The Wolfram Physics Project

[Anderz]

Stephen Wolfram who started as a mainstream scientist today has a successful company which has enabled him to do large science projects without being dependent on traditional academia. Mainstream science today is very much trapped in dogma which makes new paradigm shifts essentially impossible within established academia.

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"Stephen Wolfram (/ˈwʊlfrəm/; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American[6] computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics.[7][8] In 2012, he was named an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[9]

As a businessman, he is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research where he worked as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine." - Wikipedia

Recently he started the Wolfram Physics Project: https://www.wolframphysics.org/

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"In April of 2020, Wolfram announced the Wolfram Physics Project as an effort to reduce and explain all the laws of physics within a paradigm of a hypergraph that is transformed by minimal rewriting rules which obey the Church-Rosser property.[83][84] The effort is a continuation of the ideas he originally described in A New Kind of Science." - Wikipedia

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

I have been following the Wolfram Physics Project (WPP) for a while and one major difference is that in their model, time and space are treated as separate. In the standard model of physics today time and space are considered to be one thing.

One commenter pointed out that the WPP model is similar to what in Buddhist philosophy is called Indra's net.

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"Indra's net (also called Indra's jewels or Indra's pearls, Sanskrit Indrajāla) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of Śūnyatā (emptiness),[2] pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination),[3] and interpenetration[4] in Buddhist philosophy.

... Francis H. Cook describes Indra's net thus:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.[6]" - Wikipedia

And even though it may seem that WPP is more dualistic than the standard model by separating time from space, the opposite is the case. In WPP all of physics is a result of a single graph (network of points and lines similar to Indra's net).

 

[Anderz]

From my amateur perspective it seems that science, and thereby society at large, has moved astray into a trap of dogma. Stephen Wolfram mentioned that at first he didn't believe that the Higgs field, which supposedly spans the entire universe, could possibly work. He also gave several examples of surprises in particle physics when actual measurements were done. Such surprises are generally a bad sign and lead to falsification of the theory.

But what has happened to the standard model in physics is that instead of admitting that it has been falsified they have added more and more fudge factors and hacks in order to try to keep it consistent with observed data. It reminds me of what happened centuries ago when they believed that the sun and the planets orbited around the earth. They used epicycle theories which they made more and more complicated when new observations contradicted their theories.

The Wolfram Physics Project model is a completely new way of looking at fundamental physics. Everything in physical reality in the model is made of a "no-thing" called a hypergraph:

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"The basic concept of applying our models to physics is to imagine that the complete structure and content of the universe is represented by an evolving hypergraph. There is no intrinsic notion of space; space and its apparent continuum character are merely an emergent large‐scale feature of the hypergraph. There is also no intrinsic notion of matter: everything in the universe just corresponds to features of the hypergraph.

There is also no intrinsic notion of time. The rule specifies possible updates in the hypergraph, and the passage of time essentially corresponds to these update events occurring." - Stephen Wolfram, A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Anderz

[Jacobsrw]

59 minutes ago, Anderz said:

From my amateur perspective it seems that science, and thereby society at large, has moved astray into a trap of dogma. Stephen Wolfram mentioned that at first he didn't believe that the Higgs field, which supposedly spans the entire universe, could possibly work. He also gave several examples of surprises in particle physics when actual measurements were done. Such surprises are generally a bad sign and lead to falsification of the theory.

But what has happened to the standard model in physics is that instead of admitting that it has been falsified they have added more and more fudge factors and hacks in order to try to keep it consistent with observed data. It reminds me of what happened centuries ago when they believed that the sun and the planets orbited around the earth. They used epicycle theories which they made more and more complicated when new observations contradicted their theories.

The Wolfram Physics Project model is a completely new way of looking at fundamental physics. Everything in physical reality in the model is made of a "no-thing" called a hypergraph:

 

Is this not another perspective that attempts to quantify space and time much like Einstein’s general relativity, E = mc2?

What advancement will this contribute to understanding the fundamentals of reality? Is this not just but one more conceptual analysis of the metaphysical that struggles to still explain it?

[Anderz]

@Jacobsrw I think the main difference between the Wolfram Physics Project and the standard model is that in Wolfram's model there is a single graph that represents everything. In the standard model of physics there isn't even any foundation, and only secondary foundations such as the Higgs field, dark energy, gravitons and whatnot. A complete mess, frankly.

[Jacobsrw]

5 hours ago, Anderz said:

@Jacobsrw I think the main difference between the Wolfram Physics Project and the standard model is that in Wolfram's model there is a single graph that represents everything. In the standard model of physics there isn't even any foundation, and only secondary foundations such as the Higgs field, dark energy, gravitons and whatnot. A complete mess, frankly.

Interesting. I’ll have to look into it.

What’s the fundamental purpose of it though? A conceptual map for physics? Won’t this just be another cereal box on the isle? 

[Anderz]

@Jacobsrw My own view is that the Wolfram Physics Project has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in physics. Today physics is very much stuck in their dogma. And it has to be that way. Millions of people dependent on academia, scientific journals, universities and other institutions and even governments have to cling to the dogma even if the experts know it has been falsified.

To reject the standard model in physics is too disruptive for society as it is today. What Wolfram's project can do is to work outside of established academia with their peer reviews and narrow criteria for what they allow to be researched. This will allow a smooth and gradual transition over many years from the standard model to the new model.

[Anderz]

Superstring theories are a common approach to explain the fundamental level of physics. Do the superstring models make the Wolfram Physics Project unnecessary? No, I don't think so. Because what are superstrings? The don't seem very fundamental to me. A graph on the other hand is a fundamental object. The graph represents the total picture as a wholeness. Superstrings are a plural term, hence by definition not a wholeness, therefore not fundamental.

Also, in superstring theory they use what to me seems like dubious math. For example they have some special math that adds all natural numbers into the sum of -1/12. Seriously? 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... to infinity equals -1/12? By shifting infinite sums they can come up with this result, such as:

 

[Anderz]

How can the Wolfram Physics Project (WPP) model be fundamental, meaning how can the model be the rock bottom of all existence? I think of the WPP model as a part of Indra's net. Actually, Leo said in a video that reality is difference. And Indra's net is a result of that! Because the single (nondual) difference means that there exists that which it is a difference between. And then there are differences between the original difference and so on leading to an explosion of differences which all are connected to each other, and that is exactly what Indra's net is.

And the multiway graph in the WPP model is a part of Indra's net which represents all possible connections. Then who created the original difference? The answer is: nobody! The difference just timelessly is, like a platonic form. How can we know that the difference exists? It's similar to how 2+2 = 4 is a timeless existence. The notion "2 + 2 = 4" is not made of anything. It's a platonic Form:

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"The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas[1][2][3] is a philosophical theory, concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas.[4] According to this theory, ideas in this sense, often capitalized and translated as "Ideas" or "Forms",[5] are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations." - Wikipedia

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

How much impact the Wolfram Physics Project will have on society and on the world remains to be seen. I believe that the impact will be huge! But it will take many years before significant changes and social impact on a larger scale happens. As it is now, even though the model is simple at its foundation it quickly becomes incredibly complicated when they start matching it to the standard model in physics.

I have made comments and suggestions to the project and probably made myself look like a complete fool, haha. Because the math and the physics involved is way over my head. But I think it's useful to give inputs from a nondual perspective just to break the habit of thinking in dualistic terms.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

A huge impact on society I now realized, if the model turns out to be correct, is that it will change how we perceive accidents, risks, randomness, errors and mistakes, even in our everyday personal lives. One amazing thing Stephen Wolfram has discovered is that many processes are unpredictable yet still deterministic. Wolfram explained in a recent live stream that the model is completely deterministic. Apparent randomness is a result of the impossibility of being able to predict beforehand what the future will be for what he calls computationally irreducible processes.

It's NOT the kind of mechanical determinism that Laplace described centuries ago, where he believed that a being who knew all the particles in the universe would be able to fully predict the future. The remarkable thing Wolfram discovered is that even for many very simple processes it's impossible to predict the outcome even when they are deterministic. The outcome of the model then is that there aren't in an absolute sense any accidents, randomness or mistakes in nature or even in any human activities. It may be similar to how Leo has described reality.

 

[Jacobsrw]

23 hours ago, Anderz said:

A huge impact on society I now realized, if the model turns out to be correct, is that it will change how we perceive accidents, risks, randomness, errors and mistakes, even in our everyday personal lives. One amazing thing Stephen Wolfram has discovered is that many processes are unpredictable yet still deterministic. Wolfram explained in a recent live stream that the model is completely deterministic. Apparent randomness is a result of the impossibility of being able to predict beforehand what the future will be for what he calls computationally irreducible processes.

It's NOT the kind of mechanical determinism that Laplace described centuries ago, where he believed that a being who knew all the particles in the universe would be able to fully predict the future. The remarkable thing Wolfram discovered is that even for many very simple processes it's impossible to predict the outcome even when they are deterministic. The outcome of the model then is that there aren't in an absolute sense any accidents, randomness or mistakes in nature or even in any human activities. It may be similar to how Leo has described reality.

 

Interesting points you’ve made.

I am open to the possibility that this conception of physics could provided some implications in the relative domain of human existence. However, in the Absolute domain this is all redundant. Because fundamentally all distinctions collapse, dogmatic physics and non-dogmatic physics would invariably dissolve. Nonetheless this could be a use of tool in a dualistic sense. 
 

My question is to what extent is this useful in the relative sense? What implications would this have for a “living” human being?

On 04/06/2020 at 9:26 PM, Anderz said:

How can we know that the difference exists? It's similar to how 2+2 = 4 is a timeless existence. The notion "2 + 2 = 4" is not made of anything. It's a platonic Form:

Mathematics is completely arbitrary, this is one of my biggest sticks with the mathematical sciences. They assume mathematics is a quantitative measure inherent in reality. Yet they undermine the fact that the mind projects mathematics onto reality and assumes it absolute. No mind = no mathematics. It’s the minds language in numbers. All math is relative and dependent on the context, that context turns out to be the mind.

[Anderz]

3 hours ago, Jacobsrw said:

My question is to what extent is this useful in the relative sense? What implications would this have for a “living” human being?

Mathematics is completely arbitrary, this is one of my biggest sticks with the mathematical sciences. They assume mathematics is a quantitative measure inherent in reality.

One important consequence of the Wolfram model is that if it's true, then we don't have free will. I have noticed how in philosophy there is a lot of discussion about the need for free will related to moral responsibility. But I think it's very simple. Nonduality teacher Roger Castillo used an example of someone having been caught committing a crime, and the person claims that it was done without free will, and then the Judge replies: I understand that, and me sentencing you to prison is also done without free will. Haha, so that completely eliminates the question about moral responsibility in my opinion.

And no free will in Wolfram's sense is still a form of free will in the sense that we actually have to perform our actions including personal choices and willpower as a part of the whole universe. Computational irreducibility means that we cannot "cheat" and jump ahead into the future.

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"Computational irreducibility may also provide a scientifically-based resolution for free will." - Wikipedia

Regarding math, I have heard Stephen Wolfram mentioning that the math used today is very much a result of history and culture. It's just a slice out of all possible math. The example of "2 + 2 = 4" I gave was meant as a platonic form, something that timelessly exists. For example the notion "2" is just a label. In binary form the same expression is 10 + 10 = 100. So what I mean is that even without math, the truth of 2+2 = 4 still exists according to how I see it.

[Anderz]

I found a Scientific American article about the project:

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"But Wolfram’s model’s ability to incorporate currently accepted physics is not necessarily that impressive. “It’s this sort of infinitely flexible philosophy where, regardless of what anyone said was true about physics, they could then assert, ‘Oh, yeah, you could graft something like that onto our model,’” says Scott Aaronson, a quantum computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

When asked about such criticisms, Gorard agrees—to a point. “We’re just kind of fitting things,” he says. “But we're only doing that so we can actually go and do a systematized search” for specific rules that fit those of our universe.

Wolfram and Gorard have not yet found any computational rules meeting those requirements, however. And without those rules, they cannot make any definite, concrete new predictions that could be experimentally tested. Indeed, according to critics, Wolfram’s model has yet to even reproduce the most basic quantitative predictions of conventional physics. " - scientificamerican.com, May 6, 2020

I agree with the critics BUT my guess is that Wolfram and his team HAVE to match current theories in physics, or few people would take it seriously. So they have to start by fitting their model into the current standard model in physics. And then as a next step they can start to "prune" their model into a much smaller one that not necessarily agrees with the current standard model yet has more and simpler explanation power of how the universe works.