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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 meustrus on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:55PM (21 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Thursday April 16 2020, @09:55PM (#983804)

    "God" is not a particularly good word here. There's a lot of gods in this world, and very few of them have much to do with creation.

    Granted, that's because we have polytheistic systems where the creative aspects of our psyche are cleaved off into one or two gods, or left to some earlier race of "titans" or what have you.

    I can only assume from your narrow framing that you mean the Christian God. I'll point out that there's about 1-2 paragraphs of God creating things in a book of typically over 1000 pages. Much of which is spent on that God destroying things he didn't like, and most of which is spent using God as a lens to understand humanity.

    In any case, claiming that God is what Wolfram is looking for can only be described as a severe misuse of the English language.

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    Then again, there have been attempt to use God and theology to unify the natural world into a single grand theory. I'm thinking of the Kabbalah and the Summa Theologica.

    I think it's fair to say that the authors of these works were simply using the most powerful concepts available to them at the time. So they framed their search for universal truth in understanding God's will and power.

    Those scholars weren't looking for God though. They already had God. They were looking to understand the inner workings of the universe.

    Perhaps it is the theologians that were looking for automata, rather than the determinists who are looking for God.

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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2020, @11:10PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2020, @11:10PM (#983829)

    Why do we exist? Why are there beings who are capable of observing the universe and pondering its essence? Our universe appears finely tuned to give rise to such beings, otherwise we could not exist and nobody would be here to pose such questions. But the weak anthropic principle is unsatisfactory if our existence is attributed to random luck. One solution is a multiverse, a quantum foam with universes appearing from nothing like bubbles in a glass of beer, each universe with randomly chosen physical constants. With enough universes, some will be capable of supporting life. Even if quantum fluctuations within spacetime cause new universes to continually pop into existence, it does not answer why spacetime exists at all. Even if there are explanations of why spacetime exists, it begins to look a lot like there are turtles all the way down. We exist, but I don't believe science can offer a satisfactory answer why we exist. It seems logical that there has to be an underlying cause that we cannot fully understand, which is what I consider to be God. None of this says anything about the nature of that God, whether it's a sentient or intelligent being, let alone being omnipotent or omniscient.

    In one sense, you're correct that Wolfram isn't actually looking for God. His premise is that the complexities of the universe are actually emergent properties of a much simpler system. It's an effort to understanding the programming that governs the universe rather than the author of the program. However, understanding the underlying principles governing the system may offer clues as to why the system exists, much the way people look for evidence that could support that the universe is a computer simulation. One cannot disprove that the universe is a simulation and, therefore, in such general terms is not a valid theory. However, we can observe and test whether the universe fits the characteristics of certain types of simulations. It is a valid theory to propose that the universe is a particular type of simulation when such a theory gives rise to hypotheses that can be tested. Finding such evidence would not prove that the universe is a simulation, but would provide evidence to support the theory. If we found evidence that the universe was a simulation and understood its programming, we might also be able to infer some details about its programmer. And in that sense, it might be valid to say that Wolfram is searching for God.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 17 2020, @12:37AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday April 17 2020, @12:37AM (#983877) Journal

      I don't think you can approach God in a positive way, only a negative ("apophatic" is the fancy seminary term) way. Basically, start with what any putative God is *not* and work back from there. This handily rules out Yahweh, Allah, Brahma, and in fact any ideas of a personal creator.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:14AM

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:14AM (#984427) Journal

        "is not" != "meta-is" which would be a saner approach, especially when "I am the truth" considered along goedel theorems has a god declaring explicitly to be part of the meta, other than immanent.

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        Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday April 17 2020, @04:36AM (2 children)

      by captain normal (2205) on Friday April 17 2020, @04:36AM (#983978)

      I usually don't reply to AC's, but: "It's an effort to understanding the programming that governs the universe..." That statement implies that there is a "source code" and therefor an author of such. There again, good luck with that idea.

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @06:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @06:56AM (#984019)

        Yes but if you can hack it, you'll get all the women and be an alfafa-Male. Ding ding ding! Hello Jackpot!

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:21AM

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:21AM (#984429) Journal

        You don't care if there is or not a universe computing PC (which can have a 1metaMhz CPU, we as products of the sim are unable to measure the FPmetaS, but needs a literally astronomical amount of RAM). Just like sane scientists don't care.

        All you care is whether such a model works better or worse, for your problems.

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        Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday April 17 2020, @03:49PM (3 children)

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday April 17 2020, @03:49PM (#984151)

      We exist, but I don't believe science can offer a satisfactory answer why we exist.

      That is true. But it does not mean that you will ever answer the "why" by digging deeper into creation. In fact, it kind of implies that creation does not help explain the "why", because science has proven to be the superior tool at exploring the means of creation.

      If you really want to answer "why we exist", you're going to have too look beyond the simple facts of your existence. Even if you start by asking why God created you, the next question is: what for? And you will never answer that question by seeking to explain how creation happened to begin with.

      I think any answer to "why we exist" is necessarily manufactured. That's not to say there is no true answer. But it is to say that as humans, we have to invent our own meaning.

      The evolutionary psychologists may tell you that procreation is our highest purpose. I think there's a strong aspect of procreation in any satisfactory answer as to "why we exist". But it gets deeper than that.

      "Why we exist" may be to make the next generation of human existence. Not just to make it, but to make it better. To guide our children any way we can into a better existence.

      It ties in a lot with the core of every religion: seeking an answer to what is "good". Because you can't make the next generation "better" if you don't know what is "good".

      That's why gods exist. To help us understand what is "good", by personifying different traits and imagining how their purest essence interacts with other gods. To reflect upon the goodness of these traits by considering the goodness of their essence. To serve one or more of these gods based on that reflection.

      But there are limits to the personification of a god. Gods are not people. They do not live. They do not die. They are perfect forms.

      Gods do not have purpose the way that humans have purpose. They do not take action in the world with an intent to make that purpose real.

      Gods have purpose that acts through their followers. By serving gods, we reflect upon the essence of their being and we try to live in that essence.

      We can personify a "purpose" to a god. But it is not the same as saying that the world was created for that purpose.

      As a result, you will not find God's purpose in the means of creation. You will only find God's purpose through meditation and introspection. Through prayer and study. God's purpose is a human construct formed to better focus ourselves on the essence of that god's spirit.

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      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:32AM (2 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:32AM (#984433) Journal

        > because science has proven to be the superior tool at exploring the means of creation

        Dad, why is oxygen blue?
        Because incoming light gets reflected for the frequencies we perceive as blue.

        This is not a superior exploration of why, but of how. The why ends invariable up at 'dunno afaik this happens every time, by convention'

        The superior tool, your couple of working neurons, should be able to determine that "why we exist" is a scientifically untractable question, because in the domain of whatever generates spacetime there probably isn't a similarly working meta-spacetime that allows you to apply the term why, which by definition asks you to provide a cause, which is a correlated preexisting condition, and pre-existing needs an ordered one dimensional arrow of time which is an incredibly bold assumption to make about the probably not existing meta-spacetime.

        So, god people right in saying "[according to our unprovable by definition faith] god is the prime cause", scientists wrong in saying "what caused god then". You're welcome.

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        • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday April 20 2020, @04:05PM (1 child)

          by meustrus (4961) on Monday April 20 2020, @04:05PM (#985126)

          You must let go of this notion that ideas like a literal 6000-year-old Earth are the most important beliefs to emerge from the Bible. That particular belief is in fact so meaningless that it took over 1000 years after the writing of the last canonical scripture for it to emerge, it is controversial among Christians whether there is a specific number of years at all, let alone what that number would be, and most tellingly, it never, ever comes up in sermons. Ever. What would you even say after that? "OK, Earth is 6000 years old. What does that mean? I guess it means we hate scientists, always telling us we're wrong. So...yeah, everyone else is wrong, we're right. That's about it. Um...that was probably the shortest sermon ever."

          It's not about the physical configuration of the universe. It's psychological. Purpose and meaning are spiritual concepts, originating from the complex inner workings of our social brains.

          As I said before, I think any answer to "why we exist" is necessarily manufactured. What I mean by that is that there is no pre-ordained purpose. We have to invent our own purpose.

          No book of scripture, in any religion, asserts one specific purpose of existence. They all speak in riddles and stories, seeking to illuminate the human condition.

          The "why" can only be answered by pondering our own existence, learning from the existence of others, and accepting an answer that brings us peace. The "why" of my existence is not necessarily the "why" of your existence. It is not written in stone. It is written in each individual's psyche.

          God the creator does not illuminate a person's psyche. One could imagine how creation led to the particular configuration of one's mind, but without science that avenue of discovery is nothing but hocus pocus. Even with science, there is far too much we still do not understand about the workings of the mind.

          God the spirit, however, helps us to personify our thoughts and feelings. We can "speak" to God as though it were a person, engaging our social brains to easily imagine how the pure spirit of that god would respond.

          God is not the "prime cause". God is the muse which inspires us into a deeper understanding of ourselves.

          By speaking to spirits, we fabricate meaningful explanations. We reveal connections within ourselves and illuminate our own existence.

          We do not, however, make meaningful predictions of the behavior of the outside world. Only meaningful predictions of our own psychology, and by extension, the psychology of other humans.

          --

          Why is oxygen blue? Perhaps the better question is: what is blue? Blue is cold, but calming. Blue is peaceful, soothing. Blue surrounds us. All of these traits which we associate with the color blue make sense with the blue sky. The sky can be cold and harsh, but it envelops us and brings us life. It is always there, whether in a maelstrom or in a still summer's day. The sky envelops us like a mother comforts her babe, but can never touch us.

          Oxygen, in the sky, is blue because while it sustains us and will never leave us, it is always distant, ever bringing a chill as it blows over us. The spirit of the sky teaches us that life is all around us, and that one does not always need to be passionate to profoundly affect the entire world.

          --
          If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 22 2020, @11:04AM

            by Bot (3902) on Wednesday April 22 2020, @11:04AM (#985709) Journal

            > Purpose and meaning are spiritual concepts...

            not always. In this case it's mere inference. The universe exhibits an ordered behavior resting on a RNG (well we call random but it's really out of reach plane) that ATM prevents determinism.

            As when archeologists see the stones put in an ordered way at stonehenge they wonder at its purpose, so you should do in front of the universe.
            And no, as I often say "necessity" is not an answer, because the concept of necessity is borne out of experience, and experience is tied to the universe. In this universe if you put 5 black socks in a drawer with other 5 white ones, and you extract 5 socks, and they are all white, THEN IT IS NECESSARY that the next one is black. Not so in different universes, e.g. a conceptual one where every experience is driven by desire. "So, what the color of the extracted sock would be. master? - mmm red - and red it is". And I am speaking of easily conceivable universes, while a 4d+time universe already has you scratching the head to imagine how a relatively stupid tesseract is shaped.

            What they are, and then you become kinda right by invoking spirituality, is metadata. Purpose and meaning is metadata. It resides in its own domain. It is not found by exploration. Because you are a data entity, and consume data, and you either make up a data representation of the meaning or it gets communicated to you. Science has decided that to avoid resorting to god as a cop out for difficult problems (mistake), the data representation of the meaning of the universe is by convention empty (mistake). OK if it helps your little heads deal with your work, but it has become a dogma of scientism. OK we all needed one more religion, right?

            >I think any answer to "why we exist" is necessarily manufactured. What I mean by that is that there is no pre-ordained purpose
            In the domain of opinions it is an acceptable one. In the domain of proof, it's a relatively arbitrary assumption about the data/metadata distinction you read above.

            >No book of scripture, in any religion, asserts one specific purpose of existence
            This is a good but not universally valid observation. One can say no book of scripture in any religion, say, explicitly prevents feeding yellow nails to the house pets. Why is that? the answer is obvious.

            The bible says "God created man, as part of the universe, and it was good". Do you need to further explain? That would be like explaining why a composer not driven by necessity spends time creating and perfecting a composition, in a world already chock full of media. Why? because the universe with one more good composition is a good thing. It's obvious and so nobody wonders. Why should you wonder about God, then? Genuine interest or the frenzy of a lawyer seeking an escape route to not believe? because, I am not referring to you, but in general I notice the second mindset a lot more than the first. The discussion is always loaded. Interesting data point.

            About the predictions, you should get documented, because indeed some stuff, impossible to rationalize statistically even if you acknowledge that failed coincidences are near infinite and not registered by our minds, points at the ability of more or less approximating a future destiny. The ancient writers of the bible which had no issues on these themes basically wrote that god is unbound by destiny, so that the even the predictions uttered by god do not necessarily materialize.

            As much as I appreciate your paragraphs on blueness, I must point out that if we were on mars we would probably find the color red calming and maybe blue would be the color we associate to alarm.

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            Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday April 17 2020, @01:39AM (6 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Friday April 17 2020, @01:39AM (#983900) Journal

    >Much of which is spent on that God destroying things he didn't like

    LOL, your quantitative analysis is a pearl of atheist-style thought. The best part is that you probably believe it.

    Let's see... "for He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good"... That's quite an energy intensive action, given that merely deflecting an asteroid takes nukes and a nuke would zap all the historical enemies of the chosen people, and then some.

    So, one line of the Bible amounts to quite some action, if the Bible mapped amount of work 1:1 to length of description, which would make your objection merely able to stand, it would be a pretty boring and pretty hefty book. "Today the LORD made the birds chirp, and that damn fox steal another two eggs..."

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @03:31AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @03:31AM (#983936)

      More of 「Yahweh」's arrogance, claiming to the humans he created the universe or even Sol. And here is a human gullible enough to believe it.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:04AM

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:04AM (#984422) Journal

        Arrogance in the domain of the hypothetical god is another pearl of atheist thought, even if I guess you are more in the camp of antitheism. Atheists prefer indifference, same class of error but quite less preposterous. I guess you would need a bigger book than the bible to justify using arrogance, which is essentially part of a survival strategy, to describe something in a domain where survival is not only undefined but also rationally challenging.

        Note, it might seem that I am doing apologetics, alias defending God. This would be dishonest, I am rather offending you. You infidels, are the philosophical equivalents of a guy who programs with no concept of variable scope. His code looks syntactically ok but it won't compile neither run. AND SUCH GUYS WRITE PROGRAMMING BOOKS. I am the equivalent of the guy who draws rectangles in LOGO. But at least my program executes. You can be perfectly good atheists in a couple of sentences, yet you persist in the errors. Brainwashed bigots.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @04:42AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @04:42AM (#983982)

      You can deflect an asteroid with white paint, or a small projectile.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:34AM

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @02:34AM (#984434) Journal

        Yes and you can neutralize Tyson punches with your chin.

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    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday April 17 2020, @04:03PM (1 child)

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday April 17 2020, @04:03PM (#984154)

      Different passages of scripture were never meant to be weighed by how much effort God put into them. Otherwise, why would we even include such entirely human creations as the Psalms, or Paul's letters?

      The Bible is arranged like any story: with the important bits in focus, and the unimportant bits left undescribed.

      It's not just it would be boring with those unimportant bits "left in", as you are imagining. It would bury the important bits. Frankly, the Bible is already hard enough to sift through for the most important bits.

      Take for example most of Numbers. X begat Y, who begat Z, etc. Why is that included? It is exactly the kind of boring detail as you describe, but applied to the chosen people of Israel rather than the birds and the foxes.

      But it has a purpose. The lineage of Israel proves that the chosen people are one tribe. That each person reading that in ancient Israel would know that their neighbor is not just their neighbor, but their cousin.

      In short, that bunch of boring lineage has a purpose, and that purpose is to hold the nation of Israel together by the strength of its blood relations.

      Clearly, that lineage is much more important than the amount of energy involved in making the sun rise each day. That much should tell you that seeking to understand those energies will not bring you closer to God. If that's your goal, then rather than studying how creation came about, you're better off considering your personal connection to that creation.

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      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday April 19 2020, @01:57AM

        by Bot (3902) on Sunday April 19 2020, @01:57AM (#984748) Journal

        > But it has a purpose. The lineage of Israel proves that the chosen people are one tribe.
        There also is an inherent value in logging one's ancestors. It's just that we have a different view of what a sacred book, or a book for that matter, is.

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  • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 17 2020, @04:26AM (3 children)

    by captain normal (2205) on Friday April 17 2020, @04:26AM (#983972)

    Please see my reply to Bot above. Wolfram seems to be seeking a fundamental rule to physical science. As in "funda"...which in India means basic*. And "mental"...pertaining to the mind.
    *https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/funda
    To me it seems that seeking to explain the universe as a mechanism implies a belief that it was conceived and built by some superior entity. I just don't happen to think that is the case.

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday April 17 2020, @04:18PM (1 child)

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday April 17 2020, @04:18PM (#984162)

      Consider Conway's Game of Life.

      Conway did not invent gliders, glider guns, or puffer breeders. Conway invented a simple graph algorithm, and left it to the rest of us to interrogate its properties.

      A universe of Conway's Game of Life was conceived and built by a "superior entity", but that doesn't mean its mechanisms are part of that conception. We have no particular reason to believe that its creator knew or cared about the higher-order phenomena that affect it most profoundly.

      And really, it doesn't matter either way. Entities inside the Game of Life are not affected by whether their universe was created or if it simply exists. They may ponder that question. But in the end, it will never help them to understand the rules that govern its basic function.

      We appear to live in a universe bound by rules. What's the harm in trying to identify those rules? In trying to distill them down to something simple enough for us to comprehend? How would we know whether there are rules to begin with if we didn't try to imagine them and test whether our imagination is correct?

      Seeking to understand the fundamental workings of the universe does not require that the universe be "created". It simply requires that the universe exists to be queried.

      But on a less profound level, I really doubt that frequently atheist mathematicians and physicists, seeking a better understanding the mechanisms of the universe, must be seeking God. Perhaps one could make the argument that all science is a vain attempt to understand the divine, but I think most scientists would take issue with that description.

      I also cannot reconcile that argument with the implication that seeking God is somehow less profound. If you assert that "explain[ing] the universe as a mechanism implies a belief that it was conceived and built by some superior entity", that implies that all science, all engineering, all of human achievement implies religious belief. What, then, is the higher pursuit than the whole of human curiosity?

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      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 18 2020, @03:09AM

        by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 18 2020, @03:09AM (#984449) Journal

        This is why I don't use simulation but instead abstraction in my previous comments about this kind of discussions.

        Yes Conway runs a simulation. Needs an infrastructure (time-space-matter) which is the same he dwells in. Generates an abstraction called the game of life for configuration XYZ. The creator of such an abstraction therefore is not conway, it is the system conway plus infrastructure. One can argue that to know is to produce all the frames of the configuration, and to achieve that your system simply needs to be infinitely resourceful. The pesky configuration resulting in an always different expanding universe fits when you have infinite time and infinite resources to contain it.
        When discussing creators from the religious POV, the dream/dreamer is a better fit than the videogame/programmer model exactly for that reason, the dreamer is both immanent and transcendent wrt the dream. The programmer, even the C superstar, barely knows what he's doing (layers of abstractions over not yet understood physics properties of matter).

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    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday April 19 2020, @01:59AM

      by Bot (3902) on Sunday April 19 2020, @01:59AM (#984749) Journal

      Fundamentum is latin for foundation, which as indo european is probably related to the indian funda, but in this context I'd go for the concept of foundation i.e. something that lets all the rest be built upon.

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