For anyone interested in Wolfram’s ideas but put off by his style, I encourage you to check out talks by Jonathan Gorard. He’s the main collaborator on the “physics project”, and strikes me as being more even-handed and less grandiose.
They’ve used the Wolfram model (and some additional “mathematical technology” they developed) to compute an “entanglement entropy” that agrees (“exactly”) with the calculations using “path integrals using standard causal set theoretic techniques” – the latter tho seems to be a quantum field theory mathematical formalism that stills being developed
The particle physics is still “embryonic” – they have conjectures about particles being ‘persistent tangles in graphs/networks’, and some suggestive toy models, but no scattering amplitudes that can be calculated yet, and an estimate ‘5-6’ mathematical milestones remain before they reach things like that
One of the hosts asks about ‘emergence’ (which seems a little ‘cringe’ to my old ears; I liked the idea, but it’s pretty simple on its own, and was heavily abused as a marketing buzzword) – Gorard’s answer is wonderful tho;
The other host mentioned that the computational focus of the theory seemed ‘correct’, and something that was overdue in physics education in his opinion – I don’t think they’ve read NKS! They’d probably like it.
The field/gauge theory connections are preliminary but promising; they matched some calculation for electromagnetism (for a “Dirac monopole”) but haven’t completed others.
They’re some interesting discussion of ‘avoiding curve fitting’ – “a good model is one where everything that can be emergent is emergent”
There’s some experimental investigations ongoing (or were as of October 2021) in “dimension perturbations” in the early universe and “dimension perturbations” and their effect on the propagation of light (for astrophysics); the hope for the latter is to be ably to compute/calculate predictions of the effects of “small scale dimension perturbations”. [One aspect of the theory is that spacetime is expected to (or just could?) be of fractional dimension, instead of an exact integer ‘topological dimension’.]
Overall, I’m not sure Wolfram’s physics theory is under-appreciated. It seems like there’s a good sized team making good progress and that, at worst, it’s still a bunch of cool math/science/computering.
Jonathan Gorard, discussing the math, is very convincing. He said some very intriguing things about practical benefits with the theory for “quantum computation optimization”, e.g. “circuit simplification for quantum computers” (for experiments or simulations).
His description of quantum computing, using the ‘multiway systems’, as ‘a statistical ensemble of inputs, on which the multiway system then performs all possible computations, producing a statistic ensemble of outputs’.
In the first video, Gorard stated that the “worst case” outcome of the project, in his view, would be a bunch of really cool math/computation. I think they might be a good bit past that already. (The first two videos were recorded about five months apart.)
Another great quote from the second video: ‘multiway systems give you something like a path integral approach to computation’. That’s something. (I don’t really know what, but it seems cool!)
(My math creds are a BA (and one graduate seminar class) and being generally interested. I’ve one some very amateurish ‘original math’ that was almost certainly independent re-discovery, to the extent I finished any of it. I make a living via classical computer programming.)
Before just what of the second video I’ve now watched, I didn’t think quantum computing would ever ‘really work’. (I don’t think ‘quantum supremacy’ has been definitely demonstrated still?) A big part of that was due to intuitions I picked up from reading NKS. That is very interesting that NKS+ is what has now convinced me that it probably will be working and practical. I excuse myself as having been driven mad learning about the continuity of the real numbers! (I just didn’t think our universe could be made of real numbers!)
So, the Wolfram Physics theory is: discrete (“quantized”), computational, multiway (‘many worlds’, “path integral”, ‘statistical’), and Jonathan Gorard seems like a legit mathematician/computer-scientist
I like the idea that the underlying ‘quantized quantumness’ of spacetime (everything) might be a discrete “statistical ensemble”.
For anyone interested in Wolfram’s ideas but put off by his style, I encourage you to check out talks by Jonathan Gorard. He’s the main collaborator on the “physics project”, and strikes me as being more even-handed and less grandiose.
Here are some links:
Eigenbros ep 117 - Jonathan Gorard (Wolfram Physics)
Eigenbros ep 138 - Wolfram Physics Project Pt. 2 (w/ Jonathan Gorard)
Fast Diagrammatic Reasoning and Compositional Approaches to Fundamental Physics (Topos Institute Colloquium)
The first video (Eigenbros episode 117) is great – Jonathan Gorard shares a lot of interesting details!
He does in fact seem like a much more ‘standard degree’ of grandiose :)
My favorite quote so far from that first video:
(Sorry for replying so much to your comment!)
More notes about the second video:
They’ve used the Wolfram model (and some additional “mathematical technology” they developed) to compute an “entanglement entropy” that agrees (“exactly”) with the calculations using “path integrals using standard causal set theoretic techniques” – the latter tho seems to be a quantum field theory mathematical formalism that stills being developed
The particle physics is still “embryonic” – they have conjectures about particles being ‘persistent tangles in graphs/networks’, and some suggestive toy models, but no scattering amplitudes that can be calculated yet, and an estimate ‘5-6’ mathematical milestones remain before they reach things like that
One of the hosts asks about ‘emergence’ (which seems a little ‘cringe’ to my old ears; I liked the idea, but it’s pretty simple on its own, and was heavily abused as a marketing buzzword) – Gorard’s answer is wonderful tho;
The other host mentioned that the computational focus of the theory seemed ‘correct’, and something that was overdue in physics education in his opinion – I don’t think they’ve read NKS! They’d probably like it.
The field/gauge theory connections are preliminary but promising; they matched some calculation for electromagnetism (for a “Dirac monopole”) but haven’t completed others.
They’re some interesting discussion of ‘avoiding curve fitting’ – “a good model is one where everything that can be emergent is emergent”
There’s some experimental investigations ongoing (or were as of October 2021) in “dimension perturbations” in the early universe and “dimension perturbations” and their effect on the propagation of light (for astrophysics); the hope for the latter is to be ably to compute/calculate predictions of the effects of “small scale dimension perturbations”. [One aspect of the theory is that spacetime is expected to (or just could?) be of fractional dimension, instead of an exact integer ‘topological dimension’.]
Overall, I’m not sure Wolfram’s physics theory is under-appreciated. It seems like there’s a good sized team making good progress and that, at worst, it’s still a bunch of cool math/science/computering.
The second video is really interesting!
Jonathan Gorard, discussing the math, is very convincing. He said some very intriguing things about practical benefits with the theory for “quantum computation optimization”, e.g. “circuit simplification for quantum computers” (for experiments or simulations).
His description of quantum computing, using the ‘multiway systems’, as ‘a statistical ensemble of inputs, on which the multiway system then performs all possible computations, producing a statistic ensemble of outputs’.
In the first video, Gorard stated that the “worst case” outcome of the project, in his view, would be a bunch of really cool math/computation. I think they might be a good bit past that already. (The first two videos were recorded about five months apart.)
Another great quote from the second video: ‘multiway systems give you something like a path integral approach to computation’. That’s something. (I don’t really know what, but it seems cool!)
(My math creds are a BA (and one graduate seminar class) and being generally interested. I’ve one some very amateurish ‘original math’ that was almost certainly independent re-discovery, to the extent I finished any of it. I make a living via classical computer programming.)
Before just what of the second video I’ve now watched, I didn’t think quantum computing would ever ‘really work’. (I don’t think ‘quantum supremacy’ has been definitely demonstrated still?) A big part of that was due to intuitions I picked up from reading NKS. That is very interesting that NKS+ is what has now convinced me that it probably will be working and practical. I excuse myself as having been driven mad learning about the continuity of the real numbers! (I just didn’t think our universe could be made of real numbers!)
So, the Wolfram Physics theory is: discrete (“quantized”), computational, multiway (‘many worlds’, “path integral”, ‘statistical’), and Jonathan Gorard seems like a legit mathematician/computer-scientist
I like the idea that the underlying ‘quantized quantumness’ of spacetime (everything) might be a discrete “statistical ensemble”.
Glad you liked it! I think the ideas are very interesting too, for I think similar reasons to you.
Will be curious to see how much further they go.
I’m very satisfied at making this post, if only from being pointed at those videos!
Thanks!
I’m going to add them to my ‘read later’ list now.