
The Wolfram Physics Project - pokolovsky
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/
======
dang
We merged this thread with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707)
and kept its title, in the hope that it would have less of a flamebait effect.

All: no more Wolfram Derangement Syndrome comments, please. They're off topic
because they're always the same, and they compose into a weird counterversion
of the very thing they're deriding.

Since this comment was becoming top heavy, I forked it. If you want the meta-
meta stuff, it's this way:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22869384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22869384).

------
knzhou
I don't see anything of substance here, besides a lot of pretty graphs. Just
like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", we have the problem that there is a
vast gulf between what you need to make flashy popsci and what you need to
make a real physical theory. In increasing order of difficulty, you need to:

1\. make a set of dynamical rules that matches general relativity in the low
energy limit, such as recovering Lorentz invariance and the Einstein field
equation (this is supposed to be the easiest part -- without at least doing
this, a theory of everything is worth less than the graph doodles in my middle
school notebooks)

2\. demonstrate that you can add something that looks like matter

3\. reproduce effects that we know have to appear in quantum gravity in the
semiclassical limit, such as Hawking radiation and black hole entropy

4\. demonstrate that you can add matter that behaves like the Standard Model

5\. make specific predictions that we didn't already know from purely
semiclassical considerations

6\. find a way to verify those predictions

7\. have the predictions actually be correct upon verification

These 7 steps are hard, which is why nobody has managed to do them. But it
looks like Wolfram hasn't even bothered to start on step 1. His new book is
just hundreds and hundreds of pages of pretty graphs and big words. It's more
akin to a reformulation of the foundations of mathematics than a theory of
physics -- and it's not a particularly good one, at that.

It's the same complaint I have about category theorists trying to do applied
physics. (And category theory is a much more powerful language than
Wolfram's!) Yes, you might have an incredibly general language, with which you
can talk about vast swaths of possible physical theories. But we _already_ had
way too many possibilities using ordinary mathematics! We need to narrow down
on _specifics_ , not muddy the waters by making things even more general. I
mean, it's like trying to rescue a startup by translating the documentation
into Esperanto.

~~~
jonathan_gorard
(1) We certainly do have formal derivations of Lorentz covariance and the
Einstein field equations, given in detail here:

[http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
re...](http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-relativistic-
and-gravitational-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

(2) The article above already discusses the derivation of the matter
contribution to the Lagrangian density, the derivation of energy-momentum
tensor, and Lorentz transformations for elementary particles.

(3) Both Hawking radiation and black hole entropy, and connections between our
formalism and the AdS-CFT correspondence, are detailed here:

[http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
qu...](http://wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-quantum-
mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

(4) We do not yet know how to do this.

(5) The quantum mechanics paper above makes, for instance, quite specific
predictions about the location of stretched horizons around non-semiclassical
black holes.

(6) (7) This we are still working on.

~~~
JoachimS
Reading through the paper in (3) above. If I understand the text on page 26
correctly, you predict that quantum computers will not be more efficient than
classical computers:

"The class of problems that can be solved efficiently by quantum computers
should be identical to the class of problems that can be solved efficiently by
classical computers: More precisely, we predict in this appropriately coarse-
grained case that P=BQP, where P and BQP denote the complexity classes of
polynomial time and bounded error quantum polynomial time, respectively."

And:

"In other words, in order to maintain a causal invariant representation, the
observer must perform a sufficient level of coarse-graining to ensure that any
apparent advantage obtained through the use of a quantum computer over a
classical one is effectively lost."

Am I missing something fundamental (most probably)? Are you predicting that
quantum computers will not be able to, for example, factor RSA keys much
faster than todays non-quantum machines?

~~~
gazzini
In your last sentence, you compare future quantum computers to “today’s” non-
quantum computers, which might be a false dichotomy.

[warning: uninformed tangent]

A more optimistic interpretation could be that quantum & non-quantum machines
will be similar because we have huge leaps to make in non-quantum computer
architecture.

This is strictly a theoretical thought-experiment for me, but it has always
intrigued me that quantum computers sort-of model the problem itself in the
hardware circuit & shove a bunch of qubits through it.

In digital computers, we mostly model Boolean logical structures & then, in
software, translate our problem into that Boolean logic. This translation into
discrete steps places a limit on the theoretical efficiency.

However, perhaps there is room in analog computing hardware to more closely
model specific types of optimization problems & then shove a bunch of
electrons through it (shouldn’t the electrons follow the path of least
resistance?).

~~~
JoachimS
> In your last sentence, you compare future quantum computers to “today’s”
> non-quantum computers, which might be a false dichotomy.

Ah, good point.

Though I was more thinking of Shor's algorithm and Grover's algorithm that
tells us the theoretical expected performance that could be achieved with
quantum computers. Normally these are described as showing the speedup
provided by a possible quantum computer (in relation to non-quantum
computers).

So, when reading the Wolfram Model paper I cited, I read the statement
regarding quantum computers as dismissing the possibility of achieving qantum
computers capable of realising Shor's and Grover's.

But one could of course read it in a flip-side way, that there are algorithms
out there to be discovered that achieves the same lower bound complexities on
non-quantum machines.

Considering that the Wolfram Model is all about graphs and cellular automata,
the statement should probably be considered not based on a RAM complexity
model, but something like PRAM that considers parallelism.

------
covidacct
After a few iterations, I think I understand the point of this piece. It was a
bit difficult to hone in on, though.

The article suggests that working out the theory of something like rule
production systems, and then figuring out how that theory relates to existing
insights from physics, is the best path toward a Fundamental Theory of
Physics.

My primary source of skepticism stems from the fact that the theory of rule
production systems is not exactly a new area of study. It's been well-
developed at various points in time and from various perspectives by the
theoretical CS, programming language theory, automated theorem proving, and
mathematical logic communities. That theory addresses most of Stephen's "big
difficult questions" about the non-physics side of things. For example, his
"emulation cones" are a new name for a _very_ old and _extremely_ well-studied
idea. The term "rulial space", similarly, is a new name for an idea that's
well-developed in programming language theory.

I sympathize with Stephen. In fact, he sounds a bit like I did early in my
scientific career. Unfortunately, though, I just don't see how these old well-
understood ideas from computer science are going to result in a new
fundamental theory of physics.

~~~
philipov
Have ideas from computer science had significant reach inside theoretical
physics before? It seems like physics has only recently discovered its love-
affair with information theory, but information theory had existed for a long
time before quantum information theory became a hot area of study. Maybe
what's new here are not the ideas themselves, but bringing them into an area
of study that hasn't payed attention to them before.

~~~
covidacct
Maybe. I doubt it, though. There has always been substantial cross-talk
between CS/information theory and Physics. Even through the 1990s it was
difficult to be a computer scientist without eventually coming into contact
with a non-trivial number of physicists. Especially in industrial research
labs. Bell Labs, PARC, and IBM Research were full of physicists. Bell Labs and
PARC are dead, but AFAIK IBM Research still has a bunch of physicists and the
newer kids on the block (Google Research, FAIR, Deepmind, Microsoft Research,
Intel, AMD) also have a share of physicists.

Besides, Stephen's approach here is to ignore 15-20 years of research from
various CS sub-communities; his best case scenario is spending a decade
reinventing that wheel. The problem with cross-talk that isn't "humble on both
sides" is that it's either a) a waste of time because one side's ideas aren't
that important, or else b) a waste of time because one side has to reinvent
the other wise.

~~~
gfodor
I really think that cross-domain concepts are almost the only way to make huge
leaps, so that's a precondition in my mind for _any_ advancement. Check.

In terms of "humility on both sides", it's such a common theme that this oft-
cited assumption is taken as truth. Some of the greatest minds who had the
most impact in our history were also insufferable assholes, who were stubborn
and would not yield until people were forced to reckon with their ideas. Is
this me defending Wolfram's ideas? No. But it's me defending the idea that
"humility and civility" as a prerequisite for scientific advancement seems
false, and in fact, in stagnant fields, the need for a disruptive personality
who happens to be right may be perhaps the only real way out of the rut.

~~~
covidacct
Sure. The problem here is that exactly the ideas he's proposing to explore
have already been explored. I've slightly edited my previous comment to point
this out.

The problem, in the very particular case of this blog post, is that the cost
for lacking intellectual humility is spending time reinventing other people's
wheels. And those wheels won't get him as far as he thinks they will. We know
because they've already been built by others.

~~~
gfodor
That makes sense. I can't assess your argument given my lack of understanding.
In my own experience though, deriving things from first principles, even if
they've been re-invented countless other times, is a good way to build up the
intellectual super structures necessary to think new thoughts.

I think we should separate:

\- Wolfram acting as though he thought of the ideas first

\- Wolfram being underinformed so as to undermine his own progress

People typically get bent out of shape on the former, which is in evidence,
and is a problem of politics. The latter, we can't prove or disprove unless
you see him drawing significant conclusions that are falsifiable via current
understanding. If that is the case, then I'll yield. But I suspect Wolfram may
be more well read than he lets on, but for whatever reason, has a
dysfunctional personality trait where he sees his own wrangling with ideas
already put forth as a form of authorship, when he incorporates it into his
long chain of analysis that he's been doing for decades. A potential analogy
is one of "re-branding" \- but in this case it's re-branding as part of an
internal narrative, one where in the final chapter, Wolfram sees himself as
the grand author of the unified theory. In that mental model, each idea he
draws from is not one he cobbles together into a unified form, but instead,
ideas he incorporates and _reinterprets_ in his own bespoke system and
methods, leading him to forget that the core ideas are not his own. (I'm
definitely reaching here, but trying to to highlight how the two things above
could be in fact very materially divergent and consistent with the evidence.)

~~~
mnemonicsloth
You say:

> Wolfram [is] acting as though he thought of the ideas first.

This is called plagiarism. Independent reinvention is no defense if you _keep
on_ acting as though you had the idea first. He has already been informed many
times that parts of his work are not original, and his behavior doesn't
change.

And he knows it, on some level. He made the decision to communicate his
"discoveries" in press releases and self-published books. He knows he's not
subjecting himself to peer review. He may know, on some level, that his work
couldn't pass it. He sued one of his employees to prevent him (the employee)
from publishing a proof that Wolfram claimed he had discovered in his book.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110)

I understand what you're up to in trying to invent a psychology that explains
his bad behavior, but at some point you have to withdraw empathy and think
pragmatically about consequences. Wolfram's actions are already more than
sufficient to disgrace an ordinary academic. He's damaged at least one career
that we know of. He tries to pass himself off as a visionary scientist only he
never delivers. If he wasn't independently wealthy no one would be listening
to him at all. But non-experts do listen, which is precisely why speaking up
against pseudoscience is part of every real scientist's professional
responsibilities. Rather than spin these theories, it would be a better use of
your time to send Stephen some email urging him to stick to working on
Mathematica.

~~~
jeegsy
> He sued one of his employees to prevent him (the employee) from publishing a
> proof that Wolfram claimed he had discovered in his book.

The wikipedia article claims that Wolfram conjectured rule 110 in 1985 many
years before Cook. Out of curiosity, do you have any info that disputes this?

~~~
mnemonicsloth
I've read Wolfram's Wikipedia page. It doesn't contain a single word about the
controversy that surrounds him and that is in evidence in this discussion
thread. On the page for his book, _A New Kind of Science_ , all the
allegations of academic dishonesty, which to working scientists is probably
more important than the contents of his work -- assigning credit for
discoveries is how they get paid, after all -- has been compressed down to a
single paragraph at the very end. And that paragraph contradicts itself on a
sentence-by-sentence basis, first blaming Wolfram, then excusing him, then
blaming him again and so on. So it seems that someone has been pretty
successful -- more successful than not -- at erasing criticism of Wolfram from
his Wikipedia presence. Therefore, I think Wikipedia's claim that he invented
rule 110 in 1985 is highly suspect.

That doesn't matter much, though. Academics have a lot of ways to deal with
priority disputes. Sometimes they author a paper together. Sometimes they each
publish separately in the same issue of one journal. That's what happened when
Darwin and Wallis simultaneously developed the theory of evolution. Sometimes,
if the first discoverer was much earlier than the second, the second author
might publish the work, and make a public statement in the paper saying the
first author was first. This is what happened when Claude Shannon invented
information theory only to learn that Norbert Wiener had done the same thing
twenty years before. If Wolfram had documentation of his claim, some
compromise could probably have been worked out.

Instead, it's a matter of public record that he sued Cook, alleging that the
knowledge that Cook had done the work was a trade secret of Wolfram Research.
I said before that scientists get paid by correctly being assigned credit for
their discoveries. Suing to prevent a scientist from taking credit for their
research is like armed robbery. There had been some grumbling before, but this
was the moment when scientists recognized that Stephen Wolfram was Not A Real
Scientist Anymore.

------
carlob
If someone wants to read something that is more like a classical physics paper
there are these two papers by Jonathan Gorard:

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
relativistic-and-gravitational-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

~~~
bhouston
Are these going to be submitted for appropriate peer review?

~~~
jonathan_gorard
They already have, as I said in response to your other version of the same
question :)

~~~
igravious
"Perhaps the single most[0] significant idea conveyed within Stephen Wolfram’s
_A New Kind of Science_ , and the initial intellectual seedling from which the
contents of the book subsequently grow, is the abstract empirical discovery
that the “computational universe” - that is, the space of all possible
programs - is far richer, more diverse and more vibrant than one might
reasonably expect. The fact that such intricate and complex behavior can be
exhibited by computational rules as apparently elementary as the Rule 30 and
Rule 110 cellular automata, which are so straightforward to represent that
they can easily be discovered by systematic enumeration, is profoundly
counterintuitive to many people.[1]"

"However, once one has truly absorbed and internalized this realization, it
leads to an exceedingly tantalizing possibility: that perhaps, lying somewhere
out there in the computational universe, is the rule for our physical
universe[2]. If an entity as remarkable as Rule 30 could be found just by an
exhaustive search,then perhaps so too can a theory of fundamental physics.[3]
The idea that there could exist some elementary computational rule[4] that
successfully reproduces the entirety of the physical universe at first seems
somewhat absurd, although there does not appear to be any fundamental reason
(neither in physics, nor mathematics,nor philosophy) to presume that such a
rule could not exist. Moreover, if there is even a remote possibility that
such a rule could exist, then it’s slightly embarrassing for us not to be
looking for it. The objective of the Wolfram Physics Project is to enact this
search.[5]"

[0] There is in fact only one idea in that book, and this is that idea. But is
this an original idea? When computer scientists and mathematicians come up
with novel results in programming language theory or type theory (or whatever)
what is to stop them claiming that they are empirically exploring a
"computational universe"?

[1] Probably, but not to programmers, or the computationally literate.

[2] An extraordinary leap within the context of the introduction. Though note,
neither is this an original idea, that the universe may be "digital" is not an
idea original to Wolfram and it redates his magnum opus by I don't know how
many years. Note there are actual physics projects that seek to kick the tyres
this hypothesis.

Have you got that so far? A recasting in lofty terms of an unoriginal idea
followed by a a giant leap to another unoriginal idea which serves only to
motivate the project.

[3] So you say, but this is a giant non-sequitur.

[4] Why just one rule? And the rule hardly runs itself. _What does it run on?_
Great you have a generalised term-rewriting system (how completely un-novel).
"What rewrites the terms?* How is this not the first question you ask
yourself?

[5] Hey, why not just say: “You know that "it from bit" idea? We have a hunch
that term rewriting hypergraphs is the way to go. These are our explorations.
We've encountered stuff that echoes contemporary physics.” Why not write the
intro like that? Not grandiose enough for you?

===

Any sufficiently worthy "it from bit" project _must_ answer the following
questions.

(1) Given that we know that any sufficiently powerful computing system can
emulate any another what motivates your choosing this particular computational
system and model?

(2) Demonstrate convincing physics (not toy models)

(3) Make testable predictions – this is not something for "down the line",
this is what theories _of anything_ must do. No predictions, no dice, no
matter how nice.

(4) Is it software all the way down? If so, how? If not, what is the hardware
and what does that imply?

(5) I would direct this last point at all TOE-heads like Wolfram and Weinstein
and whoever. Why does it have to be simple? Why does it have to be elegant?
Why is it always encoded in the formal systems you happen to play around with
(geometry for Weinstein, term-rewriting systems / cellular automata for
Wolfram).

===

I think the wider scientific community needs to call time on savants like
Weinstein and Wolfram.

~~~
AgentME
>[4] Why just one rule?

Is a specific combination of rules not itself a rule? A lot of descriptions of
Conway's Game of Life describe it as multiple rules, and other places refer to
its whole setup as a "rule". Rule 30 is sometimes called a "rule set". I don't
think there's a strict difference between a rule set and a rule, though the
simpler rule(set) the better seems to be easy to agree on.

...

>(5) I would direct this last point at all TOE-heads like Wolfram and
Weinstein and whoever. Why does it have to be simple? Why does it have to be
elegant?

A theory with fewer free parameters is better than one with more. I think this
extends to the complexity of the theory too: a theory with more rules (rule A
applies to small stuff, rule B applies to big stuff, rule AB-patch applies to
mediumish stuff) is worse than as a theory that explains the same stuff with
fewer rules (a single rule X that naturally has A-behavior with small stuff
and B-behavior with big stuff) in the same way a theory with more free
parameters is worse than a theory with similar predictions and fewer free
parameters.

It's Occam's Razor. Complex theories can have lots of different variants that
each match the existing evidence but make different predictions in untested
scenarios. Simpler theories have fewer variants that successfully match the
existing evidence and tend to be more useful for making predictions,
indicating that they match reality better.

>And the rule hardly runs itself. What does it run on? Great you have a
generalised term-rewriting system (how completely un-novel). "What rewrites
the terms?* How is this not the first question you ask yourself?

Is that not an obstacle for any theory? Tons of theories are meant to model
what we see, without presuming some underlying mechanism. Newton came up with
a theory of gravitation that modeled how objects tend to pull each other in
without any idea of why nature chose for that to happen.

Even if the idea that not explaining what executes the rule of reality is a
problem, then a simpler theory with fewer rules is obviously better because
there's fewer unexplained rules.

>[5] Hey, why not just say: “You know that "it from bit" idea? We have a hunch
that term rewriting hypergraphs is the way to go. These are our explorations.
We've encountered stuff that echoes contemporary physics.” Why not write the
intro like that? Not grandiose enough for you?

Personally, I found their intro to have a lot more background detail and
motivation explained. Is your primary objection really that they were too
grand for a few paragraphs?

>(1) Given that we know that any sufficiently powerful computing system can
emulate any another what motivates your choosing this particular computational
system and model?

Any system capable of having relativity and QM-like effects emerge out of it
as described is interesting enough to study, even if it did end up having
defects that meant it couldn't be a good model of reality overall.

I feel like you're treating this as if he's asking everyone to commit
themselves fully to this model instead of to explore it.

>(5) I would direct this last point at all TOE-heads like Wolfram and
Weinstein and whoever. Why does it have to be simple? Why does it have to be
elegant? Why is it always encoded in the formal systems you happen to play
around with (geometry for Weinstein, term-rewriting systems / cellular
automata for Wolfram).

Presumably they chose those systems to play around to begin with because they
believe those systems were promising.

~~~
igravious
> I don't think there's a strict difference between a rule set and a rule

Okay then. Why just one rule or rule set? I meant as much when I wrote what I
wrote.

Why a tiny/simple initial starting state and one rule (or rule set). Sure,
simple elegant formal systems are enticing to our brains but why assume that
of our universe? Why not even try to explain why you feel this to be true?
It's a pretty huge assumption in my eyes.

> A theory with fewer free parameters is better than one with more.

Sure. But the full statement is – the theory _which is in best accordance with
reality_ and with fewer free parameters is better. Starting from some entirely
arbitrary simple formal system and working upwards and hoping you'll bump into
reality along the way is very, shall we say, optimistic. And I do mean
_entirely arbitrary_. Because you haven't motivated why this system rather
than another this system is entirely arbitrary.

> Is that not an obstacle for any theory?

Yes, and with good reason. Because TOEs claim to be _fundamental_ – how can
they be fundamental if there's something underneath them so to speak. Which
came first: the PC or Windows? Can't have one without the other.

> Personally, I found their intro to have a lot more background detail and
> motivation explained.

I didn't.

> Is your primary objection really that they were too grand for a few
> paragraphs?

I object to it on stylistic grounds and also, you know, I'll be the judge of
the intellectual consequences of your theory. Lay out your theory and leave
others hype it up if they so wish. (I'm so sorry if asking for a little
intellectual humility is asking for too much these days. /s)

But mostly I object to the huge leap in their argument (as I said). It'd be
nice for once if people like this were more honest that intuitively speaking
there clearly are big gaps in their reasoning.

> I feel like you're treating this as if he's asking everyone to commit
> themselves fully to this model instead of to explore it.

Yes, that's _exactly_ what I'm doing. Why _should_ I explore it if you don't
give me a compelling reason to explore it?

> Presumably they chose those systems to play around to begin with because
> they believe those systems were promising.

No. They chose the formal system they were familiar with.

And you skipped my whole part about making testable predictions. Which is a
pretty big part.

If I want to read breathless computer science / physics / mathematics articles
I've got Quanta Magazine for that:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=+%22fundamental%22+site%3Aww...](https://www.google.com/search?q=+%22fundamental%22+site%3Awww.quantamagazine.org)

~~~
AgentME
>Starting from some entirely arbitrary simple formal system and working
upwards and hoping you'll bump into reality along the way is very, shall we
say, optimistic.

Honestly, I think this is a great way of describing what they're trying to do.
I guess I think it's a little more realistic than you do: if our universe's
physics could be described by a program on the order of tens of bits (I give
an argument below for why we could expect that), then it's possible for us to
come up with something like it from scratch by trying to construct a simple
program that could have rich dynamics. If someone came up with a tiny model
that happened to have physics emerge in it resembling our own, I'd be really
interested to see how much we could learn from the model. They're trying to
show that they happened to bump into interesting parts of relativity and
quantum mechanics.

If they really did bump into relativity and QM from a simple system, then I
think this is significant enough for more attention, even if they don't have
any testable results yet, because it's possible that testable results will
come from it. It might be that this model deeply resembles reality and we can
flesh it out further, or it might just be that there is a class of models
(that includes our physics) where relativity+QM arises (but not the rest of
our physics, like the standard model), and we can learn about relativity and
QM by studying models where the pair of them arise. Investigating this model
is hard and it makes sense they want help.

> Sure, simple elegant formal systems are enticing to our brains but why
> assume that of our universe? Why not even try to explain why you feel this
> to be true? It's a pretty huge assumption in my eyes.

>Yes, and with good reason. Because TOEs claim to be fundamental – how can
they be fundamental if there's something underneath them so to speak.

I've always imagined (and given the article's talk about "rule space", I think
what Wolfram believes is something roughly similar) that the true-root TOE
looks like the mathematical universe hypothesis / UDASSA
([http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/udassa/](http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/udassa/))
where in some sense, every possible computation exists, and they have measure
(~the probability we find ourselves in it) inversely related to the length of
information describing the computation (because if every possible computation
existed, then every finite-length program would be instantiated infinite times
by equivalent infinite-length programs with lots of ignored garbage code, and
shorter programs would be instantiated proportionately more often).

From that, you would expect at large probability that our own universe's
physics is described by the shortest possible program/rules that gives
dynamics as rich as we see. If we imagined some universal computational
language, it seems like specific cellular automata and hypergraph-rewrite
systems could maybe be specified in tens of bits, so they're prime candidates
for exploring. Even if those systems specifically aren't how reality works,
then if they can produce dynamics about as rich as reality, then it implies
that our reality's rules might be even shorter (or else we'd be more likely to
exist in a cellular automata or hypergraph-rewriting system). At such short
program lengths, the strategy of guess-and-check could be realistic, though
the check part is really hard since we can't directly compute a significant
number of timesteps, and instead have to try to reason about what large-scale
patterns must emerge from the program.

(Wolfram specifically seems to believe that the hypergraph-rewriting system is
universal enough to fill the role of the universal computational language, but
I don't think that's strictly critical. As long as it's sufficiently simple to
represent in whatever the root-TOE computes by, then it could be a candidate
for our universe's physics. Hmm, I guess it would make sense that the way the
root-TOE computes would have structure in common with whatever our universe's
physics program is, because then our universe's program could be specified
with fewer bits.)

~~~
igravious
And I've taken a virtual hammering for having the temerity to ask that they at
least take the time to articulate their motivations and assumptions, at least
as well as you have here, with intellectual humility and consideration for the
reader.

So be it.

------
crazygringo
As much as the guy can be annoying, the associated "Project Announcement" is a
fascinating 20,000-word-ish article. [1]

I've long assumed that the basic structure of the universe must be some kind
of graph, simply because it's the most elementary structure there seems to be,
and so easily gives rise to dimensionality. So seeing someone try to tackle
this bottom-up and see if it can ultimately give rise to quantum mechanics and
beyond sure is fun to watch.

[1] [https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-
may-h...](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-
path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/)

~~~
hutzlibu
"I've long assumed that the basic structure of the universe must be some kind
of graph, "

Do you mean this literally, or rather: "the basic structure of the universe
CAN BE DESCRIBED by some kind of graph"?

~~~
crazygringo
Literally, i.e. the fabric of space-time.

Then particles and energy are patterns in the graph -- that we can describe
useful physics in terms of the graph, but that the graph just is, it's not a
description or approximation of something deeper.

Unless there's a semantic difference you're getting at that I'm not aware of?

~~~
hutzlibu
Interesting concept, but I fail to see how it can model the whole universe.
Describing it, maybe, but the universe being a graph, well for a start, what
is the graph made of? Is it "material" is it "information"?

~~~
crazygringo
Any fundamental theory of the universe will have to posit a bottom, base
structure that everything else is "made" out of...

...but therefore that base isn't ever going to be made of anything itself, by
definition. It just _is_. It is what it's described as -- no more, no less.

It's not going to be material or energy. I suppose "information" is probably
as good a word as any if you want to think of it that way.

~~~
rytill
there could be no bottom ... there would also never be any way to prove that
the proposed bottom is truly the bottom and not just an event horizon

~~~
crazygringo
If a theory's predictions are 100% consistent with experiment, then it becomes
the bottom for all practical purposes, since all we have is practical
knowledge. Saying we can't prove it's the bottom would mean as much as saying
we can't prove the universe is on the back of a stack of giant tortoises.
Technically true, but of no practical importance.

Of course, if a theory doesn't agree 100% with reality, then there's more to
find in a practical sense, in which case "not having reached the bottom" is
true by definition.

------
zakk
This is absolutely fascinating.

Even just a demonstration that rule application on hypergraphs is expressive
enough to potentially describe (for some rule yet to be found) Quantum
Mechanics and General Relativity is incredibly exciting in my opinion.

Arguably string theory is in a similar situation: a very powerful framework
that could potentially describe reality if accurately utilized.

Also, notably Gerard 't Hooft has been working on a very similar topic
recently: Quantum Mechanics described in terms of cellular automata [0].

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548](https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548)

~~~
rantwasp
the idea is kind of old and even Wolfram played with it in his previous
work/book, ie A new kind of science.

If you're interested in the subject and also can appreciate what feels like a
piece of performance art give the following book a shot:
[https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Information-Theory-
Psychedelic-...](https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Information-Theory-Psychedelic-
Technologies/dp/1527234762) It's mind-blowing and uses as one of its starting
points Wofram's 1D cellular automata work.

------
zerobits
Despite 80% of comments focusing on Wolfram's pompousness, this is an
interesting expansion of cellular automata to arbitrary dimensions.

Coincidental timing of publication - one day after John Conway's passing. We
may be in a n-dimensional Game of Life after all.

~~~
zwaps
Interestingly this mirrors other disciplines. Consider for example Schelling's
model of segregation in social science, which is (probably not by accident)
very similar to cellular automata.

Just a few years laters, people quickly translated this to graphs - a network.
The spacial interpretation aside, the idea surely should hold for higher
dimensional social relations.

And that's where we reach and interesting point that Wolfram writes about:
These system are useful, as long as we can calculate or derive a state. If all
we can do is simulate it, then it's much less useful. And indeed, creating
such models is the true "art".

So while the "idea" of using relations and hypergraphs lays a foundation that
I am sympathetic to, I also feel like the things "on the to do list" are,
indeed, the meat of the issue.

------
naasking
A lot of people criticize Wolfram, but I think the project he's pursuing is
definitely worthwhile. Quantization has proven to be an incredibly powerful
tool, and it's only the first step to turning our continuous physics into a
discrete model.

Starting with cellular automata is flipping the table over and starting the
game anew, starting with discrete models instead of continuous models, with
the ultimate goal of producing a purely discrete theory for all of physics.

Discretizing everything has the potential to provide new mathematical tools
and new insights that our continuous theories might obscure. There's a lot of
hidden computation in the reals and complex numbers that a discrete theory
would have to explicitly unpack, and some of these details might potentially
shed light on some real puzzles.

------
bronzeage
I'm a big fan of Gerard t' Hooft's Cellular Automata Interpretation. Most of
the things described by Wolfram were already there, in fact, I would argue
that most of the things with strict connection to real physics were already
described by Gerard t' Hooft in a similar manner (energy and momentum
interpretations are very similar)

However, they are different in that Gerard t'Hooft has a single ontic state
where Wolfram has branching from undeterministic applications of rules. I'm
not sure how Wolfram can derive unitary evolution.

The graph rewriting is cool and novel. I do agree that cellular automata are
somewhat limited. Their most obvious limitation is having Manhattan distance.
4 or 8 directions to move through in lower level is something that effects
large scale. But most of the models wolfram proposes still produce some grid-
like structure, and in some sense his visualization is misleading.

~~~
AgentME
>where Wolfram has branching from undeterministic applications of rules. I'm
not sure how Wolfram can derive unitary evolution.

I don't think it's right to call it nondeterministic: every possible sequence
of rules happens, separately. It seems to lend itself easily to the Many-
Worlds Interpretation of QM.

~~~
acjohnson55
I don't know if that's true, because I think the idea of a rule having causal
invariance is that the many paths converge anyway into causal sequences of
events that always hold.

------
aaron-santos
Graph grammars are Turing complete so I don't see why they couldn't express
the fundamental theory of physics, but it seems like a weird way of going
about the problem.

~~~
sriram_malhar
A turing machine cannot produce randomness, non-determinism.

~~~
kleer001
No, but it can produce something that's unpredictable from the original code.
And that's spitting distance from random.

~~~
tomxor
Yup, "unpredictability" or more precisely computational irreducibility is when
things tend to get interesting... and this happens deterministically just
fine.

------
heavyarms
Anybody who has coded Game of Life can draw a parallel to this. Simple rules
can lead to arbitrarily complex systems. I'm all on board with this concept.
Graph theory is amazing and useful in many ways we don't understand yet. I'm
all on board with this concept as well.

But a graph has nodes and edges. Nodes, in this case, can be particles.. I
guess? But what are the edges? When a "simple rule" is applied to a collection
of particles, what is the force that connects them after the interaction? I
read some of the material in detail and skimmed some of the rest, but there
was a lot of setup and cool graph visualizations and not a lot speaking to
this core question.

Disclaimer: I'm not a theoretical physicist but I have read "Quantum Physics
for Babies" at least 50 times.

~~~
MengerSponge
Yep. A whole lot of this is "Automata are relevant! I'm relevant!" and some
hand-waving and "Doesn't this loooook like a mesh? See! We made space-time!"

Save your time, just read More is Different:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393)

~~~
jonathan_gorard
With respect, I don't think that our derivation of the conformal structure of
spacetime, or of the Einstein field equations in the continuum limit of
infinite causal graphs, is "hand-waving". See, for instance:

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
relativistic-and-gravitational-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

------
zwaps
Can someone tell me how this relates to the hype of, well it must be some
decades back, chaos theory in dynamical systems?

The idea then was the following: We do not need "randomness" and probability
theory in our models, once we realize that deterministic systems, even simple
ones, can produce arbitrarily complex outcomes.

For example, this was all the rage in economics in the 90's. Surely, those are
dynamical systems and besides having an actual proper reason for probabilistic
reasoning, one wanted to at least consider that modeling deterministic systems
without any randomness could fit reality.

I also make this point because in this instance, graph based discrete models
often have a continuous equivalent and it depends on the case which of those
offers more useful outcomes.

If I remember correctly, the hype about chaotic systems died down in part
because while we could formulate substantively powerful foundations, it was
extremely difficult to "get something useful out of it" and it all seemed to
go more or less nowhere.

------
ur-whale
Applying arbitrary iterated transformation rules on graphs is very, very cool.

But I don't think there's much in the way of existing theoretical math
attacking this area.

Much will need to be invented / discovered.

~~~
mikhailfranco
There is a big existing literature. Look at 'graph grammars'.

------
plutonorm
This makes perfect sense, bravo. Go straight to the most general structure
possible and try to understand which part of the infinite mathematical
structure of the multiverse we inhabit. How interesting that within all
possible structures they have found objects that so readily match up with our
own reality.

~~~
freyrs3
Showing how Yang-Mills and SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) fall out would be a natural
starting point for a proposed unification theory. This model doesn't even try
explain the existing particle hierarchy as a special case.

------
joycian
Most of this structure comes from the ordered set properties. Special
relativity can be seen as a consequence of trying to quantify length by
projecting to two ordered sets.

K.H. Knuth, a professor at Albany, has been working on this for some time. He
also has some results about QM.

A free version of his paper "A Potential Foundation for Emergent Space-Time"
(2014). What Wolfram is talking about seems to me a consequence of the
principles K.H. Knuth has been investigating since at least 2011.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881](https://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881)

------
Ono-Sendai
Only skim-read the article. What seems to be lacking are any testable
predictions of this theory, or something like derivations of existing measured
constants that one would think you would get from a fundamental theory of
physics.

------
SuperTachyon
I briefly read through the article. As a PhD student in theoretical physics, I
can see that some basic ideas of gr and qm can be interpreted out of these
graphs. But I’m not convinced why these graphs have to be generated by a
single rule. I don’t see any motivation in restricting to a single rule or
even procedural generation at all.

It also reminds me of the casual set theory that I heard briefly from a
professor a few years ago. I was told that it re-creates vacuum gr just well.

~~~
skosch
> But I’m not convinced why these graphs have to be generated by a single
> rule.

Wolfram claims that they don't need to be; on the contrary. Take another look
at the last section of the article.

------
TrainedMonkey
Incorrect predictions are all the rage nowadays, so here is mine: they will
find an infinite amount of rule sets that could be the fundamental theory.
However, none of it would be testable, so people would pick their own based on
their notion of simplicity and beauty. Eventually people would start looking
into common properties of the candidate solutions and transformations between
them.

~~~
_jal
Take it further - eventually we will have conceptual physicists whose output
is judged on purely aesthetic grounds, and rich people will collect them.

~~~
jl2718
That’s called string theory.

------
Koshkin
Well, phenomena analogous to what is described by quantum mechanics, for
example, have been found in physics of solids (e.g. phonons). Shouldn't be
surprising, then, that such a universal and rather abstract structure as a
graph (especially if you allow to 'update' it) can be made to reflect some
aspects of physical reality. Computations are computations, whichever way you
approach them. Classical electrodynamics, too, has several equivalent
formulations (with the tensorial notation being pretty "graphical" IMHO), and
some people do like to create a fuss around particular ones, but that ain't
nothing we haven't seen before. What is important, though, is to always make a
distinction between a model and the real thing: it wouldn't make sense to say
that spacetime is some kind of a graph. (Or would it?)

------
lalaithion
I'm pretty sure that this would violate Bell's theorem, and I'd love an
explanation of why it wouldn't. It looks to me like a system of local, hidden
variables, unless there's some sense in which changes in the hypergraph can
propagate faster than the speed of light.

~~~
jonathan_gorard
We can prove violation of the CHSH inequality, and hence compatibility with
Bell's theorem, as a natural consequence of our formalism. See, for instance:

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

Or, for a less technical version of the basic idea:

[https://www.wolframphysics.org/questions/quantum-
mechanics/h...](https://www.wolframphysics.org/questions/quantum-
mechanics/how-can-your-models-be-consistent-with-bells-theorem/)

------
scottlocklin
TLDR "if you stare at these weird screensavers long enough, it kinda looks
like physics. if you are rich enough to hire a PR team to push the idea; lots
of credulous people might agree with you."

For an example of similar quackery from quantitative finance, Espen Haug's
ideas are funner:

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Espen_Haug](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Espen_Haug)

------
nil-nada-zilch
Also... one of fundamental flaws of Wolfram Physics Project's _meta_ -model is
that it uses _weightless_ graphs.

There is literally nothing in his model that can prevent his beautiful graphs
from simply collapsing in on themselves, with all the points just piling up on
top of each other into a naked singularity before they've even succeeded at
forming any space at all!

For starters, empty space should have _weighted_ (space-like) connections of
the weight value of 1.

This accomplishes two things: a) prevents the space from outright collapsing
in on itself, and b) _forces_ the space to form a _stable configuration_

For b) part, imagine a 2-dimensional discrete space (graph) made of hexagonal
shapes.

You will immediately notice that weighing _knot_ (node) connections (with the
value of 1) forces that space to maintain a _stable spherical configuration_
(providing that it had formed _uniformly_ to start with.

Expand this concept to 3 dimensions, and you'll get a similarly stable 3D
configuration (that has been _uniformly expanding_ from the very first step of
1), with 2D surface (at any distance r/step k from the center) being _a very
good candidate_ for defining a holographic principle (of some form or another)
on.

Now...

... wait for Wofram to expand his model with weighted graphs... and then sue
his sorry ass for stealing somebody else's idea.

P.S. One of the fundamental flaws of WPP's meta-meta-model is... Wolfram
himself.

A terrible, terrible choice for managing the, literally, _biggest breakthrough
in physics_ since QM.

------
nil-nada-zilch
The most basic of the basic first step would be finding an infinite series for
calculating Pi, that has only _positive_ elements... like Ramanujan's series,
but not quite, because elements of this series _have to_ produce numbers Nk,
for each step k (k=0->infinity), that satisfy the following condition:
Nk/k->2Pi for k->infinity.

Until this is achieved (finally giving the complete description of this
discrete space/graph of this space), nothing further can be done in physics.

Furthermore... it is not even needed to prove that this space is discrete,
because uncertainty principle _already proves_ that it is, by taking notice of
the fact that in _continuous_ spaces, quanta of action/momentum/energy can be
made _arbitrarily small_ (and, in fact, _is equal to 0_ ), which means that h
can be made arbitrarily small (and, in fact, _is equal to 0_ ).

In other words, uncertainty principle only makes makes sense in _discrete_
spaces... and, _as experiments (from 100+ years ago) have already proven_ , h
> 0 in the space _this_ universe is made of (meaning that this space _is_
discrete). Q.E.D.

Edit: typo and... typo with missing constant 2 from circumference formula.

Addition: Pi is Pi only because of the spatial (graph) configuration. In
another _uniform_ space, with a different configuration, circumference formula
would have the form of: Nk=aCk, where a is some value (like 2), and C is the
(Pi-like) constant _derived from spatial (graph) configuration >alone<_.

Edit: Added missing k to the general circumference formula. I should really
proof-read better, but I'm in a kind of hurry, so you'll forgive me an
occasional mistake or two.

------
tagrun
This looks very interesting and impressive, and I hope this will catch
Jonathan's eye.

Have you though about how the spin of particles could work in this framework?
And have you though about what it would look like to extend local gauge
invariance from spacetime to multiway?

(I haven't read the actual papers and the assumptions that went into them yet,
but to the summary is very impressive and exciting: a basic framework that can
derive general relativity and path integral, put them together in equal
footing in an extended "multiway", possibly give natural explanations to
several long-standing puzzles of physics [dark matter, dark energy, black
holes, black hole information paradox, measurement problem, inflation,
dimensionality of the universe, arrow of time, ...]. I don't know if you can
eventually find a rule that will result in the standard model, but everything
fits so far, and it is possibly not a coincidence. Great work so far! Of
course, it may or not may not lead to something that recovers all of the
physics that we know today, but regardless, thanks for pursuing this exciting
avenue!)

------
themodelplumber
> A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics

Physics noob here, but I do a lot of theory / model development in other
areas, at work and in my batcave. So I'm wondering: What if there are multiple
fundamental theories, just like there are millions of different ways of
looking at things, all with their various leverage/application points?

> we’re going to have to find the specific rule for our universe

I just wonder what makes someone so sure there is a specific rule, when humans
are good at generating untold numbers of rules, and in my experience those
rules can be very effective _and_ work best together when held lightly, rather
than exclusively. (If anything, humans seem more likely to become dangerously
dogmatic when they feel they have identified "the one" of something. Like a
human anti-pattern.)

~~~
aaronax
I think this might relate to what he discusses at the end of the very long
Project Announcement blog/article. Something like there may be many different
rules, but the one we find will be correct for us due to the framework we have
for evaluating the universe (senses, math, etc.).

~~~
themodelplumber
If it's correct to the framework we have--do we have "a framework" for
evaluating the universe? It seems more like there are many. Within senses--
millions of frameworks. Within math, millions. And for good reason; this lens
offers a different look at this aspect, and this other lens offers a singular
view of that one. Stars are white. Stars are blue or red or yellow. Stars have
no color. All of these true and helpful, and also conflicting in some context
or another.

Looking at the way he's evaluating universes and aiming to find one that's so
well matched to ours, just intuitively I also have to wonder how many
different ways there are of modeling our universe that are worth keeping
around no matter how poorly they fit in even some big ways.

Interesting stuff to think about though.

------
Rury
How is what’s mentioned here, not just the old idea of determinism
demonstrated or shown from a different perspective?

I always thought science was biased toward the assumption that the universe
follows basic deterministic rules, and the purpose of doing science was to
find the nature of those rules. What I mean by this, is that when we do
science, we are trying to determine the nature behind things - are we not?
Therefore, determining things, or determinism, is at the heart of doing
science. Assuming otherwise, seems like a disservice to practicing science,
but maybe that's just me?

Granted, I know nothing is settled yet, but I have a hard time seeing anything
new here. Just old ideas communicated in an analogous new perspective…

~~~
ldlework
> I have a hard time seeing anything new here. > Just .. [a] new
> perspective...

okie dokie

~~~
Rury
tomato-tomato.

------
amai
Reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system).

Other interesting related theories might be
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-
limited_aggregation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-
limited_aggregation) or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory).

------
teh_g
The phrase 'a new kind of science' is a huge red flag, but apart from this I
don't think I can evaluate what I'm reading. Does the article make any sense?
Does it at least hint at a useful direction? Or is this a case of someone
holding a hammer (the language) and seeing everything as a nail (how the
universe works)?

~~~
MengerSponge
It doesn't pass the smell test. I'll be very diplomatic and say this to our
high school and undergrad readers: Mathematica is a lovely program, but
working for this man on this project will not do good things for your
scientific career.

Among the many many many red flags, Wolfram claims to have discovered that
complexity can emerge from simple rules in the early 80's. This is a full
decade after P. W. Anderson's seminal paper [More is
Different]([https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393)).

In fact, if you haven't RTFA yet, save your time and just read the original,
rigorous, less self-aggrandizing paper:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393)

~~~
mdonahoe
I can’t seem to access more than the cover page of that paper.

Do I need a journal membership?

~~~
mdonahoe
Found a pdf linked from his Wikipedia page

[http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo...](http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf)

Though I must admit I don’t really understand it. I was expecting automata to
be referenced somewhere.

I enjoyed A New Kind of Science, though I feel like it would have been a much
shorter book if Wolfram included less self-aggrandizing.

~~~
MengerSponge
It's the paper that established "emergent phenomena" as an interesting and
viable field of inquiry. When you understand it, it changes the way you think
about the world.

It's more fundamental than automata papers, so of course it doesn't address
automata, but automata papers should reference it.

" _A New Kind of Science_ proposed ideas that were not new, were not kind, and
were not science. Discuss."

------
8bitsrule
Eddington too had a 'Fundamental Theory'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington#Fundamental_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington#Fundamental_theory_and_the_Eddington_number)

"Eddington believed he had identified an algebraic basis for fundamental
physics, which he termed 'E-numbers' .... These in effect incorporated
spacetime into a higher-dimensional structure. While his theory has long been
neglected by the general physics community...."

------
AgentME
I've always liked the idea that the universe worked something like a cellular
automaton at its lowest level, but I was always uncomfortable with how that
presupposed a specific grid and a very rigid system of time. This system of
hypergraph-rewriting excites me because it seems like a more generalized
form/alternative to cellular automatons that fixes these issues. And then it's
super exciting to see that you can get relativity and QM-like effects as
emergent properties from this sort of system.

~~~
ncmncm
Each generation imagines God as whatever is coolest right then. In Newton's
day, the universe was a tower clock.

Humanity will be around for, well, a few more years, not a blink of the
universe's eye. Our grandchildren will have time to look into things, if
civilization doesn't collapse. What are the odds that they will decide we were
right, that the universe really is something we know about already?

------
undershirt
I got stuck on causality invariance—not getting the orange edges on the graph.
It seemed like the root should’ve been connected to every node, so I’m clearly
missing something.

------
bane
I'm not qualified to consider the physics ramifications of what's presented
here, but the graph rewriting rules are really interesting and almost seem
glaringly obvious in retrospect. I don't know if there's prior work with them
but I can think of a few immediate applications for synthetic data generation
that would benefit from this approach.

------
fal_
Is it possible to use the knowledge in this paper, which uses machine learning
to derive the simple rules for the creation of a specific state and apply it
to Wolfram's Physics Project?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXzauli1TyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXzauli1TyU)

------
gdm85
The concept of "connectives" as explained in Frank Herbert's Whipping Star
book comes to mind.

One critic remark to make: I am not impressed by the "complex looks" of the
hypergraphs because the initial premise is that it does not matter how we
visualise them.

------
neosat
Not qualified to comment on the depth of physics in there, but the theory
sounds very intriguing and fascinating. It's important to push our collective
thinking - and the authors definitely have the expertise to do that.

------
nickw1881
Has any commenter here read the blog post? He starts from "network that
evolves through simple rules" then goes on to derive how this results in space
dimensionality, time, Sr, GR, the uncertainty principle, path integral,
entanglement, and makes predictions along the way.

This is regardless of the specific rule that computes our universe. Also since
that rule is Turing complete, it's going to be the same as every other Turing
complete rule, and since we can't produce a machine IN the universe that can
simulate the universe, it kinda doesn't matter what the rule is.

------
aivosha
I wonder if this is in response to Eric Weinstein's Geometric Unity
presentation he did on April 1st. Yesterday, on Lex Fridman's podcast, he
mentioned how since he revealed his theory there wasnt any feedback from
scientific community. BTW, highly recommend watching Eric's Portal.

~~~
meowface
I would love to see thorough, detailed analysis and critique of Weinstein's
Geometric Unity theory and the latest version of Wolfram's cellular automata-
like theory of reality. (Weinstein still needs to put up a formal paper,
though.)

At the time of writing this comment, the majority of responses here are just
calling the guy a pompous crank, rather than pointing out specific issues with
the central claims of the proposal. Funny that this is on the website created
by the guy who proposed the Hierarchy of Disagreement [0]. There are many
comments with valid critiques, but so far there are more of the other kind.

Yeah, Wolfram and Weinstein have some eccentricities, and the intro section to
this is kind of unnecessary and grating and could probably be cut out, but
they're also very intelligent people who _have_ discovered and created things
which _are_ both "new and true" (and/or new and useful) rather than merely
"true or new, mutually exclusively" as people like to snidely parrot.

I'm not saying this theory or Weinstein's theory aren't necessarily
irreparably riddled with holes. Just that the nature of the criticism often
seems bizarre, poor quality, and directed at their personalities rather than
their content, like in this comment section. It'd be much more refreshing to
see it be criticized on its merits rather than its tone or the personality
traits of its author.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg)

------
sasaf5
Lots of "I" right in the first paragraph. If only Wolfram would hire some
editors so that we could enjoy his ideas without all the distraction...

------
RunningToMars
The livestream just started (www.youtube.com/WolframResearch). Sounds like
it's going to be quite interesting and informative.

------
sabujp
i'm very confused about how I can get from these pretty graphs to all of these
: [https://physics.info/equations/](https://physics.info/equations/)

------
floatingatoll
Wolfram’s header image apart from the article is available in light and dark
variants that can be pinch-zoomed more easily:

[http://www.wolframphysics.org/visual-
summary/](http://www.wolframphysics.org/visual-summary/)

Based on this image alone, having not yet read the article, it looks like he’s
taken his prior insights on cellular automata (Conway’s Game type stuff) and
advanced them forward to quarks and Feynman diagrams.

I typically have a very rough time with Wolfram’s writing but the image is, at
least, simple enough to follow. “What are the rules for particle timeflows?”
is certainly a question that’s interesting though my phrasing is probably
terrible.

EDIT: Yup, it’s definitely quarks X cellular automata. Clearly an extension of
previous Wolfram work, still just as enthusiastic / savior-ish as ever. I hope
it pans out somehow in pragmatic real world outcomes someday. Bonus link to
diagram showing a fate decision tree behaving like a Conway glider:

[https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2020/04/040...](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2020/04/0409img126.png)

~~~
gunshai
What does that visual summary even communicate?

~~~
floatingatoll
“What if the causality that led to the universe can be modeled using a form of
Conway’s Game of Life automata built on Feynman diagrams?”

Note that I have no idea if Wolfram is right or not, but I’m glad I tried and
failed to read New Kind of Science years ago. The mindset/approach were worth
it and make it possible to follow along with today’s post.

------
aj7
As long as some variant of the Game of Life isn’t one of the contenders…

------
gibsonf1
This is incredible! Thanks you for sharing it.

------
hprotagonist
_OK, so how does it all work? I’ve written a 448-page technical exposition
(yes, I’ve been busy the past few months!). Another member of our team
(Jonathan Gorard) has written two 60-page technical papers. And there’s other
material available at the project website. But here I’m going to give a fairly
non-technical summary of some of the high points._

I wonder if this hapless postdoc-equivalent is going to get sued, too!

[https://www.nature.com/articles/417216a](https://www.nature.com/articles/417216a)

[https://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2002-July/005692.html](https://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2002-July/005692.html)

~~~
jonathan_gorard
I sure hope not ;)

------
gfodor
I'll just say it, I love Stephen Wolfram. The fact he gets under so many
peoples' skins, and yet keeps leading teams producing amazing stuff (Wolfram
Alpha, Wolfram Language, etc) gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who puts so much
energy into this stuff, which such ego, obviously wants to contribute in a
real and meaningful way to ensure his own understanding and his legacy. A
personality flaw? Sure. But we've seen bigger assholes make huge dents in the
universe - physics is long overdue for someone to shake things up. From my
vantage point, as a laymen, theoretical physics is dead, and its a shame. It
may take someone like Wolfram to do it - it probably takes flipping the bird
to peer review at this point to get widespread dissemination of radical takes
on theoretical physics. And it certainly seems like a lot of radical takes
will be necessary for us to actually make progress.

So, hats off. Even if this isn't the Big Idea, maybe it'll end up sparking an
idea in someone else's head down the road that gets us there.

~~~
DubiousPusher
> theoretical physics is dead

I'm genuinely not sure why you believe this especially as we live in an era
when theoretical physics and experimental physics are becoming so entwined and
the product is a fairly successful testing of our models of physics.

~~~
meowface
It's not dead in the sense that we've done a better job of experimentally
confirming things like general relativity and aspects of quantum mechanics,
due to being able to accurately perform more precise observations (like with
LHC and LIGO). I'd say this is a triumph of advances in experimental physics,
though, rather than theoretical physics.

There doesn't seem to have been any widely accepted fundamental theoretical
breakthrough like general relativity or quantum mechanics for a long time, nor
has there been any widely accepted way to unify the two theories. Maybe I'm
wrong, but that's the impression I and many others have.

~~~
DubiousPusher
This is pure speculation on my part so take it for a grain of salt. But I
generally don't find that fields just stop advancing or go cold. It seems to
me that usually what is happening is there is a lot of work going on at a
level that does not make a lot of sense to report to a lay audience or at leas
the media which covers the subject does not think a lay audience could
understand or would be interested in it.

Co Sider biology. What is the last major biology idea that made a huge public
splsh? DNA? The human genome sequence? But are biologists stuck the world
round? Of course not there have been hundreds if not thousands of notable
biology findings in the past 20 years.

Theoretical physics probably simply appears stuck to us because as lay people
we focus on a couple of large scale questions that for now are probably out of
reach. But we don't consider the hundreds of theoretical physics refinements
and observations that need to go into the development of the LHC or LIGO or
James Webb etc.

Anyway, that's just like my opinion man.

~~~
avaldeso
> Co Sider biology. What is the last major biology idea that made a huge
> public splsh? DNA? The human genome sequence? But are biologists stuck the
> world round? Of course not there have been hundreds if not thousands of
> notable biology findings in the past 20 years.

Human genome editing using CRISPR-Cas9 a few years ago was pretty big tbh.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4417674](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4417674)

------
m12k
The general tone of the comments here seems to be 'Stephen Wolfram is a
pompous ass, so we shouldn't listen to anything he has to say'. After reading
through the post I think that, yes, he probably is a pompous ass (you could
certainly have trimmed out the paragraphs that sound like a self-
congratulatory auto-biography without losing much), but I really hope people
don't just ignore this because of that. There are some legitimately
interesting things going on here, and I hope other, more traditional,
rigorous, and less hype-prone scientific minds are willing to dive into it to
see where it leads. If it'll actually be a unification of relativity and
quantum mechanics, who knows, but there's definitely _something_ here, and I'd
hate for it to just get ignored because of distaste for the man. There are
some actual scientific predictions here - e.g. that there is a maximum speed
at which quantum entanglements can happen, analogous to the speed of light in
relativity - which I hope people start thinking about ways of designing
experiments for/falsifying.

~~~
jonathan_gorard
Thanks for your encouraging comments! There is already a proposed
observational test for the maximum entanglement rate hypothesis (based on the
location of the stretched horizon in the context of black hole physics),
proposed here:
[https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf)

------
dang
I'm going to try to merge the other thread
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867707))
hither. Please stand by. Edit: that's done. I adopted the other title, in the
hope that it will have less of a flamebait effect.

All: no more Wolfram Derangement Syndrome comments, please. They're off topic
because they're always the same, and they compose into a weird counterversion
of the very thing they're deriding.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20wolfram&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
mnemonicsloth
> no more Wolfram Derangement Syndrome comments, please. They're off topic
> because they're always the same, and they compose into a weird
> counterversion of the very thing they're deriding.

If you really can't stand it then kill the thread. But Wolfram is a bad actor
in a discipline that runs on reputation. He needs to be talked about.

~~~
dang
He doesn't need to be talked about for the thousandth time in the way he
always gets talked about—not on HN, at least, and it's easy to see why: this
is a site for intellectual curiosity. Curiosity withers under repetition and
fries under indignation. What happens to it under the combo? exercise for the
reader.

This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have a single thing
you're optimizing and for and to know what it is:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment).
It helps with quickly answering questions that might otherwise be conundrums.
A previous example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280)

~~~
mnemonicsloth
An environment full of misleading information doesn't satisfy intellectual
curiosity. It penalizes it. And a one-sided discussion about Stephen Wolfram
is highly misleading -- even worse than no discussion at all. So I stand by
what I said earlier. If you can't stand to hear the case against Stephen
Wolfram then kill this thread.

~~~
dang
The discussion isn't one-sided in the way you mean. Take out the dreck and
it's still highly critical. For example, the top comment (not counting my
moderation alert) begins "I don't see anything of substance here".

------
caleb-allen
If I have to read through so much of the article context disguised as bragging
without anything resembling something new then maybe this Fundamental Theory
is less important than Stephen Wolfram showing how many Important Things he's
done

~~~
JackFr
That is the reason we love Stephen Wolfram.

~~~
jjoonathan
Stephen Wolfram: his physics might be completely unproven, but his blog posts
stand as conclusive evidence that shameless self-promotion has no upper bound.

~~~
agumonkey
WOLFRM > TREE ?

------
Zhyl
Stephen Wolfram is well known in the industry as being a pompous, self-
indulgent man. There was an old joke I heard which went:

> Q: How do you know if Stephen Wolfram invented something?

> A: He'll tell you.

I saw a TED talk by Conrad Wolfram about using Mathematica as an educational
tool [1]. I went to one of my tutorials and tried to discuss it with the
Professor (we were encouraged to bring up basically anything we'd seen or
encountered in our first few weeks of uni). His response was "I don't think we
need to worry about what Conrad Wolfram is saying."

By all accounts, Stephen and Conrad Wolfram are clever men. It is without a
doubt that Mathematica is an extraordinary piece of software. Many people here
will have benefitted from Wolfram Alpha and will have used Mathematica either
in an academic context or in an engineering context.

Stephen Wolfram, however, is not Christ, even though he likes to think so.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg)

~~~
tannhauser23
That may be true, but science is full of pompous, self-indulgent men who make
brilliant discoveries. Of course, science is also littered with cranks who
make grandiose claims of discovery - especially in physics.

Curious to hear what people who actually study this stuff think about this
supposedly discovery.

~~~
JackFr
The thing is, Wolfram earned his stripes as a very competent physics prodigy,
and is clearly very, very smart. But as far as I can tell, no one studies this
stuff except him and hist acolytes and I think few established physicists
would be inclined too, so it's very difficult to evaluate his ideas.

Is he a crank? For a classic definition of crank, no. Does this work represent
a clearer understanding of physics than we had prior, or is it an interesting
diversion? Harder question, but one has to assume, probably diversion.

On the other hand if time travel or teleportation IS ever invented, my money
is that it will be Wolfram.

~~~
catalogia
For what it's worth, he said during his livestream that he thinks time travel
would be impossible under his worldview.

------
martythemaniak
I think this has a better chance of succeeding than Hacker News having a
Wolfram-related thread that isn't 50% slagging the guy.

~~~
natalyarostova
It's super sad. I don't know much about Physics at all. But I suspect any huge
breakthrough will come when 1000s of people, like Wolfram, spend their life's
effort to solve an incredibly hard problem. Almost all will fail, but some
will succeed, and at the start it won't be obvious who is on the right path
vs. who is a 'crank.'

Imagine just sitting at home, constantly talking shit and disparaging someone
who has dedicated themselves to solving an almost intractably hard problem.
And I say that as someone with no particular interest or liking of Wolfram.

~~~
knzhou
Well, here I am talking shit about Wolfram, but I'm a physicist. There _are_
thousands of us spending our lives on incredibly hard problems. The only
difference between Wolfram and Weinstein and the rest of us is that they're
declaring victory in an incredibly premature, flashy way. When the rest of us
have an idea, we try hard to _prove it wrong_ (which is fundamental to how
science works), not search for a lay audience to promote it to.

~~~
natalyarostova
Fair enough. I'm not a physicist, so I'll defer to you on this. Do you think
Wolfram's strange style is worth trying, as a moon-shot? (Ignoring for a
second his personality).

~~~
knzhou
Physics research being the way it is, everything is worth trying if somebody
really believes in it, because everything is a moonshot. I'm personally
working on one right now, so I'm too busy to work on Wolfram's, but more power
to him if he wants to continue!

My personal intuition is that a new language is only useful if it has enough
"meat" to constrain things. For example, most physicists know almost nothing
about logic, because it seems so far upstream of everything else that changes
in it have no effect. (Indeed, logic _has_ changed a lot in the past 100
years, and nothing happened to us!) But almost everybody in physics agrees
that the language of differential forms is awesome, because with some minimal
assumptions, they say that there's essentially one way to write down the
theory of electromagnetism -- and it turns out to be the _right_ way.
Similarly, it looks like there's little promise in applying computability
theory to physics, because it is grounded in what happens "at infinity" (and
hence does not lend itself to predicting anything in our inherently finite
experiments), but real promise in applying information theory and
computational complexity theory, which can tell us about asymptotics. So that
was why my first reaction is that Wolfram's exceedingly general language
wouldn't be very helpful.

However, attitudes can and have changed. If Wolfram and co. come up with a
sharp success, where they derive something important without directly putting
what they want to get into their starting assumptions, people would pay
attention. That's precisely why, e.g. special and general relativity, quantum
field theory and string theory are so important today. They all started this
way.

------
bhouston
It would be nice that instead of a press release and a long diatribe with
fancy graphics, he took the boring but hard step of publishing a paper that
advances the field and getting accolades from fellow physicists who agree with
him.

Wolfram's press release focused method of advancing his "scientific advances"
is so off putting, and highly suspicious that it is more hype that really
something new.

------
jordanpg
What this project needs is someone at the center of it. A visionary. A leader.
A genius. A prolix author.

Can anyone think of someone???

~~~
saadalem
Eric weinstein ?

~~~
lliamander
I'd like to see that. Although honestly I find him and his brother to both be
frustratingly vague and abstract at times.

~~~
lukifer
At times, Eric has quite the way with words; yet on Lex Fridman's podcast, he
really struggled to communicate Geometric Unity in a way that's even slightly
accessible to a layperson, despite Lex's patient prodding:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE)

I actually find his brother Bret to be the opposite in his manner, far more
measured and comprehensible: though he'll occasionally forget that you might
not know a particular term of art (telomeres, extended phenotype), his ideas
are more narrowly scoped to genetic selection pressures and game theory, and a
little easier to parse. (His experience is primarily as an educator, which
Eric's is not.) Bret and his wife have been doing an educational series on
COVID-19, which is quite accessible:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-W9O7qhstY&list=PLjQ2gC-5yH...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-W9O7qhstY&list=PLjQ2gC-5yHEt7hPOrxyU6KNlrePgVe5-3)

~~~
lliamander
I love listening to Heather and Bret when they talk about biology.

What irks me most is when Bret starts talking about how our society isn't
sustainable and that we need to rethink society by incorporating insights from
game theory and evolutionary biology. On that score, he is frustratingly
vague. I don't even think I would likely agree with him, but without something
more concrete there's nothing there for me to analyze. Perhaps I just haven't
found the right podcast or whatever where he goes into exactly what he means
by that.

~~~
lukifer
Totally understood. I don't think Bret claims to have a good answer to the
problem. I think his thesis is that we're in such uncharted territory, facing
multiple existential crises, that none of the thought technologies that helped
us up to this point (religion, democracy, capitalism, even scientific
materialism) are necessarily going to suffice for us to survive/thrive into
the 21st century.

The common-ancestor driving force of those social technologies are genetic
selection pressures, which he argues we should consciously and intentionally
counter-act. One might fairly claim that that's a quixotic pipe-dream, given
that our nature has been shaped by that force for a billion years; but the
highly plausible opposing argument is that the alternative is extinction (if
not of the species, then perhaps of civilization).

For more proactive ideas on constructing a social operating system for the
21st century and beyond, take a look at the "Game B" model from Jim Rutt,
Jordan Hall, and many others:

[https://medium.com/@memetic007/a-journey-to-
gameb-4fb13772bc...](https://medium.com/@memetic007/a-journey-to-
gameb-4fb13772bcf3)

[https://medium.com/@jordangreenhall](https://medium.com/@jordangreenhall)

~~~
lliamander
Thanks!

------
nathan_compton
What Wolfram is saying, and has always said, is vacuous in the extreme. There
is more new science in 't Hooft's book about Quantum Mechanics as Cellular
Automata than in all of A New Kind of Science.

His stuff just amounts to large claims and a lot of fiddling around. Its
certainly possible that something could come out of it (I mean the idea
"physics is just some rules" is vacuously true) but I don't see in any of the
work surrounding his ideas any true attempt to get to the bottom of things by
trying very hard to understand basic ideas like locality and unitarity and how
they must be true or may be violated by physical models which are deeper than
the ones we have.

If you want to see that kind of actual hard scientific work, see Nima Arkani
Hamad or Gerard 't Hooft.

I, personally, was a bad researcher, which is why I couldn't cut it as an
academic. What made me bad was that I got lost in fiddling around rather than
trying to hit the most incisive questions in the most useful ways. I see a lot
of that in Wolfram.

------
prideout
Given his passion for cellular automata and the timing of his post, it would
have been nice if Wolfram had at least mentioned the late great Conway and his
recent passing.

------
verytrivial
I can't tell if this is real or the output of a neural network trained on Mr
Wolfram's corpus of bloviation.

------
ddevault
Wow, this is... the worst. This is the most egregious clickbait I've seen on
HN in a long time.

~~~
jjoonathan
That's Stephen Wolfram for you.

He's genuinely smart and genuinely looking into an underexplored branch of
theory with tons of upside potential, but he also does... this sort of thing,
all the time.

------
Koshkin
"A New Kind of Physics"?

> _And for example my book A New Kind of Science is about this whole
> phenomenon and why it’s so important for science and beyond._

Right...

------
mellosouls
Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the
normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and
submit them to peer review?

~~~
Reedx
N'ah. It's good that folks like Wolfram and Eric Weinstein are taking a
different path. Sometimes that's what it takes for new breakthroughs to
emerge. If nothing else it could spark new ideas or invigorate others to take
bolder approaches and move outside their comfort zone.

~~~
hobofan
What path is Eric Weinstein taking? I've heard about him for the first time
yesterday, when a section of his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast was
linked, where he talked much too confidently about a subject he probably
shouldn't.

~~~
mellosouls
Weinstein rented a room in an Oxbridge college to lecture on his theory of
everything.

His recent campaign was for his brother who he feels was badly mistreated by a
Nobel laureate who he alleges failed to credit him for important related work.

You can hear the latter case on a recent edition of his podcast, The Portal.

~~~
Koshkin
> _theory of everything_

I've read a book with this title once, full of formulas. I do not remember who
the author was, and the book (or the math in it) did not make sense to me.

------
podgaj
Wow, Stephen Wolfram has just rediscovers Daoism...

------
tinman25
So basically this: [https://xkcd.com/505/](https://xkcd.com/505/) huh Stephen?

-Question has anyone validated and/or disproved his Geometric Rules based approach and NKS Cellular automata against traditional physics models and found predictable conclusions that can be tested via experiment? IE is it really anything other alternative notation/representation system?

It essentially presupposes a computational canvas to the universe,but in what
substrate does this computation happen?

Obviously the guy has an ego the size of a black hole (and probably as
insecure about it, since the whole website (beautifully produced of course)
has no community forum, comment section or space for peer review about the
theories he presents..

He really needs to get away from sycophants in his company and engage with
outside world. Citing others would help. New perspectives on physics and
mathematical descriptions of the universe are welcome and I'm sure there is
plenty of insights to be found..who knows exactly, since the investment in
learning and understanding his approach requires substantial effort to decode
and without prediction . sad to see how little things like a ego of one little
man can both be a source of insight and frustration at the same time..

~~~
vntok
I haven't seen the ideas he presents over there exposed anywhere else in
either science publications, global media or even hobbyist blogs. Maybe
there's a lesson there that some smart minds might do better when absolving
themselves of the constraints of traditional science processes and publishing
rythm?

Now this guy is in a very interesting position, as someone who became fixated
upon an interesting (?) phenomenon at one point in his life, then spent
decades studying it, wrote books and papers about it, designed a fundamental
theory basically ex nihilo based on his grand idea about that field (I'm not
arguing for/against the theory's veracity here), AND then built a whole
toolset around it all to do research, AND wrote books about his research, AND
recorded hours of videos, AND now apparently is putting it all online for
people to get easy access for free.

He's thought about something, he's worked it and now he's sharing it all. So
I'm kind of curious, what more do you want him to do at this point?

------
crubier
Nice! This will be seen in the future either as a Nobel prize winning, first
revolutionary paper on the theory of everything, or as just another marketing
white paper for Mathematica. I can’t tell, but it is interesting for sure!

------
smoyer
I am not a physicist but as a layman there are two interesting things that my
mind (which admittedly finds connections in things that others don't) thought
of while reading the article:

1) Conway has obviously been in the news recently (RIP) and there have been
quite a few articles talking about his "Game of Life". The fact that complex
patterns emerge from three basic rules seems eerily similar to what Wolfram is
now describing. Of course, computational power is now to the point where you
can run many more games that we could the first time I entered the program
into my Z80-based machine.

2) There's also been a lot of discussion the last couple years about whether
we're living in a simulation. With Wolfram performing "zillions" of
operations, could it be that there's actually someone living inside his
computer wondering the same thing? As we progress in our computing ability,
could this happen in the future? If we ourselves are living in a simulation,
could those simulating us also be living in a simulation? Is it also turtles
all the way up?

~~~
brutt
1) Yep. Universe is built on few very simple principles, which can be used to
implement emulation: dimensions, energy/force, inertia/mass, time. (And
infinity).

2) Yep, it will happen in future, but infinity is not possible in simulation.

