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Things like this always leave me feeling stupid. How is one supposed to wrap their mind around the idea of space emerging from an underlying "network"? What e

by tux1968 11y ago

Things like this always leave me feeling stupid. How is one supposed to wrap their mind around the idea of space emerging from an underlying "network"? What exactly is being networked; what is the "stuff" of the network? He describes the network in terms of connections, which in my mind requires a topology, or space within which to exist; yet space does not apparently exist at this level. If there is no space, then what separates the nodes in the network? If no space separates the nodes, what defines the distinct connections between them? Yes, i'm completely lost.

codeulike 11y ago
What is matter made of? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be matter. From what fundamental thing does 'space' arise? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be anything that would exist in a 'space' as such. And so we creep towards the idea that at a low enough level, everything is just information.
- tux1968 11y ago
  My confusion arises from his model of space emerging from something than in and of itself requires space to exist. It just seems circular. And i don't see how the term "information" has much descriptive power when discussing nature at its most fundamental level. That may be a way to model it, or describe the physics of it, but that's just an abstraction of whatever that fundamental building block is.
  - philipov 11y ago
    It seems to me that the fundamental thing that Wolfram is saying is that reality is non-local. Locality itself is an emergent phenomenon. This is his clever way of getting around Bell's Theorem. His networks don't require space to exist, they are space. When we think of spacetime, we think of a manifold, and he's saying that what looks like a manifold at a macro level is really just a discrete network at a micro level, and this sort of data structure is more suitable for explaining non-local phenomena, because locality is an effect, not a property, of the model. But for that to work, he has to derive all the current laws from his new model, and he is far from doing that, even though it is a quite fantastic thought experiment. I think the confusion comes from the fact that at a fundamental level, we do not have the capability to know anything but models and abstractions derived from sense data, and no one is claiming their theories are more than models.
    - tux1968 11y ago
      But a theory is supposed to model something that actually exists, yes? So for instance when philosophers made the conjecture for the existence of the atom, their theory was either correct or not, on the basis of whether the atom actually existed in nature. So if Wolfram is correct, then there exists at the lowest level of nature a network, upon which everything else follows. Wolfram is trying to describe reality, something that exists, analogous to the existence of the atom? Do we agree this far? If these Wolfram-nodes of our networked-reality do indeed exist, how are they connected in unique patterns if there is no "space" between them? If his theory is not meant to predict something that actually exists, as in the prediction of the atom, well then, i'll bow out of this conversation because it's well and truly beyond my conception of what science is about.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > But a theory is supposed to model something that actually exists, yes? Yes, but "model" is the key word. If it provides a set of rules which predict the way thing that exist in the world behave, then it models something (or set of things) that exits in the real world.
      - philipov 11y ago
        This is a classic debate in the philosophy science. Should theories describe the world, or merely make predictions about it? Because no one these days believes that quantum mechanics really describes the world, we live firmly in the realm of theories being things that make predictions. The existence of the atom, however, is not what is being predicted. A theory should predict the sensor readings of particular instruments during particular experiments. Those sensor readings are what is real; "The Atom" is the abstraction. The very idea that "things exist" is an abstraction. A thing exists if we can model it, and that model corresponds with reality.
      - drdeca 11y ago
        I don't understand why you feel that there needs to be a space in order to have a collection of nodes and edges that connect the nodes. It isn't as if there is an actual line connecting two dots across space. It's just, there's a set of "points" (there doesn't need to be any things about these "points" other than that they are distinct. You could think of them as urelements I guess.), and another set of "edges", which are each a set of two elements from the first set. A pair of "points" are "connected" by an "edge" iff the set comprised of those two "points" is in the second set. This doesn't need a notion of space to work, unless you need like, an idea of space to have collections of things. So unless "the collection of odd numbers" needs an idea of space, then graphs don't need space.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > What is matter made of? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be matter. Sure it could (in principle) be; its matter all the way down, and there is no lower-level thing of which matter is made. (Though, actually, I think the standard answer to "what is matter made of" under current way of interpreting things would be "energy", but then you could repeat the exercise with "energy" in place of "matter" and its the same issue, mutatis mutandis.)
  - brianberns 11y ago
    Greenness disintegrates: https://goo.gl/2X4288 https://goo.gl/2X4288
fengwick3 11y ago
Wolfram is proposing a radically different way of interpreting the universe. His main argument is that if his cellular automatons can achieve emergent behaviour similar to real physics, then it is evidence for it being the underlying mechanism in the universe. For a (really long) discussion on how this simulation parallels physics, check his book, A New Kind of Science, out. Then maybe you would want to read Aaronson's review of it, just for a balanced perspective.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > His main argument is that if his cellular automatons can achieve emergent behaviour similar to real physics, then it is evidence for it being the underlying mechanism in the universe. Then it is a hint that possibly it might be the underlying mechanism of the universe. It's not exactly evidence.
  - fengwick3 11y ago
    Yes perhaps evidence is too strong a word, though that's not what Wolfram would have you believe. Although to be fair, it's going to be quite cumbersome to discount every other statement in a book almost a thousand pages in length.
- fanchao 11y ago
  More precisely, simple rules can have emergence. Wolfram's most common example is simple cellular automata. Cellular automata do not need to be simple. Other rules like Turing machines can have emergence.
brazzledazzle 11y ago
Tell me about it. I still remember asking my dad what came before the universe when I was a kid and he said, "No, there was no before." When I inquired again he said "Time is a property of our universe. You can't have a before without it. There wasn't nothing, there wasn't a before. You are part of this universe and cannot exist without it. There's no curtain to look behind, this is it." That realization made me feel pretty stupid and caused a minor existential crisis.
- tribeofone 11y ago
  I had the same realization and it terrified me.
hcarvalhoalves 11y ago
You can describe things in two ways: 1) Decompose into smaller components and put back together 2) Look at it's structure It's the diference between describing a cardboard box and a cube (platonic solid). To describe the first, I have to describe what is cardboard, what is cellulose, what is a cell, what is matter, ... all the way down, and then I hit a wall. To describe the second, I just need topology. This definition of space is that space "just is", resembles a network, and that the "stuff" in it is just how we perceive particular local structures. The network is only a geometrical analogy, there's no "space" between the nodes because the nodes don't represent anything concrete. You can describe the same network algebraically, but then you're left with no pictures to illustrate the article.

by tux1968 11y ago

codeulike 11y ago

What is matter made of? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be matter. From what fundamental thing does 'space' arise? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be anything that would exist in a 'space' as such. And so we creep towards the idea that at a low enough level, everything is just information.

tux1968 11y ago
My confusion arises from his model of space emerging from something than in and of itself requires space to exist. It just seems circular. And i don't see how the term "information" has much descriptive power when discussing nature at its most fundamental level. That may be a way to model it, or describe the physics of it, but that's just an abstraction of whatever that fundamental building block is.
- philipov 11y ago
  It seems to me that the fundamental thing that Wolfram is saying is that reality is non-local. Locality itself is an emergent phenomenon. This is his clever way of getting around Bell's Theorem. His networks don't require space to exist, they are space. When we think of spacetime, we think of a manifold, and he's saying that what looks like a manifold at a macro level is really just a discrete network at a micro level, and this sort of data structure is more suitable for explaining non-local phenomena, because locality is an effect, not a property, of the model. But for that to work, he has to derive all the current laws from his new model, and he is far from doing that, even though it is a quite fantastic thought experiment. I think the confusion comes from the fact that at a fundamental level, we do not have the capability to know anything but models and abstractions derived from sense data, and no one is claiming their theories are more than models.
  - tux1968 11y ago
    But a theory is supposed to model something that actually exists, yes? So for instance when philosophers made the conjecture for the existence of the atom, their theory was either correct or not, on the basis of whether the atom actually existed in nature. So if Wolfram is correct, then there exists at the lowest level of nature a network, upon which everything else follows. Wolfram is trying to describe reality, something that exists, analogous to the existence of the atom? Do we agree this far? If these Wolfram-nodes of our networked-reality do indeed exist, how are they connected in unique patterns if there is no "space" between them? If his theory is not meant to predict something that actually exists, as in the prediction of the atom, well then, i'll bow out of this conversation because it's well and truly beyond my conception of what science is about.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > But a theory is supposed to model something that actually exists, yes? Yes, but "model" is the key word. If it provides a set of rules which predict the way thing that exist in the world behave, then it models something (or set of things) that exits in the real world.
    - philipov 11y ago
      This is a classic debate in the philosophy science. Should theories describe the world, or merely make predictions about it? Because no one these days believes that quantum mechanics really describes the world, we live firmly in the realm of theories being things that make predictions. The existence of the atom, however, is not what is being predicted. A theory should predict the sensor readings of particular instruments during particular experiments. Those sensor readings are what is real; "The Atom" is the abstraction. The very idea that "things exist" is an abstraction. A thing exists if we can model it, and that model corresponds with reality.
    - drdeca 11y ago
      I don't understand why you feel that there needs to be a space in order to have a collection of nodes and edges that connect the nodes. It isn't as if there is an actual line connecting two dots across space. It's just, there's a set of "points" (there doesn't need to be any things about these "points" other than that they are distinct. You could think of them as urelements I guess.), and another set of "edges", which are each a set of two elements from the first set. A pair of "points" are "connected" by an "edge" iff the set comprised of those two "points" is in the second set. This doesn't need a notion of space to work, unless you need like, an idea of space to have collections of things. So unless "the collection of odd numbers" needs an idea of space, then graphs don't need space.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> What is matter made of? The answer, whatever it is, cannot be matter. Sure it could (in principle) be; its matter all the way down, and there is no lower-level thing of which matter is made. (Though, actually, I think the standard answer to "what is matter made of" under current way of interpreting things would be "energy", but then you could repeat the exercise with "energy" in place of "matter" and its the same issue, mutatis mutandis.)
- brianberns 11y ago
  Greenness disintegrates: https://goo.gl/2X4288 https://goo.gl/2X4288

fengwick3 11y ago

Wolfram is proposing a radically different way of interpreting the universe. His main argument is that if his cellular automatons can achieve emergent behaviour similar to real physics, then it is evidence for it being the underlying mechanism in the universe. For a (really long) discussion on how this simulation parallels physics, check his book, A New Kind of Science, out. Then maybe you would want to read Aaronson's review of it, just for a balanced perspective.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> His main argument is that if his cellular automatons can achieve emergent behaviour similar to real physics, then it is evidence for it being the underlying mechanism in the universe. Then it is a hint that possibly it might be the underlying mechanism of the universe. It's not exactly evidence.
- fengwick3 11y ago
  Yes perhaps evidence is too strong a word, though that's not what Wolfram would have you believe. Although to be fair, it's going to be quite cumbersome to discount every other statement in a book almost a thousand pages in length.
fanchao 11y ago
More precisely, simple rules can have emergence. Wolfram's most common example is simple cellular automata. Cellular automata do not need to be simple. Other rules like Turing machines can have emergence.

brazzledazzle 11y ago

Tell me about it. I still remember asking my dad what came before the universe when I was a kid and he said, "No, there was no before." When I inquired again he said "Time is a property of our universe. You can't have a before without it. There wasn't nothing, there wasn't a before. You are part of this universe and cannot exist without it. There's no curtain to look behind, this is it." That realization made me feel pretty stupid and caused a minor existential crisis.

tribeofone 11y ago
I had the same realization and it terrified me.

hcarvalhoalves 11y ago

You can describe things in two ways: 1) Decompose into smaller components and put back together 2) Look at it's structure It's the diference between describing a cardboard box and a cube (platonic solid). To describe the first, I have to describe what is cardboard, what is cellulose, what is a cell, what is matter, ... all the way down, and then I hit a wall. To describe the second, I just need topology. This definition of space is that space "just is", resembles a network, and that the "stuff" in it is just how we perceive particular local structures. The network is only a geometrical analogy, there's no "space" between the nodes because the nodes don't represent anything concrete. You can describe the same network algebraically, but then you're left with no pictures to illustrate the article.