’t seem to be in there, yet, not in the visual summary.

My hope would be the merging of the Wolfram Physics scheme into classical Causal Dynamical Triangulation to make a single scheme. One advantage of the Wolfram Physics over Causal Dynamical Triangulation is that by moving spacially sideways in Wolfram Physics allows a calculation of the rate at which the universe changes beyond the visible horizon, something that is not possible with Causal Dynamical Triangulation. And further, assuming that Wolfram Physics has a limiter to stop space growing exponentially with linear time, the Wolfram Physics model can incorporate eternal inflation cosmology (by the simple expedient of allowing a probability in quantum mechanics to remove the limiter), whereas Causal Dynamical Triangulation can not.

A few more observations. By insisting on the fundamental nature of causality (Causal Dynamical Triangulations does, too), Wolfram Physics ‘a priori’ rules out time travel. I approve of that. Further, the insistence of quanta of spacetime as the fundamental unit rather than “subatomic particles”, Wolfram Physics plugs an annoying gap in the standard model of how you define entropy from Boltzmann statistics through the era of cosmic inflation. In addition, the separation of within and outside the cone of potential causality in Wolfram Physics makes it compatible with Special Relativity but not with Newtonian Physics (except as an approximation to relativity), which counts as a plus.

What Wolfram is saying is not so much re-inventing existing mathematics as using it. Or to put it another way, 350 pages of restating the obvious in order to move beyond the obvious to the hypothetical.

This sort of reminds me of Godel’s work. After proving the self-contradictory nature of any mathematics that contains the integers, it was claimed that Godel went beyond that to prove the failure of physics. How does that tie in, because Godel’s model of the universe based firmly on General Relativity not only allowed, but insisted on the existence of time travel. Wolfram Physics disallows time travel up front, which I can hope forces physics as we know it to work.

Summary, I’m not going to rule Wolfram Physics out. I personally find it more sensible than Quantum Loop Gravity. Wolfram needs to elucidate that limiter that stopped the inflationary epoch from continuing forever, and to find an explanation for dark energy.