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Physicists Criticize Stephen Wolfram’s ‘Theory of Everything’

113 points by guybedo 6y ago

leephillips 6y ago
Theories that reproduce things we've already observed are a dime a dozen. The test is whether you can predict new things. And Wolfram's theories don't even predict what we already see. And sorry, but complaining about the "corruption" of the peer review system that you refuse to engage with (and it does have problems) is the calling card of the crank. It's just that this crank happens also to be, or have been, a genius of some kind, so he's never completely ignored.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Never underestimate the ability of a genius to become a crank the moment they leave their narrow lane.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Weve got a genius crank to thank for the vitamin c cures everything craze. Linus pauling was convinced vitamin c megadoses could do pretty much everything under the sun. Lots of examples of geniuses that dont know a lot outside their narrow field, sometimes stunningly narrow
  - willis936 6y ago
    Imagine trying to collaborate with Wolfram on a topic that you are an expert in and he is not. Now imagine why he wouldn’t like the peer review process.
- stared 6y ago
  I disagree. A lot of progress in physics was by providing another formalism, which predicted nothing, but provided another picture, provides a theoretical foundation, etc. Take the Langrangian formalism for classical mechanics (you write a book about Noether, right?) - it is equivalent to the causal laws of motions, yet provide a powerful practical and theoretical tool. Or: - Schroedinger vs Heisenberg description of QM - Path integral formulation - Feynman diagrams (here you can argue that it is not even a formulation, "just a visual representation") The problem with Stephen Wolfram's theory of everything is not that it does not explain new things. The problem is that (as it is right now) it does not explain new things (he should wish to get there). The problem is that it follows the pattern: 1. Simple graph automata rules. 2. A loose connection with a few physics properties. 3. ??? 4. Theory of everything! Profit!!!
  - leephillips 6y ago
    I don't think we actually disagree; in any case, I can't find anything in your comment that I don't agree with. I think an important point is that the alternative formulations you list are provably equivalent to the theories that they reformulate; they can not make different predictions, but make make some calculations much easier and lead to expanded insights. It was a big deal when Schrödinger proved the equivalence of the two versions of QM (although his proof was incomplete; a rigorous proof was accomplished by von Neumann). As you suggest, the problem with Wolfram's computational approach is that since it is not equivalent to existing theory, except perhaps in some special cases, it must be a different theory, with different predictions. And, as of almost 20 years since _A New Kind of Science_, it hasn't predicted anything.
    - stared 6y ago
      For a long time, I had thought that A New Kind of Science is an excellent math popularization book on cellular automata, prompting to do computational experiments in mathematics, and having an emphasis on beautiful visualizations. Also, his science education posts (e.g. on analyzing FB data) are wonderful. I just read a few chapters. And later, I was surprised by the criticism. It turned out that "A New Kind of Science" is not a tongue-in-cheek title (vide "Freakonomics"), but that SW actually believes that it not only is a new kind of science, but his science (Turning, Conway, Feynman, anyone...?). Some cellular automata simulations are nice. And in general, many concrete in physics are not general, yet are useful e.g. for numerics (with known limitations). They are not considered crackpot (even if not useful), as long as they make clear what they predict, what - not. Any toy model usurping its right to be the TOE, without a sufficient proof (not just the lack of proof it is not) is likely to be crackpotism. (Side note: for quite a few years I used heavily Mathematica. Only a decade ago I switched to Python, for a few reasons, but mostly for open-source (and quite a few of its implications). Jupyter Notebook, which IMHO was a game-changer for data science in Python, clearly had quite a few inspirations from Mathematica.)
      - leephillips 6y ago
        Yes, I think the idea behind notebooks like Jupyter came from Mathematica. Many people believe that Mathematica would have been huge if it had been open sourced. Now it's probably too late. For example, you can use many kernels with Jupyter, not only Python, so it's a very flexible interface. I enjoy toy models, either simplified equations or computational models like CA. I even made a toy model for the spread of corona virus, so I can look at the effects of isolation, death rate, etc. on the spread of infection, and to give my students something to play with during isolation: https://lee-phillips.org/corona/ https://lee-phillips.org/corona/ But I don't claim that this is a serious epidemiological model. Like CAs and the like, I'm hoping that it is fun to play with and might, just possibly, lead to some insight or new idea. But then that new hypothesis would have to be studied using a more serious model.
sgillen 6y ago
Most of the criticism Stephen gets seems fair. Clearly the guy is a megalomaniac. That being said his ideas are interesting and he is also clearly a genius(just maybe not to the degree he thinks himself) and I’m happy he’s working on his crazy ideas. I think they’re interesting, and although I wouldn’t bet on it, if he comes up with a predictive theory of everything all the better.
- baddox 6y ago
  Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. I know this is taken as gospel around here, but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Is it just that he wrote a book about ideas he thinks are very important and interesting?
  - WhitneyLand 6y ago
    No, it’s not just that he wrote a book with ideas. He has at least one recent interview where it’s pointed out to him that some of the power of what he’s touting has been known in different forms for decades by some formidable people like John Conway et al. He replied something to the effect of oh John never saw this stuff coming. Whether that’s true or not the way he’s so quickly and casually dismissed people like that, that have made relevant contributions to his work is a red flag for me. P.s. normally Conway’s work wouldn’t overlap centrally with a theory of everything but it’s more relevant given Wolfram’s approach.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Glassdoor provides some insight: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-management-Reviews-EI_IE14501.0,16_KH17,35.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-m...
    - stared 6y ago
      From one of these: "An interferring CEO who thinks he knows everything and any project can completed by one engineer in 2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's really complicated [...] If you do have to work with Stephen Wolfram, may god help you. 30 years ago, he was a genius with ideas ahead of his time and he managed to productize them. Today, he is still a genius with ideas that would have been ahead of their time 20 years ago. He is failing to lead this company to the future, and his main method of leading is screaming like a toddler who is told they can't go to the beach during a hurricane. If you are in upper management or project management, you will have to meet with him multiple times per week. In these meetings he will ask for updates on features and products he invented a week ago and be angry they are not ready to be pushed to production yet. After he finishes loudly complaining about how slow and bad everyone is, then he'll go on to request entirely new things that he expects to get immediately. Priorities are never clear, and when you try to get him to guide you, he he has no idea what he actually wants other than "everything". His irrationality and personal attacks drive people to tears." Maybe I am overly harsh, but to me, it sounds like Steve Jobs minus being actually at the frontier of innovation.
doliveira 6y ago
Is there a good expression in English for something like "throwing it out to the crowd"? As in, you just shout it out to a crowd of cheering fans to strong arm someone instead of actually focusing on making your point.
- austinjp 6y ago
  Perhaps "playing to the gallery", although the strong-arming aspect isn't quite there.
- jajag 6y ago
  Possibly "grandstanding".
- bribroder 6y ago
  "Hyping", or "puffery"
ummwhat 6y ago
I have a pretty high tolerance for personality traits that most people find insufferable. That said I can't get through any of Wolfram's work. The novel information I want to read is hidden like raisins in a bread made of gloating about his own genius.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  Sounds like my reaction to Taleb and Mandelbrot.
  - evanpw 6y ago
    Books that should be blog posts, papers that should be tweets.
smitty1e 6y ago
If Wolfram's got it nailed, let him produce the warp drive. There's no problem admitting he's forgotten more about science than I'll ever grasp. The discussion seems more about a Newtonian Ego System than about the fundamental questions of the universe.
hulahoof 6y ago
I enjoyed wolframs framing of the problem, yes it wasn't peer reviewed or asserting new claims - but everyone is acting like it was. I think it's a cool idea that may have results in the future, which is how I felt he presented it.
stared 6y ago
It bugs me that a lot of friends who are interested in physics (but themselves are not physicists, or at least - not yet physicists) think that history is happening in their eyes. I suggest them (even if they are not physicists!) looking at the "The Crackpot Index" by John Baez (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html) and manually calculating the score for Stephen Wolfram.
cryptica 6y ago
>> “‘If we suppose that a rabbit was coming out of the hat, then remarkably, this rabbit would be coming out of the hat,’” Aaronson says. “And then [going] on and on about how remarkable it is.” That has to be one of funniest quotes I ever read. I did have this thought that Stephen Wolfram may be overrated in the past. He is a good businessman for sure. The amount of attention he gets from the media does appear to be disproportionate to his achievements and perhaps may cause overconfidence. That said I do understand the view that the scientific community may have become so narrowly focused on rigid scientific review processes that they could be missing out on real innovation and alternative ideas. For example I can't help but think of what would happen if some random (not PhD) engineer came up with a new and highly innovative mathematical construct and published it on their blog... I doubt their idea would get any attention at all; no matter how useful or impressive it is. It would be lost in the noise because scientists are not going to review it. Science is still operating on an outdated idea that all scientific knowledge is centralized within universities and that all credible innovations must necessarily come from these universities and all great scientists must be somehow be socially connected to existing great scientists. As if direct social connections are still the only pathways through which cutting-edge knowledge can flow. It completely ignores the existence of the internet.
- thechao 6y ago
  There are a limited number of hours in the day. I guarantee you that >99.99% of all nonexpert blogs on the internet are pure garbage—should they spend 50-100 hours a week reviewing crazy? My field was an uninteresting sub-field of programming language theory, and every conference, at least 1/2 the papers submitted were borderline batshit insane. The stuff on the internet is gibberish. Screaming into the night & railing that physicists are ignoring you is just sociopathy. Instead, go to them, give presentations, prove your ideas have merit. Make it short to get their attention, build up credit & lead them to what’s new.
  - achillesheels 6y ago
    No, it isn’t sociopathy. I, for instance, tried to engage with Sabine Hossenfelder on a novel interpretation of electron diffraction which would help demonstrate linear time-invariance of electromagnetic phenomena in an atomic scale (nickel crystal) only to be completely ignored - despite the fact she posts on her blog a “speak to a physicist” button. In fact, the physicist she paired me with failed to appear to two scheduled Skype calls and explained he was too sick after the fact. And no response from her. So here I am, with ignored emails by professors because they don’t have the bandwidth and I don’t have the branding. Physicists by trade do not trade on advancing the state of the art. That takes courage and risk of reputation. This is why the natural sciences have progressed outside of vocations. “Lead then to what’s new” is better worded as “make it shameful to ignore you”. I am acutely aware of that now.
saystupidthings 6y ago
I didn't know this guy existed. How I feel bad for using Wolfram alpha. Thanks HN.
danpalmer 6y ago
I'd love to see some great blog posts, talks, etc from people who disagree with this piece of research. There are lots of people who dislike him, great, I agree, this is common knowledge, but it's not a reason that his research is wrong – the scientific community is better than ad-hominem attacks. The problem is that he's a pretty good science communicator. As a layperson (but software engineer so I'm somewhat mathematically literate and know what a graph is), I got through the intro talk published by them and came out feeling like I understood what the premise was, roughly how it worked, how it could apply, why it might be a good model. I then read a physicists "debunking", but because it was basically just references to physics papers saying "ah but you didn't address the something conjecture" I didn't really get anywhere with it. I'm glad the physics community are discussing it internally, that is ultimately more important, but as a layperson I'd really like to get a good understanding of the other side of the argument.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  One issue with fundamental theories that I've seen is that it's really easy to come up with a model that reproduces some aspects of relativity or even quantum mechanics, especially in some approximation, such as low energies or weak fields. In that regime, you can wave your hand and pretend that everything is linear or nearly so. The symmetries are common symmetries that a lot of algebras or geometries share, so things just "seem to work" almost magically. This is like saying you've invented a car from scratch because you've made something with mirror symmetry that can roll forward. Obviously, this is missing more than a few details. What Stephen Wolfram seems to have done is come up with an extremely generic system that can describe anything, in much the same way that a CAD program can use meshes to describe any piece of machinery you'd like to design. That doesn't mean that meshes are equivalent to metal and concrete. Just because meshes can have various symmetries and can be used to represent circular things doesn't mean that a mesh is a car either. Similarly, in a very real sense the Universe performs computation, because -- duh -- it contains computers. And brains. And many things of that nature. Brains and computers run by the same rules of physics that stars and experimental particle beams do. Hence, the Universe computes. It also computes in the trivial sense that if you add 1 hydrogen atom to 1 hydrogen atom you get 2 hydrogen atoms. So if you come up with a very generic form of computation, such as automata, or substitution rules, or whatever, of course you're going to find many things that "look like" various aspects of the computation the Universe is performing. But analogies are just that: comparisons of vaguely similar features. That doesn't mean they're isomorphic to each other, nor does it mean that some random theory is actually the rules the Universe follows. Stephen spends a lot of his time jumping up and down and pointing at some trivial aspect of his theories and saying "Look at this! My theory can perform addition! The Universe does addition too! Hence my theory is the theory of the Universe!" I've been interested in the fundamental theory of everything for two decades now, and I spend about an hour a day on average poking through random arXiv papers looking for ideas or signs of progress. I've noticed a few things: Much of Wolfram's criticism of academia and modern theoretical physics is correct. It's much the same as Eric Weinstein's criticism. They both say that the politics and economics of academia make it nigh impossible to rock the boat and come up with radical new ideas. I noticed this too. Modern theoretical physics isn't. It's intellectual wankery and dick measuring as a way of getting pieces of paper and tenure. There's zero motivation or incentive to do anything useful, because the system has slowly evolved over time to disincentivize it. However, this doesn't mean that their particular "rebel" flavour of TOE is correct, just because the models produced by Universities have gone nowhere. Progress in some arbitrary direction is not necessarily better than no progress at all! Progress in the right direction is needed. Over the years (decades!) I've developed an acid test to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff: 1) Does the theory even mention particle generations? Bonus points if demonstrates at least three and explains why we haven't found four. 2) Is it a truly local theory in that global communication is never required? (Many current theories implicitly involve "solving" something, which is often implicitly a global minimisation.) 3) Can the theory be applied to single systems, or just ensembles? (Most QM theories automatically fail this one. Single particles exist, single electrons go into higher orbits from a single photon, etc... Either you can model this, or your theory is woefully incomplete) 4) Can it explain the observations of Quantum Mechanics without resorting to the "infinite dimensional" mathematical wizardry? Can it produce computable models, or just symbolic gibberish that I guarantee you no particle "computes" as it goes about its business. 5) Nobel prize winning stuff would explain the origins of constants that are currently experimentally determined inputs. (Most theories I've seen don't even have numbers.) 6) The ultimate requirement is for a TOE to "not only" produce the known observable physical behaviour but to also naturally exclude everything else. That is, the ideal rules should have some sort of incredibly tight self-consistency that can only happen in one way and can only produce physics. For example, an algebra that can only be used to represent valid combinations of particles and fields, and can never represent any other "invalid state" that makes no sense. Unfortunately, 99% of the stuff I see fail at all of the above. Wolfram's theory does too. His current graph-based theory and his previous cellular automaton theory spectacularly fail the 6-th requirement. They're both nearly unconstrained computation models with infinite flexibility, the exact opposite of a good TOE.
loopz 6y ago
He's right and he's wrong: Graphs are wonderful datastructures to mimic/simulate complex phenomena realistically. Also, simple computational rules, especially with feedback-loops, may yield complex output of intriguing complexity. It's very seductive reductionism. But from most simple observations in nature, there's no direct causal link between the two, . Intuitively, we "know" everything originated from a "Big Bang", but we don't have proof how or if complexity arose over time, or was it always intrinsinct to cosmos, and wether the question itself have any measurable implications.. So graphs and computational feedback remain interesting and time-consuming avenues for research, but it's a big leap from superficial studies of outputs ("how") and finding a graph-formula that would explain all possible universes ie. from a "Big Bang" point ("why"). A solid unchanging theory would need to address enough "why"'s in order to be properly backed up by predictions explaining the observable physical universe, to be relevant. If the theory can include new hypothesis and rules at any time, it's not a theory, but a container for information and rulesets (ie. a Turing-complete system). Of course, you can "curve fit" anything inside a graph. They're great at it for simulations and games, and are already used everywhere you do computationally interesting complex stuff. There's just no indication or proof that the physical world matches any model created by humans living within the universe. Maybe someone humble will stumble unto some simple explanation, but so far, the deeper we go, it seems even experts get lost in the tough complexities and unintuitive laws we assume govern microcosmos and energy. It seems to boil down to difference between theory and practice. Pure mathematics and observations are theory, while how to simulate and mimic, is more engineering and providing interesting outputs. If we combine the two, we can build universes.. (ok, off the pipe for now :)
- HourglassFR 6y ago
  > Intuitively, we "know" everything originated from a "Big Bang" I don't think we have any intuition about this at all, we are however fairly accustomed to this idea with old creation myths that still loudly resonates throughout culture, and of course now that it has been the scientific orthodoxy for 50 years or so. But yeah I definitly agree with you on the "curve fit" thing. I would not be surprised that, if one day we do find a comprehensive theory of everything (assuming this is even possible or even have a meaning at all), it would be possible to express it in this very general framework of hyper-graph re-writing itself according to some rule. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to so. And in any case, at the end of the day, like everything else humans do, science is a social process. The goal is to get closer to truth (whatever that means), but you won't get there by ignoring any input, and insist that everyone should drop whatever they are doing and come admire/help you on your work.
forgot_again 6y ago
>"I think the popular notion that physicists are all in search of the eureka moment in which they will discover the theory of everything is an unfortunate one,” says Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “We do want to find better, more complete theories. But the way we go about that is to test and refine our models, look for inconsistencies and incrementally work our way toward better, more complete models.” And yet Einstein did just that in developing General Relativity, as have many other scientists and thinkers in producing their novel theories or approaches. Yes, GR made falsifiable predictions, but it still represents a paradigm shift, the sort Katie Mack thinks of as "unfortunate". I am not endorsing Wolfram's work at all. But the idea that science has to progress in a step by step, gradual, collaborative fashion is naive and historically ignorant.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  It's not naive and historically ignorant, that is how science generally progresses. Paradigm shifts are rare by definition. Einstein was an obvious outlier, and Wolfram is no Einstein. Your argument is used by every crackpot to justify their dismissal of the scientific process - because making progress that way is much harder than simply posting their theory on a primadonna blog and demanding the world come to them.
  - forgot_again 6y ago
    I don't disagree with you that paradigm shifts are rare, but to dismiss then out of hand as simply not being the way we do science is indeed naive. We need both sorts of thinkers in science: those who want to make the important incremental improvements and those who seek entirely new ways of looking at problems.
    - mellosouls 6y ago
      Yes we do - but it's important that we don't prioritise the rich, famous, connected businessmen and their internet fanboys trumpeting their vanity projects over the obscure patent clerks (and equivalent) doing the actual hard, brave work of letting their theories speak for themselves.
at_a_remove 6y ago
I will admit to an obsessional CA phase decades ago, but even then it was clear to me that, while the universe probably does operate on repeated application of simple rules, there was no reason why they had to be cellular in nature. Even the development of CA based on floating point numbers, which somewhat clears up the anisotropic nature of the phenomena generated by conventional CA, still has directional preferences. CA does not seem to be great at replicating conservation principles -- and they are everywhere in physics -- and attempts to graft them on by complex interactions between glider guns or the like only highlights the fragility of the process, as even the slightest misalignment causes chaos. When you run a CA, you get expansion or contraction and are typically left with some stable/oscillating phenomena if it doesn't just keep blowing outward, and those configurations which remain are still ... fragile. In ways particles are not. Particles might come and go, but the quantities they represent linger. Where is that in CA? As to anyone who suggests they have new physics, bring us testable observations of that which would not be explicable in our current frameworks. Give us a refinement of the numbers, measurable in some fashion, to highlight a deviation from that which is predicted by the old ways. I haven't seen anything like that out of him. Perhaps a ruleset exists which would have these things, but if so, wouldn't he have mentioned it instead of just doing his usual business about Rule 30 and the like? Or are we -- and here is where, outside of ego, I get the biggest crank feelings from Wolfram -- all expected to drop everything, adopt his approach, and iterate through ever more complex configurations of CA until we find the one that somehow works? Of all of the bits in Baez's crackpot index, this is the one reliable indicator I find missing, although "10 points for each statement along the lines of 'I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations'." is in the ballpark. Everyone, drop everything and do it my way until it works!
- xamuel 6y ago
  >ever more complex configurations of CA until we find the one that somehow works Just gotta keep adding more epicycles, eventually geocentrism will be vindicated! /s
seibelj 6y ago
In case no one has read it yet, here is a very amusing take down of Wolfram and why he is the classic crank theorist http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/
moomin 6y ago
This is like if John du Pont published a 3,000 page proof of P=NP that made no reference to the well known problems with proving it, circumvented peer-review and appealed directly to the general public. Remember: no-one ever claimed the prize for disproving the TimeCube guy either.
nabla9 6y ago
This is not Wolfram's first Theory of Everything. Wolfram published "New Kind of Science" almost 20 years ago. Scott Aaronson was kind enough to review it: https://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf https://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf So was Juergen Schmidhuber and many others http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_reviews.html http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_reviews.html Wolfram has now moved from CA to Hypergraphs (essentially sets). They are so generic structures that you get anything physics-like from them if you want. For example, if you visualize hypergraph that you get from normal execution of numerical simulations for relativistic, quantum or general relativity simulations, they would look cool and you might realize that they are connected to physics. Just like Wolfram's pretty pictures. Would execution graph representation explain more than equations and code? I don't think so.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yeah At the same time it misses the point of the natural sciences. Hypergraphs as described are more like Calculus than Physics. Of course, describing gravity with calculus was a brilliant discovery but you can't just have calculus and say "that's gravity". You need the connection between the two.
  - abernard1 6y ago
    I think Wolfram's claims are even more egregious than that. His model is inherently computational. It would be like saying "here's a computer that can execute things" and then proving that you'd created the Linux kernel or something. It's not a very surprising claim to say that a particular fact can be represented in a system which can represent anything. Mathematicians (well, most anyways) don't go around claiming they've discovered the secrets of the universe because math _could_ describe it in principle.
    - bitforger 6y ago
      I don't think he claimed to find the theory of everything. I think he's excited because he thinks that in this framework we can just "throw compute" at the problem to enumerate the possible theories of everything, and automatically rule out the ones that don't align with reality.
dannykwells 6y ago
Final sentence is brutal: And when provided with some of the responses from other physicists regarding his work, Wolfram is singularly unenthused. “I’m disappointed by the naivete of the questions that you’re communicating,” he grumbles. “I deserve better.”
- deleted 6y ago
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yters 6y ago
Something like Wolfram's vision has to be true if materialism has any hope of working. The universe is finite and discrete, so a Turing machine is an upper bound on its capabilities. The original thing that started it all has to be really simple: have a large(ish) probability of occurring by chance and a very high compression to get an orderly universe. Therefore, if materialism is true, then in the beginning must be some simple, but potentially Turing complete substrate, such as a cellular automata or graph thingamabob.
- goatlover 6y ago
  > The universe is finite and discrete, Well, the universe appears to be close to flat, which would indicate an infinite size. And the discreteness of spacetime in QM hasn't been made to work with Relativity, thus the forays into String Theory and Quantum Loop Gravity.
  - yters 6y ago
    Even if there is an infinite expanse, there are only finite effect ranges. Does anyone seriously think infinity has any sort of physical impact? I've never seen such an idea in all my years of physics exposure.
redsymbol 6y ago
It's interesting how his personality traits affect the discourse around this. Like this quote from the close of the article: “I’m disappointed by the naivete of the questions that you’re communicating,” [Wolfram] grumbles. “I deserve better.” And maybe that's actually true. Of course, many will find this manner of speech pushes our buttons; coming across as arrogant, megalomaniacal, almost anti-scientific-process. But that has NOTHING do to with whether this theory is correct or not. When the most obnoxious person you can imagine says 2 + 2 = 4, that doesn't change the fact that 2 + 2 actually does equal 4. (Of course, if they claim 2 + 2 = 5, their being obnoxious doesn't make that true either.)
nscalf 6y ago
On a higher level than just Stephen Wolfram, I find the practice of immediately dismissing people who are "outsiders" from academia (or from a field) disturbing. In our history, some of the most insightful work and execution has come from outsiders. Computer science seems to be quite good when it comes to this, but fields like physics seem to be so violently against people who are not doing research at a top tier university that they're preventing their own progress. Looking at the state of physics research, I've personally decided not to go deep into the field on my own, it feels like there is no way I could contribute to progress. I'm not sure if this is because of the hyper competitive state of getting tenure or if this is just an example of group think against the other, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the field of physics has gone from the most exciting and impactful field in science to being largely stagnant.
- foxyv 6y ago
  "Let me tell you my theory!" If you think listening to someone's new app idea is bad, there is nothing worse than an amateur physicist trying to tell you their newest theory. "Proof? Who needs that! My theory is so elegant!" "What do you mean my proof doesn't make any sense, maybe I'm just too much of a genius! How can you not see that right away?" "You have, 1028 emails with frustratingly naive 'What About?' questions from various self-taught physicists." I think a lot of physicists get kinda jaded about outside work. Then, when a genuinely talented and hardworking non-professional shows up, it's hard to tell the difference.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    The Exhibit A example is perpetual motion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
- orbifold 6y ago
  The ratio of cranks to valuable outside contributions is probably 10^{-6} if not smaller. At our theoretical physics institute, they have a wall with the most amusing crank theories. It is also extreme arrogance that makes someone think they could contribute something without investing 5+ years of their life. The total time is probably more than 10+ years before you can perform adequately and independently.
bionhoward 6y ago
Gotta love the “usually white and male” jab. It’s ironic how the default virtue signal about racism and sexism right now is to attack white men, because to attack someone’s race and gender is the definition of racism and sexism.

113 points by guybedo 6y ago

Theories that reproduce things we've already observed are a dime a dozen. The test is whether you can predict new things. And Wolfram's theories don't even predict what we already see. And sorry, but complaining about the "corruption" of the peer review system that you refuse to engage with (and it does have problems) is the calling card of the crank. It's just that this crank happens also to be, or have been, a genius of some kind, so he's never completely ignored.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Never underestimate the ability of a genius to become a crank the moment they leave their narrow lane.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Weve got a genius crank to thank for the vitamin c cures everything craze. Linus pauling was convinced vitamin c megadoses could do pretty much everything under the sun. Lots of examples of geniuses that dont know a lot outside their narrow field, sometimes stunningly narrow
- willis936 6y ago
  Imagine trying to collaborate with Wolfram on a topic that you are an expert in and he is not. Now imagine why he wouldn’t like the peer review process.
stared 6y ago
I disagree. A lot of progress in physics was by providing another formalism, which predicted nothing, but provided another picture, provides a theoretical foundation, etc. Take the Langrangian formalism for classical mechanics (you write a book about Noether, right?) - it is equivalent to the causal laws of motions, yet provide a powerful practical and theoretical tool. Or: - Schroedinger vs Heisenberg description of QM - Path integral formulation - Feynman diagrams (here you can argue that it is not even a formulation, "just a visual representation") The problem with Stephen Wolfram's theory of everything is not that it does not explain new things. The problem is that (as it is right now) it does not explain new things (he should wish to get there). The problem is that it follows the pattern: 1. Simple graph automata rules. 2. A loose connection with a few physics properties. 3. ??? 4. Theory of everything! Profit!!!
- leephillips 6y ago
  I don't think we actually disagree; in any case, I can't find anything in your comment that I don't agree with. I think an important point is that the alternative formulations you list are provably equivalent to the theories that they reformulate; they can not make different predictions, but make make some calculations much easier and lead to expanded insights. It was a big deal when Schrödinger proved the equivalence of the two versions of QM (although his proof was incomplete; a rigorous proof was accomplished by von Neumann). As you suggest, the problem with Wolfram's computational approach is that since it is not equivalent to existing theory, except perhaps in some special cases, it must be a different theory, with different predictions. And, as of almost 20 years since _A New Kind of Science_, it hasn't predicted anything.
  - stared 6y ago
    For a long time, I had thought that A New Kind of Science is an excellent math popularization book on cellular automata, prompting to do computational experiments in mathematics, and having an emphasis on beautiful visualizations. Also, his science education posts (e.g. on analyzing FB data) are wonderful. I just read a few chapters. And later, I was surprised by the criticism. It turned out that "A New Kind of Science" is not a tongue-in-cheek title (vide "Freakonomics"), but that SW actually believes that it not only is a new kind of science, but his science (Turning, Conway, Feynman, anyone...?). Some cellular automata simulations are nice. And in general, many concrete in physics are not general, yet are useful e.g. for numerics (with known limitations). They are not considered crackpot (even if not useful), as long as they make clear what they predict, what - not. Any toy model usurping its right to be the TOE, without a sufficient proof (not just the lack of proof it is not) is likely to be crackpotism. (Side note: for quite a few years I used heavily Mathematica. Only a decade ago I switched to Python, for a few reasons, but mostly for open-source (and quite a few of its implications). Jupyter Notebook, which IMHO was a game-changer for data science in Python, clearly had quite a few inspirations from Mathematica.)
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Yes, I think the idea behind notebooks like Jupyter came from Mathematica. Many people believe that Mathematica would have been huge if it had been open sourced. Now it's probably too late. For example, you can use many kernels with Jupyter, not only Python, so it's a very flexible interface. I enjoy toy models, either simplified equations or computational models like CA. I even made a toy model for the spread of corona virus, so I can look at the effects of isolation, death rate, etc. on the spread of infection, and to give my students something to play with during isolation: https://lee-phillips.org/corona/ https://lee-phillips.org/corona/ But I don't claim that this is a serious epidemiological model. Like CAs and the like, I'm hoping that it is fun to play with and might, just possibly, lead to some insight or new idea. But then that new hypothesis would have to be studied using a more serious model.

sgillen 6y ago

Most of the criticism Stephen gets seems fair. Clearly the guy is a megalomaniac. That being said his ideas are interesting and he is also clearly a genius(just maybe not to the degree he thinks himself) and I’m happy he’s working on his crazy ideas. I think they’re interesting, and although I wouldn’t bet on it, if he comes up with a predictive theory of everything all the better.

baddox 6y ago
Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. I know this is taken as gospel around here, but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Is it just that he wrote a book about ideas he thinks are very important and interesting?
- WhitneyLand 6y ago
  No, it’s not just that he wrote a book with ideas. He has at least one recent interview where it’s pointed out to him that some of the power of what he’s touting has been known in different forms for decades by some formidable people like John Conway et al. He replied something to the effect of oh John never saw this stuff coming. Whether that’s true or not the way he’s so quickly and casually dismissed people like that, that have made relevant contributions to his work is a red flag for me. P.s. normally Conway’s work wouldn’t overlap centrally with a theory of everything but it’s more relevant given Wolfram’s approach.
- mkl 6y ago
  Glassdoor provides some insight: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-management-Reviews-EI_IE14501.0,16_KH17,35.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-m...
  - stared 6y ago
    From one of these: "An interferring CEO who thinks he knows everything and any project can completed by one engineer in 2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's really complicated [...] If you do have to work with Stephen Wolfram, may god help you. 30 years ago, he was a genius with ideas ahead of his time and he managed to productize them. Today, he is still a genius with ideas that would have been ahead of their time 20 years ago. He is failing to lead this company to the future, and his main method of leading is screaming like a toddler who is told they can't go to the beach during a hurricane. If you are in upper management or project management, you will have to meet with him multiple times per week. In these meetings he will ask for updates on features and products he invented a week ago and be angry they are not ready to be pushed to production yet. After he finishes loudly complaining about how slow and bad everyone is, then he'll go on to request entirely new things that he expects to get immediately. Priorities are never clear, and when you try to get him to guide you, he he has no idea what he actually wants other than "everything". His irrationality and personal attacks drive people to tears." Maybe I am overly harsh, but to me, it sounds like Steve Jobs minus being actually at the frontier of innovation.

doliveira 6y ago

Is there a good expression in English for something like "throwing it out to the crowd"? As in, you just shout it out to a crowd of cheering fans to strong arm someone instead of actually focusing on making your point.

austinjp 6y ago
Perhaps "playing to the gallery", although the strong-arming aspect isn't quite there.
jajag 6y ago
Possibly "grandstanding".
bribroder 6y ago
"Hyping", or "puffery"

ummwhat 6y ago

I have a pretty high tolerance for personality traits that most people find insufferable. That said I can't get through any of Wolfram's work. The novel information I want to read is hidden like raisins in a bread made of gloating about his own genius.

michaelcampbell 6y ago
Sounds like my reaction to Taleb and Mandelbrot.
- evanpw 6y ago
  Books that should be blog posts, papers that should be tweets.

smitty1e 6y ago

If Wolfram's got it nailed, let him produce the warp drive. There's no problem admitting he's forgotten more about science than I'll ever grasp. The discussion seems more about a Newtonian Ego System than about the fundamental questions of the universe.

hulahoof 6y ago

I enjoyed wolframs framing of the problem, yes it wasn't peer reviewed or asserting new claims - but everyone is acting like it was. I think it's a cool idea that may have results in the future, which is how I felt he presented it.

stared 6y ago

It bugs me that a lot of friends who are interested in physics (but themselves are not physicists, or at least - not yet physicists) think that history is happening in their eyes. I suggest them (even if they are not physicists!) looking at the "The Crackpot Index" by John Baez (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html) and manually calculating the score for Stephen Wolfram.

cryptica 6y ago

>> “‘If we suppose that a rabbit was coming out of the hat, then remarkably, this rabbit would be coming out of the hat,’” Aaronson says. “And then [going] on and on about how remarkable it is.” That has to be one of funniest quotes I ever read. I did have this thought that Stephen Wolfram may be overrated in the past. He is a good businessman for sure. The amount of attention he gets from the media does appear to be disproportionate to his achievements and perhaps may cause overconfidence. That said I do understand the view that the scientific community may have become so narrowly focused on rigid scientific review processes that they could be missing out on real innovation and alternative ideas. For example I can't help but think of what would happen if some random (not PhD) engineer came up with a new and highly innovative mathematical construct and published it on their blog... I doubt their idea would get any attention at all; no matter how useful or impressive it is. It would be lost in the noise because scientists are not going to review it. Science is still operating on an outdated idea that all scientific knowledge is centralized within universities and that all credible innovations must necessarily come from these universities and all great scientists must be somehow be socially connected to existing great scientists. As if direct social connections are still the only pathways through which cutting-edge knowledge can flow. It completely ignores the existence of the internet.

thechao 6y ago
There are a limited number of hours in the day. I guarantee you that >99.99% of all nonexpert blogs on the internet are pure garbage—should they spend 50-100 hours a week reviewing crazy? My field was an uninteresting sub-field of programming language theory, and every conference, at least 1/2 the papers submitted were borderline batshit insane. The stuff on the internet is gibberish. Screaming into the night & railing that physicists are ignoring you is just sociopathy. Instead, go to them, give presentations, prove your ideas have merit. Make it short to get their attention, build up credit & lead them to what’s new.
- achillesheels 6y ago
  No, it isn’t sociopathy. I, for instance, tried to engage with Sabine Hossenfelder on a novel interpretation of electron diffraction which would help demonstrate linear time-invariance of electromagnetic phenomena in an atomic scale (nickel crystal) only to be completely ignored - despite the fact she posts on her blog a “speak to a physicist” button. In fact, the physicist she paired me with failed to appear to two scheduled Skype calls and explained he was too sick after the fact. And no response from her. So here I am, with ignored emails by professors because they don’t have the bandwidth and I don’t have the branding. Physicists by trade do not trade on advancing the state of the art. That takes courage and risk of reputation. This is why the natural sciences have progressed outside of vocations. “Lead then to what’s new” is better worded as “make it shameful to ignore you”. I am acutely aware of that now.

saystupidthings 6y ago

I didn't know this guy existed. How I feel bad for using Wolfram alpha. Thanks HN.

danpalmer 6y ago

I'd love to see some great blog posts, talks, etc from people who disagree with this piece of research. There are lots of people who dislike him, great, I agree, this is common knowledge, but it's not a reason that his research is wrong – the scientific community is better than ad-hominem attacks. The problem is that he's a pretty good science communicator. As a layperson (but software engineer so I'm somewhat mathematically literate and know what a graph is), I got through the intro talk published by them and came out feeling like I understood what the premise was, roughly how it worked, how it could apply, why it might be a good model. I then read a physicists "debunking", but because it was basically just references to physics papers saying "ah but you didn't address the something conjecture" I didn't really get anywhere with it. I'm glad the physics community are discussing it internally, that is ultimately more important, but as a layperson I'd really like to get a good understanding of the other side of the argument.

jiggawatts 6y ago
One issue with fundamental theories that I've seen is that it's really easy to come up with a model that reproduces some aspects of relativity or even quantum mechanics, especially in some approximation, such as low energies or weak fields. In that regime, you can wave your hand and pretend that everything is linear or nearly so. The symmetries are common symmetries that a lot of algebras or geometries share, so things just "seem to work" almost magically. This is like saying you've invented a car from scratch because you've made something with mirror symmetry that can roll forward. Obviously, this is missing more than a few details. What Stephen Wolfram seems to have done is come up with an extremely generic system that can describe anything, in much the same way that a CAD program can use meshes to describe any piece of machinery you'd like to design. That doesn't mean that meshes are equivalent to metal and concrete. Just because meshes can have various symmetries and can be used to represent circular things doesn't mean that a mesh is a car either. Similarly, in a very real sense the Universe performs computation, because -- duh -- it contains computers. And brains. And many things of that nature. Brains and computers run by the same rules of physics that stars and experimental particle beams do. Hence, the Universe computes. It also computes in the trivial sense that if you add 1 hydrogen atom to 1 hydrogen atom you get 2 hydrogen atoms. So if you come up with a very generic form of computation, such as automata, or substitution rules, or whatever, of course you're going to find many things that "look like" various aspects of the computation the Universe is performing. But analogies are just that: comparisons of vaguely similar features. That doesn't mean they're isomorphic to each other, nor does it mean that some random theory is actually the rules the Universe follows. Stephen spends a lot of his time jumping up and down and pointing at some trivial aspect of his theories and saying "Look at this! My theory can perform addition! The Universe does addition too! Hence my theory is the theory of the Universe!" I've been interested in the fundamental theory of everything for two decades now, and I spend about an hour a day on average poking through random arXiv papers looking for ideas or signs of progress. I've noticed a few things: Much of Wolfram's criticism of academia and modern theoretical physics is correct. It's much the same as Eric Weinstein's criticism. They both say that the politics and economics of academia make it nigh impossible to rock the boat and come up with radical new ideas. I noticed this too. Modern theoretical physics isn't. It's intellectual wankery and dick measuring as a way of getting pieces of paper and tenure. There's zero motivation or incentive to do anything useful, because the system has slowly evolved over time to disincentivize it. However, this doesn't mean that their particular "rebel" flavour of TOE is correct, just because the models produced by Universities have gone nowhere. Progress in some arbitrary direction is not necessarily better than no progress at all! Progress in the right direction is needed. Over the years (decades!) I've developed an acid test to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff: 1) Does the theory even mention particle generations? Bonus points if demonstrates at least three and explains why we haven't found four. 2) Is it a truly local theory in that global communication is never required? (Many current theories implicitly involve "solving" something, which is often implicitly a global minimisation.) 3) Can the theory be applied to single systems, or just ensembles? (Most QM theories automatically fail this one. Single particles exist, single electrons go into higher orbits from a single photon, etc... Either you can model this, or your theory is woefully incomplete) 4) Can it explain the observations of Quantum Mechanics without resorting to the "infinite dimensional" mathematical wizardry? Can it produce computable models, or just symbolic gibberish that I guarantee you no particle "computes" as it goes about its business. 5) Nobel prize winning stuff would explain the origins of constants that are currently experimentally determined inputs. (Most theories I've seen don't even have numbers.) 6) The ultimate requirement is for a TOE to "not only" produce the known observable physical behaviour but to also naturally exclude everything else. That is, the ideal rules should have some sort of incredibly tight self-consistency that can only happen in one way and can only produce physics. For example, an algebra that can only be used to represent valid combinations of particles and fields, and can never represent any other "invalid state" that makes no sense. Unfortunately, 99% of the stuff I see fail at all of the above. Wolfram's theory does too. His current graph-based theory and his previous cellular automaton theory spectacularly fail the 6-th requirement. They're both nearly unconstrained computation models with infinite flexibility, the exact opposite of a good TOE.

loopz 6y ago

He's right and he's wrong: Graphs are wonderful datastructures to mimic/simulate complex phenomena realistically. Also, simple computational rules, especially with feedback-loops, may yield complex output of intriguing complexity. It's very seductive reductionism. But from most simple observations in nature, there's no direct causal link between the two, . Intuitively, we "know" everything originated from a "Big Bang", but we don't have proof how or if complexity arose over time, or was it always intrinsinct to cosmos, and wether the question itself have any measurable implications.. So graphs and computational feedback remain interesting and time-consuming avenues for research, but it's a big leap from superficial studies of outputs ("how") and finding a graph-formula that would explain all possible universes ie. from a "Big Bang" point ("why"). A solid unchanging theory would need to address enough "why"'s in order to be properly backed up by predictions explaining the observable physical universe, to be relevant. If the theory can include new hypothesis and rules at any time, it's not a theory, but a container for information and rulesets (ie. a Turing-complete system). Of course, you can "curve fit" anything inside a graph. They're great at it for simulations and games, and are already used everywhere you do computationally interesting complex stuff. There's just no indication or proof that the physical world matches any model created by humans living within the universe. Maybe someone humble will stumble unto some simple explanation, but so far, the deeper we go, it seems even experts get lost in the tough complexities and unintuitive laws we assume govern microcosmos and energy. It seems to boil down to difference between theory and practice. Pure mathematics and observations are theory, while how to simulate and mimic, is more engineering and providing interesting outputs. If we combine the two, we can build universes.. (ok, off the pipe for now :)

HourglassFR 6y ago
> Intuitively, we "know" everything originated from a "Big Bang" I don't think we have any intuition about this at all, we are however fairly accustomed to this idea with old creation myths that still loudly resonates throughout culture, and of course now that it has been the scientific orthodoxy for 50 years or so. But yeah I definitly agree with you on the "curve fit" thing. I would not be surprised that, if one day we do find a comprehensive theory of everything (assuming this is even possible or even have a meaning at all), it would be possible to express it in this very general framework of hyper-graph re-writing itself according to some rule. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to so. And in any case, at the end of the day, like everything else humans do, science is a social process. The goal is to get closer to truth (whatever that means), but you won't get there by ignoring any input, and insist that everyone should drop whatever they are doing and come admire/help you on your work.

forgot_again 6y ago

>"I think the popular notion that physicists are all in search of the eureka moment in which they will discover the theory of everything is an unfortunate one,” says Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “We do want to find better, more complete theories. But the way we go about that is to test and refine our models, look for inconsistencies and incrementally work our way toward better, more complete models.” And yet Einstein did just that in developing General Relativity, as have many other scientists and thinkers in producing their novel theories or approaches. Yes, GR made falsifiable predictions, but it still represents a paradigm shift, the sort Katie Mack thinks of as "unfortunate". I am not endorsing Wolfram's work at all. But the idea that science has to progress in a step by step, gradual, collaborative fashion is naive and historically ignorant.

mellosouls 6y ago
It's not naive and historically ignorant, that is how science generally progresses. Paradigm shifts are rare by definition. Einstein was an obvious outlier, and Wolfram is no Einstein. Your argument is used by every crackpot to justify their dismissal of the scientific process - because making progress that way is much harder than simply posting their theory on a primadonna blog and demanding the world come to them.
- forgot_again 6y ago
  I don't disagree with you that paradigm shifts are rare, but to dismiss then out of hand as simply not being the way we do science is indeed naive. We need both sorts of thinkers in science: those who want to make the important incremental improvements and those who seek entirely new ways of looking at problems.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Yes we do - but it's important that we don't prioritise the rich, famous, connected businessmen and their internet fanboys trumpeting their vanity projects over the obscure patent clerks (and equivalent) doing the actual hard, brave work of letting their theories speak for themselves.

at_a_remove 6y ago

I will admit to an obsessional CA phase decades ago, but even then it was clear to me that, while the universe probably does operate on repeated application of simple rules, there was no reason why they had to be cellular in nature. Even the development of CA based on floating point numbers, which somewhat clears up the anisotropic nature of the phenomena generated by conventional CA, still has directional preferences. CA does not seem to be great at replicating conservation principles -- and they are everywhere in physics -- and attempts to graft them on by complex interactions between glider guns or the like only highlights the fragility of the process, as even the slightest misalignment causes chaos. When you run a CA, you get expansion or contraction and are typically left with some stable/oscillating phenomena if it doesn't just keep blowing outward, and those configurations which remain are still ... fragile. In ways particles are not. Particles might come and go, but the quantities they represent linger. Where is that in CA? As to anyone who suggests they have new physics, bring us testable observations of that which would not be explicable in our current frameworks. Give us a refinement of the numbers, measurable in some fashion, to highlight a deviation from that which is predicted by the old ways. I haven't seen anything like that out of him. Perhaps a ruleset exists which would have these things, but if so, wouldn't he have mentioned it instead of just doing his usual business about Rule 30 and the like? Or are we -- and here is where, outside of ego, I get the biggest crank feelings from Wolfram -- all expected to drop everything, adopt his approach, and iterate through ever more complex configurations of CA until we find the one that somehow works? Of all of the bits in Baez's crackpot index, this is the one reliable indicator I find missing, although "10 points for each statement along the lines of 'I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations'." is in the ballpark. Everyone, drop everything and do it my way until it works!

xamuel 6y ago
>ever more complex configurations of CA until we find the one that somehow works Just gotta keep adding more epicycles, eventually geocentrism will be vindicated! /s

seibelj 6y ago

In case no one has read it yet, here is a very amusing take down of Wolfram and why he is the classic crank theorist http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

moomin 6y ago

This is like if John du Pont published a 3,000 page proof of P=NP that made no reference to the well known problems with proving it, circumvented peer-review and appealed directly to the general public. Remember: no-one ever claimed the prize for disproving the TimeCube guy either.

nabla9 6y ago

This is not Wolfram's first Theory of Everything. Wolfram published "New Kind of Science" almost 20 years ago. Scott Aaronson was kind enough to review it: https://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf https://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf So was Juergen Schmidhuber and many others http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_reviews.html http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_reviews.html Wolfram has now moved from CA to Hypergraphs (essentially sets). They are so generic structures that you get anything physics-like from them if you want. For example, if you visualize hypergraph that you get from normal execution of numerical simulations for relativistic, quantum or general relativity simulations, they would look cool and you might realize that they are connected to physics. Just like Wolfram's pretty pictures. Would execution graph representation explain more than equations and code? I don't think so.

raverbashing 6y ago
Yeah At the same time it misses the point of the natural sciences. Hypergraphs as described are more like Calculus than Physics. Of course, describing gravity with calculus was a brilliant discovery but you can't just have calculus and say "that's gravity". You need the connection between the two.
- abernard1 6y ago
  I think Wolfram's claims are even more egregious than that. His model is inherently computational. It would be like saying "here's a computer that can execute things" and then proving that you'd created the Linux kernel or something. It's not a very surprising claim to say that a particular fact can be represented in a system which can represent anything. Mathematicians (well, most anyways) don't go around claiming they've discovered the secrets of the universe because math _could_ describe it in principle.
  - bitforger 6y ago
    I don't think he claimed to find the theory of everything. I think he's excited because he thinks that in this framework we can just "throw compute" at the problem to enumerate the possible theories of everything, and automatically rule out the ones that don't align with reality.

dannykwells 6y ago

Final sentence is brutal: And when provided with some of the responses from other physicists regarding his work, Wolfram is singularly unenthused. “I’m disappointed by the naivete of the questions that you’re communicating,” he grumbles. “I deserve better.”

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yters 6y ago

Something like Wolfram's vision has to be true if materialism has any hope of working. The universe is finite and discrete, so a Turing machine is an upper bound on its capabilities. The original thing that started it all has to be really simple: have a large(ish) probability of occurring by chance and a very high compression to get an orderly universe. Therefore, if materialism is true, then in the beginning must be some simple, but potentially Turing complete substrate, such as a cellular automata or graph thingamabob.

goatlover 6y ago
> The universe is finite and discrete, Well, the universe appears to be close to flat, which would indicate an infinite size. And the discreteness of spacetime in QM hasn't been made to work with Relativity, thus the forays into String Theory and Quantum Loop Gravity.
- yters 6y ago
  Even if there is an infinite expanse, there are only finite effect ranges. Does anyone seriously think infinity has any sort of physical impact? I've never seen such an idea in all my years of physics exposure.

redsymbol 6y ago

It's interesting how his personality traits affect the discourse around this. Like this quote from the close of the article: “I’m disappointed by the naivete of the questions that you’re communicating,” [Wolfram] grumbles. “I deserve better.” And maybe that's actually true. Of course, many will find this manner of speech pushes our buttons; coming across as arrogant, megalomaniacal, almost anti-scientific-process. But that has NOTHING do to with whether this theory is correct or not. When the most obnoxious person you can imagine says 2 + 2 = 4, that doesn't change the fact that 2 + 2 actually does equal 4. (Of course, if they claim 2 + 2 = 5, their being obnoxious doesn't make that true either.)

nscalf 6y ago

On a higher level than just Stephen Wolfram, I find the practice of immediately dismissing people who are "outsiders" from academia (or from a field) disturbing. In our history, some of the most insightful work and execution has come from outsiders. Computer science seems to be quite good when it comes to this, but fields like physics seem to be so violently against people who are not doing research at a top tier university that they're preventing their own progress. Looking at the state of physics research, I've personally decided not to go deep into the field on my own, it feels like there is no way I could contribute to progress. I'm not sure if this is because of the hyper competitive state of getting tenure or if this is just an example of group think against the other, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the field of physics has gone from the most exciting and impactful field in science to being largely stagnant.

foxyv 6y ago
"Let me tell you my theory!" If you think listening to someone's new app idea is bad, there is nothing worse than an amateur physicist trying to tell you their newest theory. "Proof? Who needs that! My theory is so elegant!" "What do you mean my proof doesn't make any sense, maybe I'm just too much of a genius! How can you not see that right away?" "You have, 1028 emails with frustratingly naive 'What About?' questions from various self-taught physicists." I think a lot of physicists get kinda jaded about outside work. Then, when a genuinely talented and hardworking non-professional shows up, it's hard to tell the difference.
- hitekker 6y ago
  The Exhibit A example is perpetual motion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
orbifold 6y ago
The ratio of cranks to valuable outside contributions is probably 10^{-6} if not smaller. At our theoretical physics institute, they have a wall with the most amusing crank theories. It is also extreme arrogance that makes someone think they could contribute something without investing 5+ years of their life. The total time is probably more than 10+ years before you can perform adequately and independently.

bionhoward 6y ago

Gotta love the “usually white and male” jab. It’s ironic how the default virtue signal about racism and sexism right now is to attack white men, because to attack someone’s race and gender is the definition of racism and sexism.