## Wolfram's Theory of Everything

We are the Borg.
Witness
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Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:50 pm

### Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics…
and It’s Beautiful

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Back when I used do theoretical physics for a living, I must admit I didn’t think much about trying to find a fundamental theory; I was more concerned about what we could figure out based on the theories we had. And somehow I think I imagined that if there was a fundamental theory, it would inevitably be very complicated.

But in the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that even when the underlying rules for a system are extremely simple, the behavior of the system as a whole can be essentially arbitrarily rich and complex.

And this got me thinking: Could the universe work this way? Could it in fact be that underneath all of this richness and complexity we see in physics there are just simple rules? I soon realized that if that was going to be the case, we’d in effect have to go underneath space and time and basically everything we know. Our rules would have to operate at some lower level, and all of physics would just have to emerge.
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/202 ... beautiful/ for the rest.

Long but interesting read. A book will follow.

Fid
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Didn't he change his name to tungsten at some point?
... The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light ... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.
Carl Sagan

robinson
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Interesting
♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ "

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

Rob Lister
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

ed
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Oh yeah!!!

Why does the OP conjure up this?

https://timecube.2enp.com/

Rob Lister
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Indeed

Abdul Alhazred
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

But can you build a bomb with it?
The arc of the moral universe bends towards chaos.
People who believe God or History are on their side provide the chaos.

ed
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Title: G_D

### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

You can build ANYTHING with it.

That's why (to quote the author):
It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

shemp
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

He's either one of the greatest geniuses of all time or a complete fucking loony.
"It is not I who is mad! It is I who is crazy!" -- Ren Hoek

"what dicking deep shit i produce" -- pillory

Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want

People are shitting themselves to death
Crap so much they fail to take a breath
But even when their kids are starvin'
They thought Trump would throw them Charmin.

Abdul Alhazred
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

shemp wrote:
Wed Apr 22, 2020 3:04 pm
He's either one of the greatest geniuses of all time or a complete fucking loony.
Not mutually exclusive. Arguably, Tesla ...
The arc of the moral universe bends towards chaos.
People who believe God or History are on their side provide the chaos.

robinson
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

It looks pretty legit

Totally unlike anything else however
♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ "

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

robinson
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

That the renderings work best in 3D is pretty cool
♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ "

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

Witness
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Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:50 pm

### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

shemp wrote:
Wed Apr 22, 2020 3:04 pm
He's either one of the greatest geniuses of all time or a complete fucking loony.
Difficult to say.

Quoting from the Wiki page of his preceding magnum opus, A New Kind of Science (NKS):
Methodology

A common criticism of NKS is that it does not follow established scientific methodology. For instance, NKS does not establish rigorous mathematical definitions, nor does it attempt to prove theorems; and most formulas and equations are written in Mathematica rather than standard notation. Along these lines, NKS has also been criticized for being heavily visual, with much information conveyed by pictures that do not have formal meaning. It has also been criticized for not using modern research in the field of complexity, particularly the works that have studied complexity from a rigorous mathematical perspective. And it has been criticized for misrepresenting chaos theory: "Throughout the book, he equates chaos theory with the phenomenon of sensitive dependence on initial conditions (SDIC)."
In a 2002 review of NKS, the Nobel laureate and elementary particle physicist Steven Weinberg wrote, "Wolfram himself is a lapsed elementary particle physicist, and I suppose he can't resist trying to apply his experience with digital computer programs to the laws of nature. This has led him to the view (also considered in a 1981 paper by Richard Feynman) that nature is discrete rather than continuous. He suggests that space consists of a set of isolated points, like cells in a cellular automaton, and that even time flows in discrete steps. Following an idea of Edward Fredkin, he concludes that the universe itself would then be an automaton, like a giant computer. It's possible, but I can't see any motivation for these speculations, except that this is the sort of system that Wolfram and others have become used to in their work on computers. So might a carpenter, looking at the moon, suppose that it is made of wood."
So it's a tad "Impressionist science", a style which doesn't sit too well with the mainstream. (But is not completely unknown, e. g. some books by Mandelbrot of set fame are very much "look how these graphs are similar".)

And even if Wolfram's promises aren't realized, his forthcoming book – clearly extending NKS – will probably make for an interesting read.

If you have too much time on your hands (ha ha!) you can dip into his blog (https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/) which has some interesting morsels.
But life is short.

sparks
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

If he wishes to write books in which he makes claims that are not supported by any evidence whatsoever, well cranks and twats do that every fucking day.
You can lead them to knowledge, but you can't make them think.

robinson
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

So does almost everybody on the internet and in the news each day
♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ "

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

sparks
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

Agreed. But in this case, that doesn't make this 'theory' of his an accurate representation of the way the Cosmos works. Now, maybe he's absolutely correct. But the jury is out until we have evidence provided by double blind experimentation, and at this point, he has none to offer. Extraordinary, intriguing and even likeable claims abound. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You can lead them to knowledge, but you can't make them think.

gnome
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

ed wrote:
Wed Apr 22, 2020 1:43 pm
You can build ANYTHING with it.

That's why (to quote the author):
It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.
It's like going to zombo.com! Anything is possible there.
"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a zoo! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"
--Soldier, TF2

Abdul Alhazred
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

zombo.com

Thanks for reminding me.

Dammit! An important site that still requires Flash.
The arc of the moral universe bends towards chaos.
People who believe God or History are on their side provide the chaos.

gnome
Posts: 23843
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 12:40 am
Location: New Port Richey, FL

### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

FUCK. Quick, how do we find out who owns it? Maybe they can be persuaded to update?
"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a zoo! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"
--Soldier, TF2

Rob Lister
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### Re: Wolfram's Theory of Everything

That might be sacrilege, gnome. Like refinishing Thomas Jefferson's roll-top desk and using polyurethane.

Doesn't load, obviously, but here's the source code.

Code: Select all

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