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The Universe in 4 Lines of Code?
serendigital writes "Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of Mathematica has, after 10 years+ finished his book, "A New Kind of Science." In a "Wired" article entitled: The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ...," Steven Levy talks about how and why the book was written and more importantly, what it is about. The best part of the article is in this exchange: 'I've got to ask you,' I say. 'How long do you envision this rule of the universe to be?' ... 'I don't know. In Mathematica, for example, perhaps three, four lines of code.'" This book seems a little... nutty. But it's been submitted a bunch of times. If anyone wants to review it, go right ahead.
I managed to get it a week ago because I work at a bookstore. I'm about halfway through, and so far it's overrated. The demonsrated cellular automata are very cool, but Wolfram constantly confuses similar behavior for causation. After the first 300 pages describing various kinds of CAs, he slips into pure "I suspect" and "Probably" and "Very likely" mode without really explaining why he suspects the things he does. The wildest thing he's stated so far (without any real evidence, just lots of "It is my strong belief") is that space and time are discrete on a very small scale, and are stuctured as a network of nodes. He doesn't (yet) go so far as saying that the universe is actually a simulation running in a computer. Maybe he will later in the book. Most of the rest of it seems to be concerned with the limits of computation.
In his credit, he does make a good argument that much of nature is based on processes analogous to CAs, particularly the growth of plants and pigmentation patterns on animals. But again there's lots of "I believe" and practically no "I've observed."
Looks like he's rediscovered chaos theory - simple input intp simple equations give complex outputs; he thinks he can find the simple input which generates the universe from a chaos producing equation.
Perhaps I'm being too rash (haven't read the book, but I certainly will), but it seems we cannot apply this theory to predict anything about our own universe, simply because applying cellular automaton methods would require incredibly detailed measurements of initial conditions. We can't measure the positions and momenta of all particles (thank you dear Heisenberg) in order to predict weather or cosmology, and the innumerable factors affecting theories of finance, politics, biology and others are likely to be beyond the reach of measurement as well. Pity.
Perhaps if combined with some sort of Monte Carlo simulation, it might have some applications: specify a million scenarios and compute probabilities for visible effects. Still, the same thing can be achieved with current computational models at lower computing cost than the tiny scale of a CA model would require.
Lastly, if found, the rule will be beyond proof. It will just be a rule that generates systems within computer simulations that are similar to observed phenomena. Good enough for some perhaps, but anything that's beyond proof tends to take on a theological flavor. Not my kind of thing.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
As PERL is the swiss army chainsaw of computer programming, Mathematica is the swiss army chainsaw of mathematics. The syntax isn't as forgiving as PERL, but it's not bad. Here's a snippit I use for singular value decomposition:
{u, md, v} = svout;
Print["u is ", u//MatrixForm];
I've done the same thing with LAPACK and CLAPACK (scientific programming libraries) and in 3 lines of FORTRAN, C or C++ you haven't even started to define your data. In Mathematica, you're already done.
Then there's visualization. Running on a PC or via XWindows, Mathematica can do stunning graphics -- including interactive graphics -- with almost no coding. It's not entirely flexible (sort of like using SAS or SPSS' graphics routines), but again you can do astoundingly great things with almost no code.
In short, Mathematica is very close, for mathematics, to what PERL is for programming (or insert your favorite programming language or toolkit - but I think PERL fits best). While in the olden days of CGI everyone would have their own copy of cgi-lib.pl, now PERL has this functionality built in -- we just do stuff like do stuff like "my $query = new CGI;". In Mathematica, the language has evolved similarly so that stuff you needed to write lots of code for previously is now abstracted to a few functions. Like PERL's ability to use modules, you can write your own add-ons for Mathematica. Like PERL's POD, Mathematica can be used for documentation (and *was* used to write the Mathematica Book, and presumably Wolfram's new book).
Just a few words about Mathematica. Give it a try, if you're remotely interested in how this stuff works. You'll probably like it!
is that the observable universe is defined by calculus and differential equations in very small areas: planetery motion, for example, or atomic physics.
Phenomena like life, geology and the like are very badly behaved with respect to our standard mathematical tools and we all know this.
Wolfram is suggesting that cellular automata provide a simple framework for examining the phenomena outside of the "magic circle" of the calculus: i.e. most of life and the universe.
Of course, for a long time we've confused hard science with the application of calculus, which has effected what we consider "science" to be: if it is not an equation, we don't think it's scientific.
Well,
1> go talk to some biologists
2> get used to it: equations got us this far, but after this it may be increasingly about computation.
Consider, for example, the Four Color Theorem - the only existing proof of which requires a lot of computer power to grind through cases. Is it a valid proof? Probably - but not to the standards of mathematicians who grew up in the pre-computer age, to whom an exhaustively checked list of cases does not look like mathematics at all.
We'll see how Wolfram's work fares over time, but my bet is that it will fare Quite Well.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
I pre-ordered this book from Amazon and have been reading it the last two days. It has some flaws; often, for example, Wolfram will put forward an idea or assertion and then simply leave it there, without support. Other times what he's saying is, like, "duh, that's obvious." Much of what he's written is stuff that seems very straightforward. But the reason it seems straightforward is that he's basically taking a qualitative approach as opposed to the traditional quantitative approach. As in, "look, these CAs reproduce patterns that look remarkably like mollusk shells," or, "here's a CA that produces the exact kind of turbulance behind a moving plate that we see in a wind tunnel." Which is all very interesting. It gets really wild when he starts talking about the fundamental structure of the universe. I was really excited at this point because for five or six years now I've imagined the basic structure as a network of nodes that follow simple combinatoric rules, which is exactly what he described. I had already figured that relativity and motion and mass and gravity and such could easily be derived from these nets, but I had trouble figuring out how to deal with quantum superposition... so I was really eager to see how Wolfram solved that problem. The letdown: he didn't. He basically said, "it's easy to see how we get motion and mass and gravity and relativity... and I'm sure we can get quantum mechanics out of it too, if we run much more complicated simulations than any that I've run." In short, he flaked out. Still, there's a lot of good stuff in the book to recommend it. And for all you bozos who think it's not possible to express the entire nature of the universe in four lines of code (or even four lines of ENGLISH): Wolfram is absolutely right about the claim, he just hasn't achieved it yet. Read the book before you say "nay."
The book sounds like a belated promo for cellular automata (that stuff was cool a few decades ago when Conway at Princeton was playing around with the game of Life on his computer ... Conway is a real mathematician by the way who has done some very legitimate work.)
The real genius of Wolfram is not his "formula" that claims to explain the world, but how he has bilked universities and research institutes around the world in the untold millions for Mathematica site licenses.
It is not an understatement to call Wolfram the Microsoft of scientific computing software. Both Gates and Wolfram dropped out of academia to create their respective computing empires. Both use proprietary data formats to lock in their customers. Both go to school campuses and offer students the "first hit" for free.
Gates' used a little of Dad's money (wealthy Washington lawyer) to get his start. Wolfram, in a stroke of true genius, used his McArthur grant to set up shop.
The book is just a farce to make the hungry PhD Computer Science students who bang their heads trying to fix the bugs in Mathematica (and there are many) feel like Wolfram is doing something useful for his hefty paycheck while they sweat over their mundane chores. Can't you just hear them whispering to each other "When is Stevie Wonderboy going to tell us how the universe got started?"
If you are at a university that has a site license for Mathematica, ask the university to consider canceling the license and purchasing the open-source REDUCE system instead. It is an older product than Mathematica and lacks a slick GUI interface. This is no longer a problem though because REDUCE interfaces nicely with TeXmacs, and if you haven't heard about the latter, check out this Metafont-based WYSIWYG scientific editor at www.texmacs.org.
Just my 2 cents worth; done ranting :)
This sounds a lot like Ed Fredkin's Digital Mechanics theories. Which isn't surpising, considering that Wolfram and Fredkin used to work together.
surely you need relativistic mechanics to describe the orbits themselves
As I vaguely recall from a physics course long long ago, Newton's equations are not wrong. There is a derivative term that everyone assumes is a constant, but written as a derivative, which is not constant under relativistic effects. Written properly, Maxwell's equations would be still be valid with relativistic effects. Classical mechanics is just a simplification of relativistic mechanics.
People interested in the concept of the universe
as a digital computer should look at
http://www.digitalphilosophy.org.
Fredkin was thinking about this stuff long before Wolfram was born.
It gives an accurate picture of physics, but not an accurate picture of anything with meaning, i.e. - relationships, love, peace, etc.
:) Establishing the probability (yes probability IS MATH, I know it is only a /chance/ of something happening, but it is still math!) of a person belonging to ideological group Y based upon that persons relationships with persons of interest A, B, and C (along with D, E, F, and G. ;) ) is a rather complicated field of study that is very much so within the sciences.
:P
:)
When it does, call me.
Ah, one at a time now.
relationships
Sure it does, in fact logical and mathematical modeling of relationships between groups and even between individuals is widely used and has been for sometime.
Just ask the CIA or FBI.
Granted we can't yank information out of a person's head;
yet.
:)
Discovering and mapping out these such relationships is a precursor to the eventual complete mapping out of all interpersonal human emotions and thoughts, but hell, the human mind has had up to 2 million years to evolve (depending on who you want to listen to) complex ways to fudge things up;
you expect things to get done when we have only recently even learned at the very HINTS of what causes the mind to work?
Bah. Give it time. But do not say it is not a science, Science is by definition All That Exists.
If it exists Science will find it out. If the current methodologies or languages of Science cannot be used to describe whatever it is that is discovered, then new languages will be developed and new methods of research will be created.
Science may be full of crotchety old inflexible men, but those crotchety old men die sooner or latter, and even better some of them are not as inflexible as you may think.
love
Science has already identified the cause for love (inherently necessary in order to keep the two parent long term system of child baring functional, not that hard to figure that one out), and is well on its way to discovering the various causes.
Already Science has isolated various chemicals that are responsible for a few of the physical incarnations of love ('that tingly feeling' and such), and soon hopefully science shall discover the remaining information as well.
Peace
Depends on what kind of peace you want.
If you mean peace as in 'no guns shooting people' then simple statistical analysis will give you the rates of death by various causes.
If you mean peace as in not being stressed out to hell then Science has had that one for quite some time, tons of chemicals involved ya (actually not that many) but hardly a secret.
Hell even the hippies had that one down.
If you mean peace as in inner wellbeing;
well heck then you are asking for bare level metaphysics, and that is just a state of mind any ways;
And science knows the causes of self delusion as well.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
For one, Wolfram is lobbing a mind-grenade at the ivory-tower sciences. For years, interdisciplinary communication has been neglected, with each discipline thinking that their area is "unique" or "special" somehow. His idea that "it's all much simpler than that" flies in the face of those who want to believe that their "specialized" knowledge is more unique, or valuable, than oh, a general algorithm. This will offend most scientists, who want to think that, say, astrophysics is more complex than sociology (and vice versa).
Human pride in their past achievements stifles much of new human achievement, and the proponents of major achievements were usually whackos at the time (Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein, Nash, Darwin) who questioned legions of prior thought with much simpler explanations. Ockham's razor indicates that four lines are much more likely than an infinitely complex universe, but, in the meantime, millions of scientists are working on finding more complexity, not simplifying.
He (Wolfram) also directly challenges some other older, widely held, beliefs in science, such as a "wet lab" (say, using human cells) cannot be replaced by a simulation. I find it amusing (as a computer professional), as it is akin to saying that an "actual accountant cannot be replaced by a spreadsheet" (or even a that a car mechanic cannot be replaced by a 'bot).
Many accountants grinding numbers were replaced by automations, but the design components, the accounting concepts, were still writing the code. In short, old school scientists looking for lots of "underlying algorithms" would lose job security if their discoveries were simply macros from another field, and their lab was reduced to replication of old data, rather than new discovery.
After reading both Science and Nature for many years, it starts as funny when you first see this actually happening, and then becomes pathetic.... when it takes 8 years for two fields to use the same two line algo's to describe a behavior (say, CA and Planetary formation). The current scientific mindset does not lead to a social scientist browsing physics journals or vice versa, for some reason, they seem to think that some things in the Universe are unrelated to other things in the universe (maybe the "Uni" part is ill-explained to scientists in training?)
Another notion he questions is the concept of "free-will", which has been an underpinning of western civilization since, well, western civilization. Not because it's a well proven, logical concept, but because the very concept of "self" and "identity" hinge on the ideas that somehow, a person is in control. People won't like this, as they'd rather be the master over a machine than a meat-machine. In bio-ethics, there's an entire war over using or changing out the machine components, hinging on a religious belief that there is a "soul", or something similar, that makes a meat-machine unique. If we are all four lines of code, or even 50000, we are much less "special" or "unique", we are not free will but a product of a program.
For all of those tired 42 jokes on this page, maybe I missed the point, maybe they did, I dunno. The entire 42 theme was that humanity, the planet earth, was just code. That any sufficiently complex system may have underlying simple questions, and simple answers. What those who didn't read the Adams books, it goes like this: The earth is just a computing device to give an answer in the form of a question. Nothing more. Tell this to religious authorities, goverment authorities, those who believe in a value of "will" or "life" and they will recoil. The meta code is a bit like two lines: // I forget the limit
initialize $earth;
sleep ($limit);
print question_of_meaning($earth);
With a runtime of many years, and millions of sub variables ($beer_sip_counter and so on), but a simple code starting base (as compared to the derivative results). This is no biggie, it's a self-modifying codebase ($earth varies itself). The premise that the entire universe could be a self-modifying codebase, however, flies in the face of those who want to find the static question, or a static answer. In a self-modifying codebase, both could change. Those who want a concept of "god" want something else messing with variables, those who want "meaning" want something that provides the meat-machine with meaning... and so on.
Just going this far, I know why it took him ten years. Years of self-editing to modify the above, etc.
Anyways, my four lines for a multiverse, in metacode:
while ($existance) { matter = matter;
//int is for folks who need to declare things often, like gods!
define function multiverse ( rand(multiverse));
multiverse ($earth); }
read this book:
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan...
Love, relationships and most defintely peace is explained by math. Why? Because of DNA, Natural Selection and simply who we are.
Get your Unix fortune now!