Meeting a Terrific Challenge

[Djchrismac]

Hi Mike, I had a look at this and it seems, well, complex:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/202 ... beautiful/





If this theory is based on General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics then you have a big problem from the start and when it comes to time, this theory only sees it as linear which is a big problem:

Time

In our models, space is defined by the large-scale structure of the hypergraph that represents our collection of abstract relations. But what then is time?

For the past century or so, it’s been pretty universally assumed in fundamental physics that time is in a sense “just like space”—and that one should for example lump space and time together and talk about the “spacetime continuum”. And certainly the theory of relativity points in this direction. But if there’s been one “wrong turn” in the history of physics in the past century, I think it’s the assumption that space and time are the same kind of thing. And in our models they’re not—even though, as we’ll see, relativity comes out just fine.

So what then is time? In effect it’s much as we experience it: the inexorable process of things happening and leading to other things. But in our models it’s something much more precise: it’s the progressive application of rules, that continually modify the abstract structure that defines the contents of the universe.

The version of time in our models is in a sense very computational. As time progresses we are in effect seeing the results of more and more steps in a computation. And indeed the phenomenon of computational irreducibility implies that there is something definite and irreducible “achieved” by this process. (And, for example, this irreducibility is what I believe is responsible for the “encrypting” of initial conditions that is associated with the law of entropy increase, and the thermodynamic arrow of time.) Needless to say, of course, our modern computational paradigm did not exist a century ago when “spacetime” was introduced, and perhaps if it had, the history of physics might have been very different.

To quote Larson "Complexity is entertaining, simplicity is not":



Any fundamental theory of physics should be able to recreate the entire universe from some simple postulates and the Reciprocal System does this. The Wolfram Physics Project will only get worse and start coming up with dark matter, black holes or worse in order to try and explain what we observe since it is based on incorrect science from the start and not the simplicity of nature.

A universe of motion makes a lot more sense to me.

FIRST FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE - “The physical universe is composed entirely of one component, Motion, existing in three dimensions, in discrete units, and with two reciprocal aspects, space and time.”

SECOND FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE - “The physical universe conforms to the relations of ordinary commutative mathematics, its primary magnitudes are absolute, and its geometry is Euclidean.”

http://reciprocalsystem.org/PDFa/The%20 ... ela%29.pdf



http://reciprocalsystem.org/paper/the-tao-of-motion

[MWells]

Yes, Wolfram explicitly says space and time are not fundamentally the same thing. But that would seem to be irrelevant, as he isn't offering a "theory" here. If he does have his own theory it would be independent of his computational modelling device's application. This is a tool which itself is more primary than the RS postulates, with the capability to express entity relationships in a purely abstract sense. For example, there is no "space" or "time" only numbers and relationships - which presumably could be suited to express RS scalar motion. There is also no inherent topology nor any structural framework, although this can be assigned or mapped. It would seem one could potentially use this for any physical theory, such as RS, String theory or Eric Weinstein's "Geometric Unity".

Mike

[Djchrismac]

Yes, Wolfram explicitly says space and time are not fundamentally the same thing. But that would seem to be irrelevant, as he isn't offering a "theory" here. If he does have his own theory it would be independent of his computational modelling device's application. This is a tool which itself is more primary than the RS postulates, with the capability to express entity relationships in a purely abstract sense. For example, there is no "space" or "time" only numbers and relationships - which presumably could be suited to express RS scalar motion. There is also no inherent topology nor any structural framework, although this can be assigned or mapped. It would seem one could potentially use this for any physical theory, such as RS, String theory or Eric Weinstein's "Geometric Unity".

Mike

Hi Mike, please accept my apologies, I jumped in without proper consideration. You could be right, perhaps it would prove useful to model scalar motion with this tool and compare the Reciprocal System results to other theories and see how they map out or compare/contrast.

[dbundy]

Hi Mike,

What others may not realize is that we have a history of discussing Wolfram's science, when I brought it to the table many years ago. It's good to hear from you again, BTW.

It all started with Wolfram's New Kind of Science and his cellular automata rule 254 (See here), which he found so simple and therefore unintersting. However, I glomed on to it, recognizing that it captured (at least in 2d) the unit progression. I modified it so that I could model the space and time displacements of the RST with it and called them PAs, for "Progression Algorithms."

I read this recently one morning when I was still in bed, the day it came out. Wolfram made a breakthrough and started the Physics Projects, and as usual, he does it in a big, big way. The man is a genuis, there's no doubt about that, but whether or not we can connect our simple reciprocal system to his work in any benificial way, I know not.

We'll see I guess.

P.S. Thanks for the video links. I find them very interesting.