5 ms·
First, I recommend skipping this post and proceeding directly to: https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/technic
by psyc 5y ago
First, I recommend skipping this post and proceeding directly to:
https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/
This post is almost pure unrelenting direct-marketing drivel, minus the call-to-action for your credit card at the end. All tell, no show. Instead of describing his theory, he describes the various exciting contortions that his face went through when he thought of it.
It is very, very hard to tell whether there is anything here. It looks as if he has taken a data structure so basic and flexible that it can represent anything you could ever think of, and then found to nobody's surprise but his own that it can represent all of known physics. Well, some other things that can represent all of known physics include: The alphabet? Math notation? Set Theory?
But I repeat: It is very, very hard to tell whether there is anything here. It is an avalanche of pictures of complicated-looking graphs, and breathless exposition that I fear does radiate crankiness. It appears to be about a million times more complicated than the physics we already have. If it isn't a million times more complicated, then he has done the worst job he could possible do of communicating it.
A relevant question to ask might be: What other leading theoretical physicists consider this a promising line of inquiry?
- ByersReason 5y agowell at first blush, looks like he re-invented graph rewriting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_rewriting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_rewriting - on cursory examination, he did not seem to mention that what he was doing with term rewriting was in any way equivalent to this very well known material at all. Maybe I missed this .. also, it is known that you can define some turning equivalence properties to such graph representations, for example : https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09406 https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09406 - so therefore you could also assume that this model can compute any computable function. And so, hence, it would seem valid to assume that a physics model can run on such a substrate.
- ByersReason 5y agobut of course, that could occur on any number of such substrates.
- ByersReason 5y agoturing, not turning :)
- DiggyJohnson 5y agoCurious, have you read anything of his? > A relevant question to ask might be: What other leading theoretical physicists consider this a promising line of inquiry Sure, that’s a relevant question. It’s also a very obvious one, so consider answering it yourself. At the same time, Wolfram has always admitted he’s an outsider not so much in a victimized manner, but that (to me) he recognizes he still has work to do before the physicists start trying to integrate his work. There’s many applications of some of his ideas in a great many domains, especially those that can be abstracted by complex systems.