Current Events > Stephen Wolfram proposing a new fundamental theory of physics

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/introduction/

Digging through it over the next few days but looks like he plans on creating an emergent spacetime using some kind of graph theory machinery...I'm not super well versed in some of the math so I'll have to do a bit of research

Not sure how you deal with continuity but I'm sure there's something in there

Interesting

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I can see why he's excited.

tiornys posted...

I can see why he's excited.

Yeah? Do you have any preliminary thoughts on the framework?

Assuming his assertions about what naturally falls out of the framework hold up in a formal sense, it looks like a very promising approach, because he claims this framework generates key equations that underlie both quantum physics and general relativity. He also claims that it generates a formal notion of what time is, provides a concrete basis for quantum physics, and offers a potential explanation for some key cosmological issues like dark matter, dark energy, and the homogeneity of the observable universe--that is, he claims that several of the most intractable problems of the past 50 years or so are solved by this model. Which means that either this is a too-good-to-be-true crackpot theory that won't hold up formally, or a model that will give a strong push to theoretical physics.

Tag

This looks interesting. Will read later.

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Is this generally being received well within the physics community or whatever?
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emblem boy posted...

Is this generally being received well within the physics community or whatever?

Many physicists on the twitter thread are saying they have problems

and as expected many are completely hand waving it away. But this is common with any new theory that claims this much. In fact, 99.999% of physicists do NOT attempt to find theories of everything because of a variety of reasons. Hard to get funded, lack of a trajectory path, etc.

Most will actually look at you strange if you say you have a theory of everything because its considered too audacious.

I'm still working through some of the technical details myself. It's definitely a cool and generative theory, but the real test will be if we can experimentally verify the predictions it makes that differ from the standard model / GR

For example, Eric Weinstein also recently released the first part of this theory called Geometric Unity. It predicts the third generation of matter is actually a false copy, and predicts a few other particles as well...so if experimentalists build machines to test this out, we can know for sure if its a closer picture of what reality is.

In Weinstein's theory, we have an observerse that is 14 dimensions, which gives rise to the 4D spacetime (with no extra machinery needed), so it's said to "generate" the spacetime.

With Einstein and GR, you start by saying "assume X is a spacetime manifold"....and move on. That assumption is what they're trying to get under.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg

The video has him explaining a bit of the concept, a lecture he gave in oxford in 2014 about it, and some annotation slides at the end if you're interested

Garrett Lisi also has a good one revolving around E8, a very beautiful mathematical structure

But he's his own thing...dropped out of academia after getting his PhD and moved to maui to work on his theory alone after cashing out on apple stock back in the day haha

my kinda scientist

I read through a decent chunk of this and from a purely mathematical level it seems interesting, since it's a hyperedge version of context-free grammars or reminiscent of the word problem in groups.

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emblem boy posted...

Is this generally being received well within the physics community or whatever?

One of the better critiques I've seen is this (from r/kromem on r/physics):

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while he addresses multiple invariances, the model doesn't address CPT symmetries at all, right? I think he's going to have a real problem adding it in with his monograph approach (as well as GHZ entanglement states).
He's modeling binary relationships very well using what's essentially a binary tree, but there are relationship constraints along the lines of "pick two out of three" that I have a hard time seeing him model with this approach, and conveniently those relationships are absent.

I know enough to have a layman's understanding of CPT symmetries, but not nearly enough to try to evaluate whether this poster is right about how hard they will be to model with this approach. However, I will say that Wolfram has asserted at least one "trio" coming out of the model: space-like relations vs. time-like relations vs. branchlike relations. Also, since time is one of the fundamental relations in the model, CP could potentially be a pair that is impacted by time-like relations. And, if you look at the example graphs grown by iterating rules, you can see that some of them exhibit high level three-fold symmetry, so it's not impossible to get "threes" out of this approach.

So I'm not convinced this is an intractable problem, but at least it's a critique of the model itself instead of a critique/dismissal of Wolfram like 90% of the reddit comments.

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Graph theory already uses a concept of beside-ness, so it doesnt do away with space

The material conditional he uses with ever example is literally only possible if the initial causal input {x, y} is spatially beside the affected graph output -> {x, y, z}

Tldr, causation is spatial

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Zanzenburger posted...

Tag

This looks interesting. Will read later.

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tiornys posted...

One of the better critiques I've seen is this (from r/kromem on r/physics):

I know enough to have a layman's understanding of CPT symmetries, but not nearly enough to try to evaluate whether this poster is right about how hard they will be to model with this approach. However, I will say that Wolfram has asserted at least one "trio" coming out of the model: space-like relations vs. time-like relations vs. branchlike relations. Also, since time is one of the fundamental relations in the model, CP could potentially be a pair that is impacted by time-like relations. And, if you look at the example graphs grown by iterating rules, you can see that some of them exhibit high level three-fold symmetry, so it's not impossible to get "threes" out of this approach.

So I'm not convinced this is an intractable problem, but at least it's a critique of the model itself instead of a critique/dismissal of Wolfram like 90% of the reddit comments.

tbf, there are only a handful of people poised to give a fair and reasonable critique (I'd say < 5k in the world who really understand this stuff enough at the level required for a good critique) so its nice you may have found one haha

MedeaLysistrata posted...

Graph theory already uses a concept of beside-ness, so it doesnt do away with space

No. When we visualize graphs, we see them as connected in space, because that's how our brains work, but a graph can represent any sort of relationship between things. Space is not inherent to the idea of a graph.

I mean I know something like a metric is required for length and angle

but I thought he was saying the relationships cause space to emerge...so technically space is inherent to the graph...aka its emergent

I haven't had a chance to really sink my teeth into this yet so not sure if I'm off base there but it seems like he's trying to build the stadium that we can then put a field in, and watch the different players emerge (the field being spacetime, the stadium being the relational graphs)

Tag for later
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The math is likely above me, but I haven't tried to read through it yet. Graph theory is pretty versatile, you can recapitulate a lot of problems using it, so I wonder how much of this is a simple re-representation rather than producing new results?

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tiornys posted...

No. When we visualize graphs, we see them as connected in space, because that's how our brains work, but a graph can represent any sort of relationship between things. Space is not inherent to the idea of a graph.

No, but a material conditional is. My point is that is you can clarify that graph theory does not depend on material conditional, then sure I have no problem with this theory's dismissal of physical space.

If this is suppose to be a physical theory that denies the existence of space as an axiomatic intuition, then it has to do more than say mathematics is only represented spatially- it has to account for spatial intuitions with an alternate concept.

If the model says graphs correspond to nature, but nature also corresponds to space, and graphs correspond to space too, then what I personal see is just an account of graphs being natural- at most, an additional intuition but jot a repudiation of space, since after all graphs clearly correspond to space.

Now you just have to show that graphs can be causal, thus entirely physical, in the same way space can. Any notion that suggests a point of connection between one node and another node is already spatial. You say a graph can represent any sort of relationship, but then so can space. You cannot escape this. Every way we have of making graphs appear, some form of spatial content is required. But I dont absolutely deny graphs could be an alternative form of inutition- it's just pointless to immediately base physics around it, unless I'm missing something.

The upshot to the theory is that if there is an intuitive form that does ultimately replace space, art and technology and even basic human experience is primed to alter itself significantly, I guess?


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Here's an interesting part...

"But the concept is then that there is a crucial simplifying feature: the phenomenon of causal invariance. Causal invariance is a property (or perhaps effective property) of certain underlying rules that implies that when it comes to causal relationships between events, all possible branches give the same ultimate results.

As we will discuss, this equivalence seems to yield several core known features of physics, notably Lorentz invariance in special relativity, general covariance in general relativity, as well as local gauge invariance, and the perception of objective reality in quantum mechanics."

Will have to see how that plays out as I keep reading...damn work from home is getting in the way haha

As I understand it, this is fundamentally a formal way of generating a discrete/quantized space-time (as opposed to a continuous one) that obeys/generates discrete versions of the key formulas that need to be observed for any successful attempt at unifying general relativity with quantum physics. The idea of making space discrete is not new, but I believe this is the most abstract attempt at implementing the idea since there is no assumption about what is fundamental. The only assumption is that whatever is fundamental is evolving via repeated iterations of some rule for evolution.

If that's correct, it's basically a more generalized form of every previous, serious attempt at unification, including string theory, quantum loop gravity, etc. That is, you should be able to build string theory within this framework, and you should be able to build quantum loop gravity within this framework, and the same for the other major attempts at unification. The advantage is that by being more general, it lets us explore more (all?) of the potential "elegant unification" formulations at once, instead of being locked into a portion of the "formulation space" by whatever starting assumptions are used (e.g. the strings in string theory or the loops in quantum loop gravity).

A possible analogy is that it's trying to be the underpinning language of attempts at proving elegant unification in the same way that set theory might be thought of as the underpinning language of mathematical proofs.

for those not somewhat versed in physics

Lorentz invariance is what makes physics the same in all reference points, general invariance gives you physics being the same through certain transformations

and local gauge invariance....is like saying you have a rule book for every point in space that tells you if you make a transformation, this is how you get back (it's more in depth than that, but it allows you to transform LOCALLY instead of globally and keep things invariant)

Wolfram also made similar, grand promises with his A New Kind of Science book, almost 20 years ago. It was a fascinating read but little came of it.

I think some people are drawn to these figures like Wolfram and Weinstein for the wrong reasons... because they romanticize this story of the polymath whos too smart for school and embarrasses all his former teachers with his hidden genius. Im not saying we should be dismissive of their ideas, but we ought to be very skeptical of anyone who avoids peer review.

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Polycosm posted...

Wolfram also made similar, grand promises with his A New Kind of Science book, almost 20 years ago. It was a fascinating read but little came of it.

I think some people are drawn to these figures like Wolfram and Weinstein for the wrong reasons... because they romanticize this story of the polymath whos too smart for school and embarrasses all his former teachers with his hidden genius. Im not saying we should be dismissive of their ideas, but we ought to be very skeptical of anyone who avoids peer review.

Definitely reasons to be skeptical of peer review itself. Not saying it's all bad...but there are some serious flaws in the system.

But their theories are out there now, and it looks like plenty of people are reviewing it so that is a kind of peer review (probably one better suited to our post-postmodern world in 2020). But it is not the personality, it is the idea that I am interested in.

God I wish I were smarter to understand all this

i enjoy reading these comments though, props to all

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In related news, a Swiss physicist has recently been publishing papers arguing that we should formulate the laws of physics in a math system that disallows numbers with infinite digits. Here's an article about it:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/

This number system looks to me like it would be a great match for a discrete interpretation of space-time.

Theres a guy who does great lectures on algebraic topology in New South Wales that argues against the reals due to continuity being a tad hand wavy

in his opinion

he goes for the rationals instead. Love seeing the different viewpoints