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Oh, I didn’t check the URL first. “Look, a simple rule made this picture! It looks very complicated. The universe is also very complicated. Therefore I’ve disc

by avalys 5y ago

Oh, I didn’t check the URL first. “Look, a simple rule made this picture! It looks very complicated. The universe is also very complicated. Therefore I’ve discovered the theory of everything. Look, this one looks like a tree! I am so great. Here is a proof of how great I am, written in my proprietary software.” Expand that to 10,000 pages and that’s what Wolfram has been up to.

mc4ndr3 5y ago
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  This comment breaks pretty much every guideline on this site, please consider that when posting.
ogogmad 5y ago
There's a rule on this website against shallow dismissals. Somehow, this rule gets forgotten whenever something by Wolfram gets posted.
- aeternum 5y ago
  It's an interesting theory but how many times can Wolfram say 'predictions are coming' and then not deliver without eventually getting dismissals? Feynman once said it is trivially easy to create new theories. What's difficult is creating a new theory that is not only consistent with every observation of the world that has come before, but also that makes useful new predictions. String theory at least makes new predictions like supersymmetry. So far Wolfram has described how GR and QM can be derived from his model but only in a hand-wavy way, he hasn't come up with the 'update rules' that actually produce anything similar to GR/QM. Just as string theory has so many free parameters that some argue it can basically model anything, Wolfram's method arguably has infinitely more free parameters and lacks specificity without concrete information on what the hypergraph's update rules are.
- deterministic 5y ago
  There is a reason why Wolfram gets routinely dismissed: he repeatedly makes bold self-promoting claims backed by algorithms that are in reality pseudo-random number generators. I must admit that I feel sorry for him. His insatiable need for recognition overpowers his otherwise impressive intellect.
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Eh, I maintain that A New Kind of Science is pretty interesting, and does contain interesting applications of his melding of complex systems, chaos theory, and finite automata. I do think this theory begins with very interesting prepositions and analyses. I agree with those who criticize with his extension of the Ruliad into the Theory of Everything domain, but, as Wolfram will probably agree, these shallow dismissals would fit neatly into one of Kuhn’s cases in an analysis of scientific revolutions, if this was one. It seems like the issue people have is with his connecting his abstract work to the physical world, as well as lack of predictions. I agree that these are the pressure point, but man, I’ve really found some of his stuff interesting. I recommend his tome, in fact. I’ve been reading it over the course of a couple years.
    - mbrodersen 5y ago
      If it isn’t falsifiable it isn’t science. I read enough of the book to realise that it isn’t what it claims to be.
      - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
        Fair enough then
a9h74j 5y ago
That loosely characterizes my reaction to his "New Science" tomb however many years ago. Succinctly, I took the celluar automaton stuff to be simulating nonconservative diffusion. That said, my guess is that the current combinatorial stuff either should not or cannot be so easily dismissed.
jsnodlin 5y ago

by avalys 5y ago

mc4ndr3 5y ago

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
This comment breaks pretty much every guideline on this site, please consider that when posting.

ogogmad 5y ago

There's a rule on this website against shallow dismissals. Somehow, this rule gets forgotten whenever something by Wolfram gets posted.

aeternum 5y ago
It's an interesting theory but how many times can Wolfram say 'predictions are coming' and then not deliver without eventually getting dismissals? Feynman once said it is trivially easy to create new theories. What's difficult is creating a new theory that is not only consistent with every observation of the world that has come before, but also that makes useful new predictions. String theory at least makes new predictions like supersymmetry. So far Wolfram has described how GR and QM can be derived from his model but only in a hand-wavy way, he hasn't come up with the 'update rules' that actually produce anything similar to GR/QM. Just as string theory has so many free parameters that some argue it can basically model anything, Wolfram's method arguably has infinitely more free parameters and lacks specificity without concrete information on what the hypergraph's update rules are.
deterministic 5y ago
There is a reason why Wolfram gets routinely dismissed: he repeatedly makes bold self-promoting claims backed by algorithms that are in reality pseudo-random number generators. I must admit that I feel sorry for him. His insatiable need for recognition overpowers his otherwise impressive intellect.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Eh, I maintain that A New Kind of Science is pretty interesting, and does contain interesting applications of his melding of complex systems, chaos theory, and finite automata. I do think this theory begins with very interesting prepositions and analyses. I agree with those who criticize with his extension of the Ruliad into the Theory of Everything domain, but, as Wolfram will probably agree, these shallow dismissals would fit neatly into one of Kuhn’s cases in an analysis of scientific revolutions, if this was one. It seems like the issue people have is with his connecting his abstract work to the physical world, as well as lack of predictions. I agree that these are the pressure point, but man, I’ve really found some of his stuff interesting. I recommend his tome, in fact. I’ve been reading it over the course of a couple years.
  - mbrodersen 5y ago
    If it isn’t falsifiable it isn’t science. I read enough of the book to realise that it isn’t what it claims to be.
    - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
      Fair enough then

a9h74j 5y ago

That loosely characterizes my reaction to his "New Science" tomb however many years ago. Succinctly, I took the celluar automaton stuff to be simulating nonconservative diffusion. That said, my guess is that the current combinatorial stuff either should not or cannot be so easily dismissed.

jsnodlin 5y ago