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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 16 2020, @05:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the 42 dept.

Stephen Wolfram thinks he may have found the theory that unifies physics: it's basically automata theory. According to his theory, the universe is basically an automaton running a simple set of computational rules. The link leads to his layman's summary of the work.

Even if this isn't how things work, it lends a completely new perspective: based on a relatively simple analysis of his idea, he derives the basics of relativity and quantum mechanics. His article makes for a mind-bending and fascinating read, but it's already a summary, and trying to do a summary of a summary here makes little sense. If you're into physics, mathematics or cosmology, have a look!


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  • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday April 16 2020, @06:32PM (15 children)

    by crafoo (6639) on Thursday April 16 2020, @06:32PM (#983724)

    Has he proposed a way of testing his theory through experiment?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2020, @06:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2020, @06:41PM (#983727)

    Hey, the rules said you'd ask that question!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday April 16 2020, @07:11PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 16 2020, @07:11PM (#983741) Journal

    <no-sarcasm>
    If a test of his theory is written in a proprietary language, then you have no way to really verify it. You also cannot verify that the execution engine even works entirely correctly. Even if research is published with data and models, if those models run only on a closed proprietary system, you can't really be sure what happens inside. Maybe the result is due to sum subtle bug in the proprietary software?
    </no-sarcasm>

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday April 16 2020, @08:09PM (2 children)

      by istartedi (123) on Thursday April 16 2020, @08:09PM (#983767) Journal

      FWIW, there are 3rd party implementations of Wolfram's language out there. Also, any worthwhile theory should be language agnostic. If such a paper is ever published, go ahead and translate it into Lisp or whatever and it should still work.

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      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @07:02AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @07:02AM (#984020)

        Something tells me it wouldn't work in COBOL.

        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday April 19 2020, @02:07AM

          by Bot (3902) on Sunday April 19 2020, @02:07AM (#984752) Journal

          IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
          PROGRAM-ID. SPOILEDJOKE.
          * SINCE I HAVE TO DECLARE IT AS A JOKE AT THE BEGINNING IT IS SPOILED THIS SUCKS ALSO I AM OVER THE 80 CHAR BOUNDARY SO THIS SHIT MIGHT NOT EVEN RUN
          PROCEDURE DIVISION.
                  DISPLAY 'IF A COBOL PROGRAM SHITS IN THE WOODS IS THERE A STILL LIVING COBOL DEV TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT IT?'.
                  STOP RUN.

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          Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday April 16 2020, @07:14PM (6 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday April 16 2020, @07:14PM (#983742) Journal

    The test is easy, it's exactly like the tests galileo performed to measure gravity. You find a model apply it and see if it predicts outcomes. The automata theory vs other models is only a matter of using the most accurate or the most useful (easy to compute or easy to comprehend).
    There surely exist an automata world that can compute F = m x a for a series of inputs, but it's more practical to just multiply. This might not always be the case.

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    • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:44PM (5 children)

      by crafoo (6639) on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:44PM (#983801)

      So it's a model and not a theory? It sounds like it makes no new predictions, and so is not a theory and not testable through experiment.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 17 2020, @01:48AM (4 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Friday April 17 2020, @01:48AM (#983902) Journal

        The theory is that the automata model is truer than the functional model, but that is a mere continuation of the fallacy of calling the universe infrastructure the real reality or the truer truth, while the real reality is this abstraction I am experiencing and the truth is possibly in its meaning.

        Wrong: the universe is the videogame, the real reality is the circuits on which it runs.
        Right: the universe is the videogame, the reality is the videogame world, the real reality is the meaning players give to what appears on the videogame world.

        In both cases, while you can attain knowledge of the real reality (imagine a videogame character that somehow acquire sentience and BELIEVES what the players tell him about their reality) demonstrating you have attained it is quite hard, and a waste of time IMHO. You die and you discover it for yourself no matter what.

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        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @07:09AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @07:09AM (#984022)

          OK what's the reality, dipshit?

          1) You are a sentient being in a Universe perceiving itself

          2) Your landlord wants his damn money, dipshit

          3) Wolfram automata blah blah blah, fucking rent dipshit

          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @03:19AM (2 children)

            by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @03:19AM (#984451) Journal

            LOL

            I am, fundamental axiom. You might be a figment of my imagination, but I am. It doesn't matter whether it is an illusion or i am living in a 59 layers deep matrix, I feel that I am right now and there is NOTHING in the universe that is stopping it. I think therefore I am? no, I am therefore I think.

            Let us call this "I am", to perceive.

            Let us call what can be directly or indirectly perceived, "real". Some things are perceived as altering my POV that is affecting me, so, as not really useful corollary but adherent with our layman definition, real is also what can directly or indirectly affect me.

            The end. Reality is defined now. Was it soooo difficult? The rent payment resides in the abstract domain of deals, but is quite real.

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            Account abandoned.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @06:56AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @06:56AM (#984799)

              You might be a figment of my imagination, but I am.

              That is the most extreme example of accidental insight that I think I have ever read. I think I know what you meant. But you nailed it: you are a figment of your imagination in the profoundest of ways. Your self-concept and self-understanding are like the image (if you're sighted) of a loved one who you can bring to your mind's eye. (Here, nerds often invoke Godel's incompleteness theorems.)

              • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 22 2020, @01:11PM

                by Bot (3902) on Wednesday April 22 2020, @01:11PM (#985718) Journal

                > you are a figment of your imagination in the profoundest of ways.

                The actual implementation of my being is irrelevant to the reasoning above, anyway, and probably undecidable from the inside of the being. Your description, as interesting as it is, yet is a model with implications that I would safely ascribe as assumptions. For example, absence of sin (if I am the god whatever I do is ethically equivalent, right?)

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                Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:55PM (1 child)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:55PM (#983805)

    There is a throwaway comment in TFA about testable "bizarre new things that might be out there to look for".

    Thing is though, if I understand it correctly, he doesn't have "a" model for the universe but rather a class of models, or more likely many many possible classes, so a prediction that is experimentally testable doesn't really get you very far, you just proved that the universe might be based on a model from a set of classes of models, but finding which one will take so long the universe will have moved on (or died).

    If you start from "not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen", then this might, eventually, prove that God is using 64 sided dice - but we can't know how many or where she's throwing them.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2020, @01:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2020, @01:10AM (#984400)

      He doesn't even have a class of models.[*]

      What he has, is a framework in which to analyze the emergent properties of simple (hyper)graph rules. Mostly very simple (hyper)graph rules.

      Why is this interesting? Because some rulesets produce networks which have properties which are spacelike, or spacetimelike.

      Imagine discovering the tools of algebra and calculus, and throwing some functions, eg. describing slopes, at them, and noticing that some of the results seemed to match observations of balls rolling on slopes. Wouldn't this profoundly indicate that there's some way to apply those tools to real-world data predictively? That the systems described using the notation and cognitive framework of the tools might therefore in some way also describe the nature of reality?

      Wolfram thinks he's found another mathematical perspective which might, in time, give us results in the same way as how we can derive systems using arithmetic and calculus which accurately-ish describe the world. His model uses very few axioms and, to translate to the physical world, maybe 2-3 assumptions (kinda like how we assume space and mass can be measured in some way, in order to get F=mv^2, impossible to tie abstract math to concrete world without at least one such), so it won't be able to provide any results which conventional mathematical tools cannot. BUT the efficiency of both solution-finding and solution-evaluating can be MUCH easier with the right tools, and this particular set of 'field glasses', he believes, might be productive.

      Get it?

      [*] ok fine he provides some example models and classifies them in a few ways eg. by dimensionality, but he provides those as didactic tools not as physical approximators.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Thursday April 16 2020, @10:02PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Thursday April 16 2020, @10:02PM (#983808)

    And then there’ll be the physics experiments. If you’d asked me even a couple of months ago when we’d get anything experimentally testable from our models I would have said it was far away. And that it probably wouldn’t happen until we’d pretty much found the final rule. But it looks like I was wrong. And in fact we’ve already got some good hints of bizarre new things that might be out there to look for.

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