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What an interesting comment, thanks for taking the time to write it. > That's irrelevant, as the program can't be derived from the rules. To understand the beh

What an interesting comment, thanks for taking the time to write it. > That's irrelevant, as the program can't be derived from the rules. To understand the behavior of the program (the universe) you need to know both the rules (physical laws) and the source code of the program (physical constants/quantities). This does not remove the fact that the universe could be built from a very few simple laws. (my first and only point in my previous comment) As with softwares, even if we do not know the 'source code' we can infer it. How? By designing experiments. There are then three possibilities: 1. Every experiment confirm our theory, in this case we believe with a certain degree of certitude that the model is a good approximation of the reality, 2. An experiment give results that do not correspond to our model, then we need to change or improve our model, 3. Two experiments on the same phenomenon give contradicting results. We finally found a bug, the behavior is undefined, maybe our universe collapse, maybe we are in a giant simulation and we found a limits of higher floating point numbers. > This is similar to QM and the Standard Model. QM has a very elegant set of simple rules of motion that describe how particles interact. But there are infinitely many possibile universes that behave according to Schrodinger's equation. To see how our universe behaves, you also need the Standard Model, with its dozens of particles and relationships between them and constants and dimensions. I do not see exactly why it is relevant but I would add that the standard model in not enough, lots of things exists in physics where we cannot define an experiment to decide what is the (our) reality. But we do not really care because the realities are somewhat equivalent. > In contrast, String Theory only has one 'particle', the string,... I will not address this comment. I think your point is that physics can be defined experimentally or mathematically and the mathematical version has more chances to be wrong because the minimum set or rules are more arbitrary? > There's a good chance Wolfram's models will turn up the same way - a new mathematical formalism that, if you plug in all of the constants of the Standard Model, predicts the Standard Model precisely. Sure there are chances that string theory and Wolfram's theory are a game of the mind and they are fundamentally flawed. But it is also true that if you chose well your first principles and they are easy enough, if both theories can be used to infer a wide variety of phenomenas, there is a good chance that there is an isomorphism between the first principles and they are equivalent in essence, so why bother, go for the system you believe in, hope to make great discoveries and one day, maybe, your theory will be merged with a better theory, but it is rarely lost. Theories are adapted and improved ;)

tsimionescu 6y ago
Sure, it's possible that the universe is governed by a few simple mathematical laws. My only point was that sometimes people look at a series of simpel mathematical laws that operate on a series of non-mathematical objects and decide to ignore the objects and focus on the laws, and essentially assume that the objects should somehow derive from the laws. I have this sensation that people often hope to reduce physics to a few mathematical laws and hope to find they don't even need any constants to measure for those laws - that they'll just pop out of symmetries or other purely mathematical properties, only being left with experiments to confirm that the universe does indeed conform to this mathematical model. While that would be beautiful, I don't see any reason to expect it to be that way - to be able to prove that the properties of the universe (e.g. The charge of the electron, the mass of the quark) are logically necessary and not mere observations.
- somethingsome 6y ago
  If you look at current mathematical and experimental physics, I do not see where people ignore the objects! (and what is a non mathematical object anyway) Physics and mathematics have evolved a lot and current research questions cannot anymore be discovered through simple experiments, one of the reasons is because an experiment would be too costly. But not always, some things are intrinsically difficult to observe or even impossible. In comparison mathematics is a 'cheap' and extremely powerful tool. When a theory is developed enough, we can start to design again experiments to test it. This is simply an example of the scientific method which is applied. In practice, even if a theory is purely mathematical (which is never the case as usually those maths are developed by trained physicists in classical theories) its power is assessed by how much of our reality we can infer with it. People mix frequently how the science make discoveries with what is true, in the case of Wolfram's theory, if it is enough to prove and infer interesting things, it is already worth studying it. If not for the sake of physics, at least for the sake of mathematics :)
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    As far as I understand it (and im not in any way claiming to be a physicist) both string theory and Wolfram's theories are tryong to deeive the constants of the Standard Model as properties of mathematical objects, not 'contingent' proeprties of the universe. That is, the Standard Model interpretation is 'the universe just happens to have these particles with these properties and these interactions', while the hope behind String Theory is that we'll be able to say 'the universe consists of this single thing that obeys this mathematical law, and so because of such and such mathematical properties it can look like either an electron or a quark or a tau particle, and when its in the electron state it must have this mass, and when it's in the graviton state it will have that mass/spin/color and no other is possible'. I used the term 'non-mathematical object' for any part of the theory whose properties can't be derived and must fundamentally come from experiment, such as the mass of the fundamental particles in the Standard Model.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Sure, it's possible that the universe is governed by a few simple mathematical laws. My only point was that sometimes people look at a series of simpel mathematical laws that operate on a series of non-mathematical objects and decide to ignore the objects and focus on the laws, and essentially assume that the objects should somehow derive from the laws. I have this sensation that people often hope to reduce physics to a few mathematical laws and hope to find they don't even need any constants to measure for those laws - that they'll just pop out of symmetries or other purely mathematical properties, only being left with experiments to confirm that the universe does indeed conform to this mathematical model. While that would be beautiful, I don't see any reason to expect it to be that way - to be able to prove that the properties of the universe (e.g. The charge of the electron, the mass of the quark) are logically necessary and not mere observations.

somethingsome 6y ago
If you look at current mathematical and experimental physics, I do not see where people ignore the objects! (and what is a non mathematical object anyway) Physics and mathematics have evolved a lot and current research questions cannot anymore be discovered through simple experiments, one of the reasons is because an experiment would be too costly. But not always, some things are intrinsically difficult to observe or even impossible. In comparison mathematics is a 'cheap' and extremely powerful tool. When a theory is developed enough, we can start to design again experiments to test it. This is simply an example of the scientific method which is applied. In practice, even if a theory is purely mathematical (which is never the case as usually those maths are developed by trained physicists in classical theories) its power is assessed by how much of our reality we can infer with it. People mix frequently how the science make discoveries with what is true, in the case of Wolfram's theory, if it is enough to prove and infer interesting things, it is already worth studying it. If not for the sake of physics, at least for the sake of mathematics :)
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  As far as I understand it (and im not in any way claiming to be a physicist) both string theory and Wolfram's theories are tryong to deeive the constants of the Standard Model as properties of mathematical objects, not 'contingent' proeprties of the universe. That is, the Standard Model interpretation is 'the universe just happens to have these particles with these properties and these interactions', while the hope behind String Theory is that we'll be able to say 'the universe consists of this single thing that obeys this mathematical law, and so because of such and such mathematical properties it can look like either an electron or a quark or a tau particle, and when its in the electron state it must have this mass, and when it's in the graviton state it will have that mass/spin/color and no other is possible'. I used the term 'non-mathematical object' for any part of the theory whose properties can't be derived and must fundamentally come from experiment, such as the mass of the fundamental particles in the Standard Model.