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From my understanding of where the research is at, I think you're asking too much of it, and rebutting it on that basis. My understanding is that it is being po

From my understanding of where the research is at, I think you're asking too much of it, and rebutting it on that basis. My understanding is that it is being posited as a category of models, of which one could be the "theory of everything". They haven't said that one of them is, and they know they haven't found the one that is yet if there is one. I'm interested in discussions about why this type of model can't work, rather than people repeatedly pointing out that they haven't found the exact model yet, which seems to be a strawman argument. As for your 6 acid test elements, that's exactly the sort of thing I'd like to learn more about, but in the current wording I feel like I'm missing about a Phd's worth of understanding. I think communicating this in a more accessible form would be great! I understand that theoretical physicists have reasons why they don't like his theories, but I don't understand what those reasons are, whereas I do understand a bit about the theories. This makes it hard (as much as I want to) to be persuaded by physicists.

jiggawatts 7y ago
To be a bit more concrete, this is a bit like saying "Computers could be used to simulate/represent physical theories, hence studying computers could lead to a theory of everything." That's not even wrong! Studying computation, computation systems, or even just mathematics in general almost certainly could assist with progress towards a TOE. That doesn't mean that pointing at a computer running a few dozen lines of code[1] and saying "A TOE could be in there... somewhere" is materially useful. [1] I'm paraphrasing Stephen himself here! Personally, I feel that if Stephen really wanted forward progress towards a TOE, he's uniquely positioned to do so. He controls a company that makes one of the best Computer Algebra Systems. He's in a position of power over a large, highly talented staff of mathematicians, and he could push Mathematica's features towards multiple relatively unexplored areas of computational mathematics where there isn't much available at the moment. Unfortunately, he's made the decision that the only two such areas worthy of his time and his company's resources are cellular automata and graph rewriting. Sigh. Meanwhile, he could have done added all sorts of features for things like handling Einstein summation convention, tensors, Geometric Algebra (and noncommutative algebras in general), topology, etc... Those would at least have immediate utility to working physicists, and if pushed to the extreme could maybe help uncover some fundamental theory somewhere. But nope. He likes to play with graphs, like a kid with with a Spirograph only interested in making pretty patterns.
- mycall 7y ago
  > Einstein summation convention, tensors, Geometric Algebra (and noncommutative algebras in general), topology, etc... Are python libraries taking up this challenge?
hitekker 7y ago
Have you considered researching the subject matter yourself? The parent articulated that this is psuedoscience, preached by a man who has advocated self-serving psuedoscience before.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  I have, in fact that's really why I'm here commenting about this. I find I learn best when good science communicators explain a topic at or just beyond my level, with the help to raise my understand, rather than when poor communicators point to a bunch of papers targeted at theoretical physicists and say "go read the background". I suspect I'm not alone on this. Again, as I've said in other comments, just pointing at him and saying he's a fraud isn't useful in explaining why. I think the scientific discourse deserves better than that.
  - hitekker 7y ago
    "Just asking questions" and then rejecting a community's answers seems like a fruitless strategy for learning. It is also uncomfortably close to the tactics of creationists, antivaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists.
    - danpalmer 7y ago
      I don't think I am rejecting the community's answer, I'm encouraging the community to be better at communicating their answer, rather than brushing off questions from lay-people with impenetrable answers. I'm very keen to have things explained at my level, because I get the "crackpot" feeling from Wolfram, I just don't know enough to understand why he's wrong. I've done science communication myself, I helped run a science festival, I know many people who still do it and are very good at it. I know how important it is to communicate well and how much impact it can have! I've even seen good science communication turn creationists and antivaxxers. I must admit I had seen the parallels while writing these things, but I've also seen people who unfortunately do believe these things turned away from mainstream science because they aren't yet at a level of understanding that the community mandates they operate at. Unfortunately for the mainstream scientific community there's often a disdain for communication like this. The fact that Wolfram is relatively good at it makes the whole situation more difficult.
sanderjd 7y ago
We have this concept in software engineering of accidental vs. essential complexity. I feel like what you're asking for is an explanation from physicists that strips out all the accidental complexity, such that the essential is left in a comprehensible form. But it seems totally plausible to me that there is no such essential core small enough to be comprehensible to us without "a phd's worth of understanding". At some point simplifying analogies are not enough, because the critical differences between theories that determine whether they are the right or wrong direction are too deep within the subtleties to show up in analogy.
neffy 7y ago
If I can add a layman perspective to Jiggawatts excellent analysis - since there's a very similar issue happening in economics, it may be a bit more approachable. Economics is also full of theories that try to explain the entire complex system from partial observations, and people arguing furiously with each other, in what for a large part in academia is a contrived nonsense that is practically useless for real world issues, and mainly serves signalling purposes. How this manifests itself there, is that they will take some time series of some kind of data - price of oil over a few years say - fit the equation of a straight line to it - and the less responsible ones then yell "solved". But if you took a longer portion of that data, went back several decades say, you would see that it is bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, and actually the only equation that is pretty much guaranteed not to fit it, is a straight line. Unless you take a short enough period. Or to put it another way, with a short enough ruler you can fit any curve. Wolfram, and his opponents, are essentially doing the same thing, only with multi-dimensional math, where the curve in question looks a bit more complex than a straight line, but fundamentally its the same thing. Which is why it matters much more than outsiders may appreciate that the model isn't an exact fit. Lurking behind all of this of course, is that one time in physics when the data and the theory were (within the limits of then technology) a pretty exact fit, and still the theory was completely wrong - epicycles.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Sounds like over fitting in machine learning.
jimbokun 7y ago
> They haven't said that one of them is, and they know they haven't found the one that is yet if there is one. In other words...they haven't made any significant discovery, yet. The physicists are just saying "OK, get back to us when you have something concrete we can evaluate."

jiggawatts 7y ago

To be a bit more concrete, this is a bit like saying "Computers could be used to simulate/represent physical theories, hence studying computers could lead to a theory of everything." That's not even wrong! Studying computation, computation systems, or even just mathematics in general almost certainly could assist with progress towards a TOE. That doesn't mean that pointing at a computer running a few dozen lines of code[1] and saying "A TOE could be in there... somewhere" is materially useful. [1] I'm paraphrasing Stephen himself here! Personally, I feel that if Stephen really wanted forward progress towards a TOE, he's uniquely positioned to do so. He controls a company that makes one of the best Computer Algebra Systems. He's in a position of power over a large, highly talented staff of mathematicians, and he could push Mathematica's features towards multiple relatively unexplored areas of computational mathematics where there isn't much available at the moment. Unfortunately, he's made the decision that the only two such areas worthy of his time and his company's resources are cellular automata and graph rewriting. Sigh. Meanwhile, he could have done added all sorts of features for things like handling Einstein summation convention, tensors, Geometric Algebra (and noncommutative algebras in general), topology, etc... Those would at least have immediate utility to working physicists, and if pushed to the extreme could maybe help uncover some fundamental theory somewhere. But nope. He likes to play with graphs, like a kid with with a Spirograph only interested in making pretty patterns.

mycall 7y ago
> Einstein summation convention, tensors, Geometric Algebra (and noncommutative algebras in general), topology, etc... Are python libraries taking up this challenge?

hitekker 7y ago

Have you considered researching the subject matter yourself? The parent articulated that this is psuedoscience, preached by a man who has advocated self-serving psuedoscience before.

danpalmer 7y ago
I have, in fact that's really why I'm here commenting about this. I find I learn best when good science communicators explain a topic at or just beyond my level, with the help to raise my understand, rather than when poor communicators point to a bunch of papers targeted at theoretical physicists and say "go read the background". I suspect I'm not alone on this. Again, as I've said in other comments, just pointing at him and saying he's a fraud isn't useful in explaining why. I think the scientific discourse deserves better than that.
- hitekker 7y ago
  "Just asking questions" and then rejecting a community's answers seems like a fruitless strategy for learning. It is also uncomfortably close to the tactics of creationists, antivaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists.
  - danpalmer 7y ago
    I don't think I am rejecting the community's answer, I'm encouraging the community to be better at communicating their answer, rather than brushing off questions from lay-people with impenetrable answers. I'm very keen to have things explained at my level, because I get the "crackpot" feeling from Wolfram, I just don't know enough to understand why he's wrong. I've done science communication myself, I helped run a science festival, I know many people who still do it and are very good at it. I know how important it is to communicate well and how much impact it can have! I've even seen good science communication turn creationists and antivaxxers. I must admit I had seen the parallels while writing these things, but I've also seen people who unfortunately do believe these things turned away from mainstream science because they aren't yet at a level of understanding that the community mandates they operate at. Unfortunately for the mainstream scientific community there's often a disdain for communication like this. The fact that Wolfram is relatively good at it makes the whole situation more difficult.

sanderjd 7y ago

We have this concept in software engineering of accidental vs. essential complexity. I feel like what you're asking for is an explanation from physicists that strips out all the accidental complexity, such that the essential is left in a comprehensible form. But it seems totally plausible to me that there is no such essential core small enough to be comprehensible to us without "a phd's worth of understanding". At some point simplifying analogies are not enough, because the critical differences between theories that determine whether they are the right or wrong direction are too deep within the subtleties to show up in analogy.

neffy 7y ago

If I can add a layman perspective to Jiggawatts excellent analysis - since there's a very similar issue happening in economics, it may be a bit more approachable. Economics is also full of theories that try to explain the entire complex system from partial observations, and people arguing furiously with each other, in what for a large part in academia is a contrived nonsense that is practically useless for real world issues, and mainly serves signalling purposes. How this manifests itself there, is that they will take some time series of some kind of data - price of oil over a few years say - fit the equation of a straight line to it - and the less responsible ones then yell "solved". But if you took a longer portion of that data, went back several decades say, you would see that it is bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, and actually the only equation that is pretty much guaranteed not to fit it, is a straight line. Unless you take a short enough period. Or to put it another way, with a short enough ruler you can fit any curve. Wolfram, and his opponents, are essentially doing the same thing, only with multi-dimensional math, where the curve in question looks a bit more complex than a straight line, but fundamentally its the same thing. Which is why it matters much more than outsiders may appreciate that the model isn't an exact fit. Lurking behind all of this of course, is that one time in physics when the data and the theory were (within the limits of then technology) a pretty exact fit, and still the theory was completely wrong - epicycles.

jimbokun 7y ago
Sounds like over fitting in machine learning.

jimbokun 7y ago

> They haven't said that one of them is, and they know they haven't found the one that is yet if there is one. In other words...they haven't made any significant discovery, yet. The physicists are just saying "OK, get back to us when you have something concrete we can evaluate."