**Ask a monkey a physics question thread**

[MadMojoMonkey]

I stumbled across /r/physics, and I found where the article and comic came from when I was googling for responses to the paper.


Basically, AFAICT, Wolfram is full of himself. Also, the claims he made about what his algorithm can accomplish are literally impossible to even the remotest degree of value.

In short... he says it can reveal all of physics. That means it has to explain all of chemistry, biology, etc. There are so many open, non-computable, problems in all of these fields. Like, not "we haven't found a way to compute them." But Halting Problem levels of proving that they cannot be computationally solved.

It's like... what he showed was all hand-waving and speculation. The amount of computation to get past the hand-waving and speculation needed to actually make a prediction seems not computationally possible.


That said. There is sometimes value in examining a simpler, similar system and seeing what is "nearby" in its description. If that nearby thing can be conceptualized as a new prediction, then that's good enough.

But that just describes string theory, pretty much. What Wolfram has done is not new or revolutionary (except maybe the images). The mathematical field of Cellular Automata has been around for a long time.I'm sure we're all familiar with Conway's Game of Life. If not, google it. It's a bit of fun for 20 minutes.

[CoccoBill]

I stumbled across /r/physics, and I found where the article and comic came from when I was googling for responses to the paper.

Can't remember exactly but I saw a link to the article somewhere, then the comic on slashdot after some digging.

Basically, AFAICT, Wolfram is full of himself. Also, the claims he made about what his algorithm can accomplish are literally impossible to even the remotest degree of value.

In short... he says it can reveal all of physics. That means it has to explain all of chemistry, biology, etc. There are so many open, non-computable, problems in all of these fields. Like, not "we haven't found a way to compute them." But Halting Problem levels of proving that they cannot be computationally solved.

It's like... what he showed was all hand-waving and speculation. The amount of computation to get past the hand-waving and speculation needed to actually make a prediction seems not computationally possible.

So basically comic strip confirmed accurate. When I skimmed the article and some discussion about it, as a layman I thought it's either one of the most revolutionary insights of all time, or a load of bollocks. Even my razor suggested the latter is more likely.

That said. There is sometimes value in examining a simpler, similar system and seeing what is "nearby" in its description. If that nearby thing can be conceptualized as a new prediction, then that's good enough.

As a concept, from what little I understood of it, it seemed really interesting and on some level compelling. Wouldn't it be great if he was right?

I'm sure we're all familiar with Conway's Game of Life. If not, google it. It's a bit of fun for 20 minutes.

Am not, will do, thanks.