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As somebody schooled in applied mathematics, it never fails to strike me how totally inscrutable and abstruse these pieces sound. It reads like a passage straig
by qubex 9y ago
As somebody schooled in applied mathematics, it never fails to strike me how totally inscrutable and abstruse these pieces sound. It reads like a passage straight out of Harry Potter.
- Ascetik 9y agoBecause it's made up, just like Harry Potter. "Theory Space" the name alone should give you red flags. Sounds like another term for 'scientists discovered' what Aristotle already knew 2400 years ago... the term "potentiality".
- qubex 9y agoThat’s where I have to disagree... as most mathematicians I tend towards the idea that mathematical structures are discovered (even though techniques might be invented). There’s clearly an underlying pattern to physics, and the two main theories have to be reconciled somehow since the Universe hangs together pretty coherently; it’s just as obvious (to me, at least) that they’re mapping something with these procedures and that what they’re finding is not a side-effect of the procedure that gets randomly instantiated by the algorithm.
- empath75 9y agoWhy should 'theory space' throw red flags? If you have a set of 'theories' with some structure attached to it, you have a 'theory space'.
- thanatropism 9y agoUsually the structure in "space" is topological, i.e. some concept of a "neighborhood".
- Steuard 9y agoAnd indeed there is a concept of "neighborhood" here: a set of parameters characterizing the conformal field theory in question.
- reacweb 9y agoMy personal red flag is the lack of formula or theorem. For me a beautiful formula is often more enlightening than a lengthy explanation. Fancy names occur in very serious mathematical articles.
- qubex 9y agoThere’s plenty of underlying mathematics and formulae (albeit being conjectures, probably not many overarching theorems for these specific theories yet). However I expect they decided against printing anything ’mathematical’, probably because the notation would be so dense with additional meanings it would be likewise indistinguishable from gibberish (for the layman, at least).
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post snarky, shallow dismissals to HN. That's just what we're hoping to avoid here. Fortunately qubex righted the ship with some high-quality replies and showed us all how it's done. But alas that is the exception. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- HONEST_ANNIE 9y agoThe article provides good links to sources like the 3.5 page Nature article below describing the progress in bootstrapping. Progress Article The conformal bootstrap https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3761 Nature Physics 12, 535–539 (2016) doi:10.1038/nphys3761
- qubex 9y agoI’m just commenting on how difficult it is to render these concepts by means of metaphors, analogies, and colloquialisms.
- HONEST_ANNIE 9y agoAh yes. It's a problem. Writing about complex mathematical subject and providing actual information is very difficult. One article that can be recommended is Terence Tao's excellent article about universality. A second draft of a non-technical article on universality https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/a-second-draft-of-a-non-technical-article-on-universality/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/a-second-draft-of-...
- qubex 9y agoI’ve worked on how dynamic networks of agents (i.e. financial markets made up of traders) exhibit universality. That said, Tao’s article is excellent.
- Mizza 9y agoOn SciHub: http://sci-hub.la/10.1038/nphys3761 http://sci-hub.la/10.1038/nphys3761
- WhitneyLand 9y agoGreat point. Why do they do that? I’m not sure who their target audience is, but I thought everyone benefits from simple as possible but no simpler.
- leephillips 9y agoI don't know if I'm part of the target audience envisioned by the author and editors, but the article served me well. The landscape of physics, while beautifully unified, is nevertheless so vast that I'm essentially a layman outside of the areas in which I've done research. I'd heard about all the things mentioned in the article, but now have a better appreciation of how they fit together and arose historically. I thought everything was well and honestly explained.