Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything

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Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything

(13 posts)

zia m
Member

I don't get it, maybe a mathematician on the forum can enlighten us.

http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-04-27&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Posted 2 years ago on 07 May 2010 1:02 #
barackosama
Member

@3:27 the punch line.
"It always seems like a big mystery how nature seemingly so effortlessly manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex."

So far computing has been a numerical deal which is prone to truncation errors, convergence, discontinuities and limited by recurssion/iterative speed. Symbolic computing appears now the way to go, think how efficient simulations would be. It would be a jump as significant when the computer took over the hand calculations. Do all math with variables and symbols like we were taught in algebra, no numbers any where at all.

Posted 2 years ago on 07 May 2010 10:17 #
toamin
member

interesting... a guy is marketing his new product.. a calculator :-)

Posted 2 years ago on 07 May 2010 10:43 #
LiberalKarachi
Member

@zia m,

Which part did you not understand? From what I gathered, it dealt with Computer Science and how the idea of computation can simulate patterns, which map directly to the primitive constructs of the universe: string theory, quantum mechanics, theory of general/special relativity. These apparently simple "patterns" in computation can give rise to great amount of complexity - irreducible complexity according to him - it is therefore conceivable that such simple patterns underpin the topics found in particle and theoretical physics. These variant patterns give rise to variant universes with variant physical laws. By pattern, i simplly mean a set of equations/formulas describing a specific universe - i.e. based on a mathematical/theoretical computer science/theoretical physics definition (e.g. as we see in Hilbert space). I think the essence of his speech was to emphasise on the natural connection (and symmetric correlation) between the ideas in computation and ideas in particle physics. Let me know if you want more (detailed/clearer) explanation.

@salam,

"interesting... a guy is marketing his new product.. a calculator :-)"

A rather philosophical question: isn't brain essentially a network of very simple calculators (neurons)?

Posted 2 years ago on 07 May 2010 18:35 #
zia m
Member

LK,
Pardon my ignorance, I don't have a background in computer science and am illiterate in computatitional sophistication.
I had very difficult time understanding his ideas.
But if he is right it will prove Alan Turing was a greater genius than Einstein.It is about time we gave due credit to Turing.
I had to listen to his more detailed talk to grasp some of his ideas.
Here is a link...

He just pulled the rug under me of the idea of creating force.
But then again i know i am composed of molecules that is empty space and so is the wall in front of me is empty space but every time i try to go through the wall i end up with a bump on my head.

Posted 2 years ago on 08 May 2010 1:22 #
zia m
Member

Oh, I forgot to mention one more thing every living mad scientist would love to solve the riddle of theory of everything.His talk should have been the major news headlines in all the news papers.
I'm just trying to digest this ground breaking news.

Posted 2 years ago on 08 May 2010 1:30 #
toamin
member

he is marketing his new product, focus on the core functionality and not the marketing elevated story-

he has assembled a calculator, let us call it smart calculator-

this guy looks more like an expert marketer :-)

Posted 2 years ago on 08 May 2010 3:14 #
LiberalKarachi
Member

@zia m,

I confess to not understanding it in its entirety, as I don't have that background. But from what I could understand from my background in Maths and a litte reasearch:

Computability ("how to do computations") has roots in recursive equations and bears relevance to the work done by a very famous mathematician Kurt Godel - and later by computer scinetists such as Turing and Church in the 1930s.

Computability extend the orthodox expressibility of maths (e.g. algebra, calculus, etc). You can, for instance, model the laws of universe or concepts in general using traditional mathematics (e.g. maths used to specify quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, rules etc). You can similarly model things usings computability, however, computability has its own perks and its own elegance. In the example he had in the video, cellular automata can be used to used to specify very simple patterns, and using those simple patterns you can construct very complex structures. Rule 30 seems to be one of them.

Armed with the knowledge that using computability one can model very complex things using very simple patterns, it sheds a new light into the workings of the universe. We assume it to be big complex strucrtutres, could there not be simple rules (compuations) which might explain its working? I think that is what he is investigating - particle/theoratical physics from the perspective of computability.

Posted 2 years ago on 12 May 2010 20:20 #
barackosama
Member

If symbolic computing takes off, I imagine this would be a leap no less than the transistor. Raising the level of abstraction is already in practice in a variety of disciplines but in Mathematics this is revolutionary. The bees and the spiders of course don't know finite element analysis and partial differential equations, yet these two creatures construct the most amazing structures known defying all theories on strength of materials. The bee movie claims that according to all the known laws of aviation coupled by advanced Mathematics, the bee technically should not fly. The bee flies any way, so the flying model must obey some much simpler rules than the complex laws of aerodynamic and fluid mechanics.

Posted 2 years ago on 12 May 2010 20:32 #
LiberalKarachi
Member

@barackosama,

That's a very good insight and I like your analogy of bee flying and aerodynamics. Perhaps, computation might be the answer, some simple recursive rule might specify how you can do something as complex as flying by a repition of very simple pattern/procedure.

Btw, what did u mean by symbolic computing and how does it differ from 'ordinary' computing?

Posted 2 years ago on 12 May 2010 20:36 #
barackosama
Member

The whole idea of Wolfram Alpha comes from Mathematica which is built using symbolic math rather than numeric, although the web mathematica uses numerical algorithms as well. For practical applications you solve any equation for an approx. or numerical solution, there is never an exact solution involved which is possible with symbolic computing. So you work with axioms, automata, theorems, other rules etc. you solve the equation then put the values in the solution form rather than numerical methods in which you start with initial guess and find solution, check errors, improve guess and solve again, that is iterative and computing intensive and deals with issues like local truncation error, solution stability, stiffness, numerical convergence and discontinuities.

Posted 2 years ago on 12 May 2010 20:57 #
zia m
Member

I was simply expressing my lack of comprehension.I also don't understand Quantum theory, but know it works.
The game theory has also made some precise predictions.
I feel there is a certain bias against the mathematicians by the basic sciences.
I hope his work will get more publicity.

Posted 2 years ago on 12 May 2010 23:27 #
taban.khamosh
Member
Here is a review of his book "A new kind of Science" on Amazon.

Reproduced here for its deliciousness and for posterity:

A new kind of review, October 14, 2002
By "bixx456"
This review is from: A New Kind of Science (Hardcover)

Why you are reading this review

I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review. This review is the product of my lifetime of experience in meeting important people and thinking deep thoughts. This is a new kind of review, and will no doubt influence the way you
think about the world around you and the way you think of yourself.

Bigger than infinity

Although my review deserves thousands of pages to articulate, I am limiting many of my deeper thoughts to only single characters. I encourage readers of my review to dedicate the many years required to fully absorb the significance of what I am writing here. Fortunately, we live in exactly the time when my review can be widely disseminated by "internet" technology and stored on "digital media", allowing current and future scholars to delve more deeply into my original and insightful use of commas, numbers, and letters.

My place in history

My review allows, for the first time, a complete and total understanding not only of this but *every single*
book ever written. I call this "the principle of book equivalence." Future generations will decide the relative merits of this review compared with, for example, the works of Shakespeare. This effort will open new realms of scholarship.

I am the author of all things

It is staggering to contemplate that all the great works of literature can be derived from the letters I use in writing this review. I am pleased to have shared them with you, and hereby grant you the liberty to use up to twenty (20) of them consecutively without attribution. Any use of additional characters in print must acknowledge this review as source material since it contains, implicitly or explicitly, all future written documents.

And not to be missed is the devastating review of NKS by Cosma Shalizi titled
A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity:

Some excerpts:

There is one new result in this book which is genuinely impressive, though not so impressive as Wolfram makes it out to be. This is a proof that one of the elementary CAs, Rule 110, can support universal computation. To explain this needs a slight detour through the foundations of computer science.
...
A New Kind of Science describes a new formal system, called a cyclic tag system (Wolfram drops "Post"), which is equivalent to a Post tag system, and so to a universal Turing machine. Finally, there is a sketch of how propagating structures ("gliders") in Rule 110 can be used to implement a cyclic tag system, assuming you had an infinite lattice to play with.
...
The real problem with this result, however, is that it is not Wolfram's. He didn't invent cyclic tag systems, and he didn't come up with the incredibly intricate construction needed to implement them in Rule 110. This was done rather by one Matthew Cook, while working in Wolfram's employ under a contract with some truly remarkable provisions about intellectual property. In short, Wolfram got to control not only when and how the result was made public, but to claim it for himself. In fact, his position was that the existence of the result was a trade secret. Cook, after a messy falling-out with Wolfram, made the result, and the proof, public at a 1998 conference on CAs. (I attended, and was lucky enough to read the paper where Cook goes through the construction, supplying the details missing from A New Kind of Science.) Wolfram, for his part, responded by suing or threatening to sue Cook (now a penniless graduate student in neuroscience), the conference organizers, the publishers of the proceedings, etc. (The threat of legal action from Wolfram that I mentioned at the beginning of this review arose because we cited Cook as the person responsible for this result.)

and,
Thus Martin Gardner's classic description of the crank scientist in the
first chapter of
his Fads and Fallacies.

In lieu of superfluous comments, let us pass on to Gardner's list of the "five ways in which the sincere pseudo-scientist's paranoid tendencies are likely to be exhibited."
1. He considers himself a genius.
2. He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant
  blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself....
3. He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated
  against....
4. He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest
  scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding
  name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton.
  Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics
  is likely to attack Einstein in the name of Newton....
5. He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many
  cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined....
Posted 1 year ago on 23 Jul 2010 17:52 #