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Its harsh to say it, but Wolfram tried his best at a computational theory of everything and failed. We didn't know this is in the eighties, when the first cell

Its harsh to say it, but Wolfram tried his best at a computational theory of everything and failed. We didn't know this is in the eighties, when the first cellular automata ideas were conceived. So it was a worthy thing to explore in earnest. But it did not work. There is nothing to show for it. It did not strike a vein. These things happen. All the time. You have a great startup idea but no market fit. In this case the market is the Universe. And you cant fake it till you make it with the Universe. The universe most certainly has a mysterious affinity with mathematics. And computation is a mathematical concept. So its a decent hypothesis. But there are a lot of mathematical concepts that dont manifest in any shape or form in physical reality. From the simple geometric thinking of ancient cultures to Newton's and Leibnitz's calculus and then all the subsequent glories of 19th and 20th century physical theory, when new mathematical concepts "fit" the way the universe works there is just an avalanche of prediction, verification, learning, refinement, further prediction etc. Its wrong to think we have reached the end of "mathematical physics". So new ideas are needed, and computation is as good an inspiration as a falling apple. But prunning dead-end ideas is a faster way to get closer to the truth.

tsunamifury 3y ago
You might really enjoy All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. He wasn’t the first to try this, and many failed before him. Most people don’t know that the entire concept of the “ecosystem” comes from a computational view of ecology. It’s bigger problem than just to this. It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society and it’s all failed. But we haven’t figured out another way. So climate change, politics, democracy and marketing all continue to try to figure out the computational stable state of society.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society What is this supposed to be a reference to?
  - gshubert17 3y ago
    Possibly the "Limits to Growth" report (1972) by Meadows, et al. They used a simple model of resources, population, economy, pollution, etc. Some would say an over-simplified model. The report sparked a lot of controversy. I am not aware of significant changes to their World3 model that might be useful trying to integrate climate change models with economic-resource and population models.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      I am very aware of what the Club of Rome is/was. I don't understand what the sentence means.
      - gshubert17 3y ago
        The last sentence said something about a computationally stable (model/state) of society. I suppose such stability would be helpful in looking for a sustainable economy or society. But I'm not clear either, on what that sentence means.
        tsunamifury 3y ago
        We keep trying to measure, calculate, forecast, then offset our world by building increasingly complex system to keep it “stable state” which we then errantly call “natural.”
        maxbond 3y ago
        What a fantastic one sentence summary of taoism and certain schools of anarchism.
  - rongenre 3y ago
    Wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  figure out the computational stable state of society Hahahaha!! That's so "psychohistory" ... it suggests such, almost 'individual'-like intention. Also, none of it has failed. That's an absurd interpretation of where we are. The real problem is that everything we do ... all the day-to-day problems we solve, all the systems we build that fit and do a 'good job' helping us, say, in some respect, ... set us up to need even more of the same basically. As you wrote elsewhere ... increasingly complex etc. I'd flesh out more, but, must run now. The reality is simply that we WON'T outrun reality. There is no failure, nor is there success ... that dualistic thinking really tends to obscure rather than clarify ... by anchoring some 'conclusion' based on some specific perspective and cutting off wider views. We will follow 'the laws' of other organisms ... our own specific path, but the same basic fundamental arc ... game theoretic and in less ... abstract framings.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    It’s failed if it doesn’t accomplish its stated goal. Don’t get lost in deconstructionism then declare all goals meaningless. It failed to create a stable state. That’s all.
cornel_io 3y ago
Here's the fundamental problem with Wolfram's approach: he 1) came up with a model of physics (which is fine), 2) noticed that it reproduced many of the normal things that are necessary in a viable theory of everything, like the basic results of quantum physics and relativity (also fine), and 3) declared success, taking 2) as an indication that he's absolutely right and this is the real theory of everything and we're done. It's 3) that's absolutely not fine, and I'm not convinced that Wolfram fully gets why. It's extremely easy to come up with models that reproduce most of modern physics if you at all know what you're doing. String theory does it, loop quantum gravity does, and so on. There are deterministic models that avoid the "God playing dice" aspects of quantum mechanics yet still reproduce all the classic results. There are rods + gears models of electromagnetism that give the right numbers even though the mechanisms are ludicrous. The fact that it is so easy to come up with models that match modern physics is in itself a meaningful and not at all obvious thing, but it ultimately derives from the fact that the real universe seems to operate on laws that spring directly from symmetry principles. It turns out that most of the physics that matters is extremely "natural" and can be derived as a consequence of much simpler assumptions than you'd expect, even if the math that gets you from those assumptions to the resulting mechanics can be intense. If you're unfamiliar with this concept but understand calculus, you owe yourself a very deep dive on Noether's theorem, the way that symmetry radiates into every aspect of physics is one of the most profound things to study in physics. The upshot of Noether's theorem and the ubiquity of its applications in modern physics is that it's very easy to create a theory that matches the predictions of e.g. special relativity: you just need to sneak it in by, for instance, defining your "foliations" in such a way that you have Lorentz symmetry, then everything else comes for free. If you want general relativity, then you (mostly) just need invariance under diffeomorphisms, which is really frickin easy to build into the limit of any graph-based model since you're basically redefining space altogether. I still don't entirely understand how Wolfram gets quantum theory in there; I don't doubt that his model does actually do it at a mathematical level, I just can't stand the verbose writing style and have too little interest in his particular theory to work through it, but once you start talking about constantly branching and recombining state graphs and stuff like that it's not at all hard to imagine that you could pick your definitions in such a way that Hilbert spaces pop out and then you define observers/observations in a way that makes it cleanly match a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. But the fact that you have a model that reproduces all of known physics doesn't mean anything. We already have several of those. And people rightly criticize even the top contenders on the basis that they all tend to suffer from the same defect, they're overparameterized and could predict a lot of universes that don't work the way ours does, and there are very few experiments that would rule the models out altogether (rather than merely constrain the parameters). To the extent that their predictions differ from what current theory would predict, their parameters could be easily tuned to match almost any result, which makes it tough to have any faith that the goalposts wouldn't be moved when results did come in that could test, say, the extreme conditions where quantum gravity would be relevant. Wolfram's is no different, except that as far as I can tell he hasn't gone anywhere near as far as e.g. the string theorists in working out what the different predictions would even be for his theory. He's just blindly declaring it correct. Models are great, and I think there is something useful in Wolfram going down the rabbit hole in terms of showing what a model that reproduces quantum effects looks like, I feel like that is underexplored (the rules of quantum mechanics are usually taken as a given, even in theories of "everything"). But his breathless declarations of having solved physics are ludicrous, and I feel like his ideas might actually be taken much more seriously if he had a more realistic understanding of what he was working with.
tiffanyg 3y ago
The universe most certainly has a mysterious affinity with mathematics. Is that really true? Could it be more fair to say that mathematics has a (not so) mysterious affinity with the universe? Specifically, where do our 'axioms' come from? Why did people spend centuries trying to prove the parallel postulate? Partly, I'm being rhetorical, but, also, partly I'm really not. I would certainly not categorically dispute what you wrote, but I'd also not embrace it 'out-of-hand'. ... So, 'the floor is open', so-to-speak... if any have other perspectives on math-universe connection, rebuttals, etc. :)
- Salgat 3y ago
  I think it's more just the fact that our universe seems to fit extremely rigid, unbreakable rules definable by math. If we lived in a simulation for example, you could have phenomena that "break" these rules at any given time.
  - thrway63245 3y ago
    [dead]
  - maxbond 3y ago
    But wouldn't we just interpret that "break" as more rules for us to learn and study and build world models around? Why would we think "the simulation has broken" and not "physics is weird huh? Especially in edge cases like absurdly high energies or absurdly tiny scales." (I don't think the universe is a simulation, to be clear.)
    - Salgat 3y ago
      In this case though there'd be nothing to learn, since math couldn't explain this phenomena.
      - maxbond 3y ago
        But that happens all the time in science, and we come up with different math that does explain it. Eg Jupiter's orbit couldn't be explained, the math didn't add up, so we came up with the idea that light had a speed and that Jupiter was far enough away that the speed impacted our calculations. If you think about quantum mechanics, it's something that could sure look like a bug. Systems that you expect to be deterministic are stochastic if you look closely enough? If it were a program I was writing, I'd start wondering if there were rounding errors and/or concurrency issues. But we've come up with math to understand it. Math is very general, I'm not sure there's a process that you couldn't describe with a complex enough mathematical system, and thereby conclude it had it's origins outside of our universe.
faeriechangling 3y ago
I wish I could fail as well as him

tsunamifury 3y ago

You might really enjoy All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. He wasn’t the first to try this, and many failed before him. Most people don’t know that the entire concept of the “ecosystem” comes from a computational view of ecology. It’s bigger problem than just to this. It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society and it’s all failed. But we haven’t figured out another way. So climate change, politics, democracy and marketing all continue to try to figure out the computational stable state of society.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society What is this supposed to be a reference to?
- gshubert17 3y ago
  Possibly the "Limits to Growth" report (1972) by Meadows, et al. They used a simple model of resources, population, economy, pollution, etc. Some would say an over-simplified model. The report sparked a lot of controversy. I am not aware of significant changes to their World3 model that might be useful trying to integrate climate change models with economic-resource and population models.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    I am very aware of what the Club of Rome is/was. I don't understand what the sentence means.
    - gshubert17 3y ago
      The last sentence said something about a computationally stable (model/state) of society. I suppose such stability would be helpful in looking for a sustainable economy or society. But I'm not clear either, on what that sentence means.
      - tsunamifury 3y ago
        We keep trying to measure, calculate, forecast, then offset our world by building increasingly complex system to keep it “stable state” which we then errantly call “natural.”
        maxbond 3y ago
        What a fantastic one sentence summary of taoism and certain schools of anarchism.
- rongenre 3y ago
  Wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
tiffanyg 3y ago
figure out the computational stable state of society Hahahaha!! That's so "psychohistory" ... it suggests such, almost 'individual'-like intention. Also, none of it has failed. That's an absurd interpretation of where we are. The real problem is that everything we do ... all the day-to-day problems we solve, all the systems we build that fit and do a 'good job' helping us, say, in some respect, ... set us up to need even more of the same basically. As you wrote elsewhere ... increasingly complex etc. I'd flesh out more, but, must run now. The reality is simply that we WON'T outrun reality. There is no failure, nor is there success ... that dualistic thinking really tends to obscure rather than clarify ... by anchoring some 'conclusion' based on some specific perspective and cutting off wider views. We will follow 'the laws' of other organisms ... our own specific path, but the same basic fundamental arc ... game theoretic and in less ... abstract framings.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  It’s failed if it doesn’t accomplish its stated goal. Don’t get lost in deconstructionism then declare all goals meaningless. It failed to create a stable state. That’s all.

cornel_io 3y ago

Here's the fundamental problem with Wolfram's approach: he 1) came up with a model of physics (which is fine), 2) noticed that it reproduced many of the normal things that are necessary in a viable theory of everything, like the basic results of quantum physics and relativity (also fine), and 3) declared success, taking 2) as an indication that he's absolutely right and this is the real theory of everything and we're done. It's 3) that's absolutely not fine, and I'm not convinced that Wolfram fully gets why. It's extremely easy to come up with models that reproduce most of modern physics if you at all know what you're doing. String theory does it, loop quantum gravity does, and so on. There are deterministic models that avoid the "God playing dice" aspects of quantum mechanics yet still reproduce all the classic results. There are rods + gears models of electromagnetism that give the right numbers even though the mechanisms are ludicrous. The fact that it is so easy to come up with models that match modern physics is in itself a meaningful and not at all obvious thing, but it ultimately derives from the fact that the real universe seems to operate on laws that spring directly from symmetry principles. It turns out that most of the physics that matters is extremely "natural" and can be derived as a consequence of much simpler assumptions than you'd expect, even if the math that gets you from those assumptions to the resulting mechanics can be intense. If you're unfamiliar with this concept but understand calculus, you owe yourself a very deep dive on Noether's theorem, the way that symmetry radiates into every aspect of physics is one of the most profound things to study in physics. The upshot of Noether's theorem and the ubiquity of its applications in modern physics is that it's very easy to create a theory that matches the predictions of e.g. special relativity: you just need to sneak it in by, for instance, defining your "foliations" in such a way that you have Lorentz symmetry, then everything else comes for free. If you want general relativity, then you (mostly) just need invariance under diffeomorphisms, which is really frickin easy to build into the limit of any graph-based model since you're basically redefining space altogether. I still don't entirely understand how Wolfram gets quantum theory in there; I don't doubt that his model does actually do it at a mathematical level, I just can't stand the verbose writing style and have too little interest in his particular theory to work through it, but once you start talking about constantly branching and recombining state graphs and stuff like that it's not at all hard to imagine that you could pick your definitions in such a way that Hilbert spaces pop out and then you define observers/observations in a way that makes it cleanly match a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. But the fact that you have a model that reproduces all of known physics doesn't mean anything. We already have several of those. And people rightly criticize even the top contenders on the basis that they all tend to suffer from the same defect, they're overparameterized and could predict a lot of universes that don't work the way ours does, and there are very few experiments that would rule the models out altogether (rather than merely constrain the parameters). To the extent that their predictions differ from what current theory would predict, their parameters could be easily tuned to match almost any result, which makes it tough to have any faith that the goalposts wouldn't be moved when results did come in that could test, say, the extreme conditions where quantum gravity would be relevant. Wolfram's is no different, except that as far as I can tell he hasn't gone anywhere near as far as e.g. the string theorists in working out what the different predictions would even be for his theory. He's just blindly declaring it correct. Models are great, and I think there is something useful in Wolfram going down the rabbit hole in terms of showing what a model that reproduces quantum effects looks like, I feel like that is underexplored (the rules of quantum mechanics are usually taken as a given, even in theories of "everything"). But his breathless declarations of having solved physics are ludicrous, and I feel like his ideas might actually be taken much more seriously if he had a more realistic understanding of what he was working with.

tiffanyg 3y ago

The universe most certainly has a mysterious affinity with mathematics. Is that really true? Could it be more fair to say that mathematics has a (not so) mysterious affinity with the universe? Specifically, where do our 'axioms' come from? Why did people spend centuries trying to prove the parallel postulate? Partly, I'm being rhetorical, but, also, partly I'm really not. I would certainly not categorically dispute what you wrote, but I'd also not embrace it 'out-of-hand'. ... So, 'the floor is open', so-to-speak... if any have other perspectives on math-universe connection, rebuttals, etc. :)

Salgat 3y ago
I think it's more just the fact that our universe seems to fit extremely rigid, unbreakable rules definable by math. If we lived in a simulation for example, you could have phenomena that "break" these rules at any given time.
- thrway63245 3y ago
  [dead]
- maxbond 3y ago
  But wouldn't we just interpret that "break" as more rules for us to learn and study and build world models around? Why would we think "the simulation has broken" and not "physics is weird huh? Especially in edge cases like absurdly high energies or absurdly tiny scales." (I don't think the universe is a simulation, to be clear.)
  - Salgat 3y ago
    In this case though there'd be nothing to learn, since math couldn't explain this phenomena.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      But that happens all the time in science, and we come up with different math that does explain it. Eg Jupiter's orbit couldn't be explained, the math didn't add up, so we came up with the idea that light had a speed and that Jupiter was far enough away that the speed impacted our calculations. If you think about quantum mechanics, it's something that could sure look like a bug. Systems that you expect to be deterministic are stochastic if you look closely enough? If it were a program I was writing, I'd start wondering if there were rounding errors and/or concurrency issues. But we've come up with math to understand it. Math is very general, I'm not sure there's a process that you couldn't describe with a complex enough mathematical system, and thereby conclude it had it's origins outside of our universe.

faeriechangling 3y ago

I wish I could fail as well as him