Hawking: No 'Theory of Everything'

Flash Modin writes "In a Scientific American essay based on their new book A Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are now claiming physicists may never find a theory of everything. Instead, they propose a 'family of interconnected theories' might emerge, with each describing a certain reality under specific conditions. The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century."

Comments

The hand of Godel?

[Hatta]

Godel proved that all formal systems are either incomplete or inconsistent. Perhaps that's what we're dealing with here.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[abigor]

Godel used the term "formal system" to specifically mean a recursive axiomatic system that can do arithmetic. I don't think it really applies here.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[w0mprat]

We work on the assumption that the laws of physics are perfect and complete, and we are just trying to reveal them. The laws of physics could work well enough but actually be incomplete and consistent as you point out. They could even bebe crappy, bloated and buggy with lots of missing chunks, unused bloat and even errors.

If the laws of physics emerged naturally, for example budding off from a parent universe, and subject to a process of evolution I would expect theories of everything to be 'just good enough' and barely work rather than somehow perfect and elegant and mystical. Much like the junk DNA, apendix and mens nipples that rides along with us because evolution didn't really have pressure need to get rid of them.

I would say we should by default expect a theory of everything a whole basket of seemingly clumsy unweildy theories that barely fit together - after all they only need to be just good enough for us to be here and not any better. If we expect flawless elegant unified symmetry and beauty, then we'd need to demonstrate why (without invoking God to explain etc).

Researchers have been seduced by subjectively elegant and simple equations all the way back to F=MA ... these worked well enough, but were ultimately wrong, the truth was more complex and nuanced, but now we're finding the universe is fuzzy, clumsy and possibly buggy (inflation, possible variations in c, other weirdness).

Re:The hand of Godel?

[Hatta]

Aren't the laws of physics axioms for the universe? Isn't the idea behind a grand unified theory to find one or two simple mathematical expressions (axioms) from which the rest of the universe can be derived? The universe is clearly Turing complete, so I really don't see how it wouldn't apply.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[Hatta]

If the "Theory of Everything" isn't complete, then how is it a theory of *everything*?

Re:The hand of Godel?

[Abcd1234]

Because you don't understand Godel's theorem, which is grossly misunderstood by basically everyone who's ever heard of it colloquially. Here, have a little read on how it's so wonderfully misunderstood, and so horribly misapplied.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[luis_a_espinal]

Prove it.

Easy. Proof by contradiction:

Assume there is a universal (and extremely long) string U that encodes a countable set containing all problems P_i (encoded as decision problems) that are possible in this Universe. We can trivially see that indeed U must contain all problems that exist for it to represent the Universe. Otherwise, it does not represent the Universe.

Furthermore, if every decision problem P_i in U is decidable, then there is a (not necessarily unique) Turing Machine T_i that halts in finite time for each problem P_i in U. With this assumption, then there would be a Universal Turing Machine T that is a chain of all turning machines T_i that can compute (and thus give meaning) to all problems P_i in U (the string encoding of the universe.) That is, T is the universe.

But the halting problem is not in U. In fact, U cannot contain neither semi decidable nor undecidable problems (which was our base assumption). However, the halting problem (and all other semi-decidable and undecidable problems) exists in the Universe. U then, cannot be an encoding of the universe, and T (a turing machine) cannot be the Universe either.

qed.

It may just be a matter of scale - we simply aren't able to take a large enough view. A turing machine, if you only look at one small part of it, is no longer turing-complete. And the presence of a turing-complete machine doesn't mean the enclosing reality suddenly is turing-complete. Think babushka dolls, as in Soviet Russia, Turing completes YOU!

Dude, the fact that there are problems in this Universe (and thus part of it) that are not turing computable (a mathematical fact indeed) does indicate that the universe is not a Turing complete nor Turing computable. The universe is naturally uncountable.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[tomhudson]

First problem ( of many ) - a representation of something is not that something. This is something that programmers forget all the time. There is no such thing as objects, methods, function calls, etc. Those are just representations. At a higher level, ordering a pizza online, and them sending you a fax of that pizza, is not going to work either. Even them sending you a complete description of the state of every single atom in a pizza is not going to work. Information, contrary to popular belief, is not equivalent to the thing being described.

In other words, even if you had a machine that was able to represent every single state of the universe, it is not equivalent to the universe. Any description of something, no matter how detailed, is not that thing, no matter how many times people chant "information theory says otherwise." It's like the pastor who preaches against same-sex marriage, saying it's unnatural and that same-sex behaviour doesn't occur in nature, but completely ignores the male dog humping his leg.

However, what you offer is not proof by contradiction. It buys into the idea that there's the possibility that the universe might be represented by a Turing machine. That's the flawed premise (but try to get people to see it when they've got their precious theories on the line).

Also, the halting problem is trivially solved by allowing the arrow of time to reverse at the end of each calculation (say once a second), so that even a near-infinite solution must, by definition, complete in 1 second of "real" time. In other words, either the Turing machine continues to exist after one second, or it disappears - stuck in an infinite time loop. This lets you know that the problem is either solvable, or not.

As for the "dude" bit, please see my profile thx bye!

Re:The hand of Godel?

[John Hasler]

The universe contains complete, formal, logical systems (e.g. computers).

Real computers are not complete, formal, logical systems.

Are they not governed by the laws of physics?

Real computers are, yes. And they are, therefor, not complete, formal, logical systems. The future state of a real computer is not entirely determined by its current state.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[Goldsmith]

I don't know Godel as well as some other people here, but I do know physics and you're making a lot of assumptions there, starting with that the universe can be "derived" from a theory of everything. The name is a little unfortunate, but the goal of a theory of everything is to create a unified description of the fundamental forces, not a program to simulate the entire universe. If you wanted to simply say "the theory of everything won't be able to tell you absolutely everything about every particle in the universe," you'd be right, and probably that's where you're going with your incompleteness thing.

More fundamentally though, you're assuming the universe is a logical system. From a physicists point of view, it is a happy coincidence that rigorous mathematics is useful in describing the universe, but there is nothing that demands that this is the case (more practically: we're happy in physics to have assumptions about things like causality and time invariance, where needed).

This may sound crazy to most people, but why exactly mathematics has been so successful in physics is still a subject of debate among physicists: whether mathematics approximates an ultimately imperfect physical reality or mathematics *is* physical reality. I don't think it will be settled soon.

Re:The hand of Godel?

[FrangoAssado]

Here is a way it could possibly not apply.

Your argument seems to be this (please correct me if I'm misrepresenting it):

Take the formal system of the "theory of everything", call it TOE. By Godel's theorem, there exists a certain arithmetic statement (G) that is independent of TOE. Because the universe is Turing complete, it's possible to physically build a Turing machine (M) whose output (or, even better, whether it halts or not) depends on the truth value of G. Since G is undecidable in TOE, the "theory of everything" can't predict what would physically happen if we actually build M in the physical world. So, this means that the "theory of everything" can't actually predict everything.

One possible objection is the following:

When you follow Godel's proof, you notice that the arithmetic statement that the proof constructs involves huge numbers, and that the more axioms you put on your system, the larger the numbers involved must be (if you don't remember just how huge the numbers are, go back and check it: it's mind boggling, even for the relatively simple formal system used by Godel).

That in itself would not be a problem, since we're only talking about the theoretical possibility of the existence of the "theory of everything". But, it turns out that it's possible (and even probable) that our universe is not actually Turing complete because there's a limit to how much computation is possible even in principle. That is, it's possible that the formal system of the "theory of everything" is complex enough that in order to build the Turing machine that would be unpredictable, you'd either have put so much in too little space that it would become a black hole, or you'd have to spread it out so much (in order to prevent the black hole) that the universe expansion would make one end of the Turing machine inaccessible to the other end, and so the machine wouldn't be able to compute anymore.

In case that last point is not too clear, you can find a much better explanation in this lecture (search for "So what does any of this have to do with computation?").

I'm not saying that this is the case, but it's certainly a possibility that has not been ruled out (and maybe it's even true).

Re:The hand of Godel?

[PenguiN42]

However, the halting problem (and all other semi-decidable and undecidable problems) exists in the Universe.

This is a HUGE assumption on which your entire argument hinges, so I think you need to define it more precisely, and provide some evidence that it is true.

Your argument seems to fall apart due to equivocation -- at the beginning you define a set of "problems" that the universe turing machine has to solve. For example, one of those "problems" might be "if you arrange mass in a certain configuration, in which direction will it accelerate?"

However, you then include "the halting problem" in this set. Bzzzt, full stop. This is a decidedly different sense of the word "problem." In this case, we're talking about an abstract idea that only exists as definitions on paper and in peoples' minds, but doesn't actually physically exist in the universe. In other words, our universe can talk about and consider and represent undecidable problems, but that doesn't mean it can actually solve them.

If you disagree, please describe a phyisical system that is "the halting problem" or some other undecidable problem and show that the universe can indeed resolve it.

Oblig

[gmuslera]

xkcd

Re:Oblig

[blair1q]

You know, it's no longer necessary to actually link to xkcd from /.

Just mention the number.

We'll laugh just as hard.

Re:Oblig

[jewens]

Some people just don't know how to tell a joke.

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonus points if your uid is funny.

Re:Oblig

[EnsilZah]

It got me to check 404 though, which actually displays a 404, given 403 and 405 do point to actual comics leads me to believe is actually intentional, geeze this guy is committed.

unified theory by the turn of the century

[Culture20]

"The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century."

I think the turn of the century reversed his claim for him.

Re:unified theory by the turn of the century

[jd]

Actually, no. I was at the talk and he actually stated that every time people predicted the end of physics, something new was discovered that revolutionized the field; that in this light he was going to predict the end of physics and the discovery of a theory of everything. As far as I'm concerned, he has achieved his objective. Something new has indeed been discovered and it does appear to have revolutionized the field.

To those who think Hawking is beyond his prime, I'll say maybe. No scientist likes to give up working in their field and Hawking has far fewer reasons than most to want to. One major contribution he can make is in describing how he models the physics in his mind. The depth of his mental agility is staggering and knowing how he achieves it would be extremely valuable. We know a little of Einstein's method, but it needs a team - I'd suggest at a minimum a physicist, an analyst trained in extracting specifications from experts whether or not the expert knows what the specifications are and an expert in thinking techniques. The idea would be that the physicist is the only one who knows what would be meaningful to ask and how to understand the answers, the analyst is the only person trained in using examples to unveil the underlying mechanisms and methods, and you still then need someone to turn this model into something that can actually be used by others.

Re:unified theory by the turn of the century

[dkleinsc]

It depends how fast he was moving relative to the calendar he was referring to.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[Sonny Yatsen]

He's a theoretical physicist. Theories ARE his results.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[Anonymous Coward]

What sort of people do you think predict the as yet unobserved particles that Fermi and LHC people are looking for? Though I doubt Hawking is right on this one, not many besides you would say he was on the sidelines anyway.

Past His Prime

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

I certainly hate to say it. And I certainly don't think I'm any smarter. But, Hawking is past his prime. It seems like he's been saying stuff recently just to say stuff. Maybe it's for attention, maybe it's because he knows extraordinary claims will sell headlines and his books/documentaries, or maybe it's because he actually believes in them. However, after his comments on active SETI being dangerous and now this... I don't know, it's like watching an amazing baseball player, past his prime, coaching a crappy minor league team. It's hard to criticize because I was never as good as he, and even now I couldn't manage a Denny's, but I don't really want to watch him either.

Re:Past His Prime

[amicusNYCL]

It seems like he's been saying stuff recently just to say stuff.

Totally. He just likes to hear his own voice.

Re:Past His Prime

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Totally. He just likes to hear his own voice.

Now you're making me wish that I hadn't commented in this discussion just so I could mod you up. Although if I had never commented, then you wouldn't have been able to reply to me and I wouldn't have been able to mod you up anyway. Maybe some smart scientist could help us out with this paradox.

Re:Past His Prime

[interkin3tic]

It happens. James Watson, who was part of the team that discovered the structure of DNA, has been saying crazier things for years.

My favorite was his presentation on why men liked butts. Certainly funnier than his comments on race.

Scientists sometimes don't age well. We probably age better on average than rock stars, but then again people pay don't take what rock stars say as seriously as scientists.

Re:Past His Prime

[deodiaus2]

The comment about Hawkins being past his prime is really ugly, especially coming from you. I think Hawkins is honest enough to say that he does not know or understand something if he doesn't. Hawkins refered to himself as being lazy in his early years in college, so he does admit some of his shortcomings. Ronnie Reagan was often ignorant of the facts, but he said them with such conviction that even people who knew had to go back to check their references before retorting. We survived Ronnie, so I'm more inclined to trust Hawkins.
It might be that it takes a lifetime to learn enough physics in order to make a statement like that. Also, as someone said, the theory of everything might fall into Godel's incompleteness type of problem. Quantum physics is a patchwork of knowledge without enough theory to explain itself. Or the theory could be beyond Human understanding.

Re:Past His Prime

[smooth wombat]

Just invent a one-way time machine. Then you could mate with all the women you wanted when men become scarce (after the giraffes have long since ceased to rule the planet) then move forward in time, wait for the last photon to decay, see the Big Bang take place, take a potshot at Hitler and as the current time approaches, slow down enough to see the comments appearing, wait for someone else to make the joke then mod them up!

Of course you have to hope this universe isn't 10' higher than the previous universe.

Re:Past His Prime

[mcgrew]

But, Hawking is past his prime.

He's only ten years older than me, kid. He's a physicist, not a football player. Unless you get alzheimer's or drink a lot or play high impact sports (boxing or non-US football) your brain doesn't suffer much if any.

Like one of my old college profs was fond of saying, "kid, I've forgotten more than you've ever learned".

However, after his comments on active SETI being dangerous

I agree with him about that. Actively hunting for species that make us look like chimpanzes by comparison doesn't seem like the smartest thing we can do.

coaching a crappy minor league team

I'd say that research at Cambrige is hardly equivalent to coaching a crappy minor league team. And the list of his accomplishments puts your "past his prime" into perspective (see the wikipedia article on him):

1975 Eddington Medal
1976 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society
1979 Albert Einstein Medal
1981 Franklin Medal
1982 Order of the British Empire (Commander)
1985 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
1986 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
1988 Wolf Prize in Physics
1989 Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord
1989 Companion of Honour
1999 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society[45]
2003 Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University
2006 Copley Medal of the Royal Society[46]
2008 Fonseca Price of the University of Santiago de Compostela[47]
2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States[4]

"When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol." -- Stephen Hawking

I think I'll change my sig...

Re:Past His Prime

[oldhack]

You're conflating blings with accomplishment. Should have listed his papers instead of awards given to him.

Re:Past His Prime

[mcgrew]

Well, wikipedia didn't list his papers.

Re:Past His Prime

[colinrichardday]

He's only ten years older than me, kid. He's a physicist, not a football player. Unless you get alzheimer's or drink a lot or play high impact sports (boxing or non-US football) your brain doesn't suffer much if any.

Lots of US football players get concussions. I don't believe that helps them.

Re:Past His Prime

[ceoyoyo]

"He's a physicist, not a football player."

Theoretical physics is very much a young man's game, probably even more so than football. Lederman has a good quote in his book. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what it is, or who said it, but it involves physicists who are in their late twenties being over the hill.

When physicists get older they become administrators and mentors. Important jobs, but not the breakthrough stuff the young ones are known for.

Wisdom from DS9

[MBGMorden]

I'm reminded of a scene from DS9. Sure it's fiction, but it always held some sway with me:

Bashir: "Trevean was right. There is no cure. The Dominion made sure of that. But I was so arrogant, I thought I could find one in a week!"
Jadzia: "Maybe it was arrogant to think that. But it's even more arrogant to think there isn't a cure just because you couldn't find it."

Hawking a smart guy, but he by no means knows everything. Throwing in the towel and declaring that there is no right answer simply because he hasn't found it just doesn't hold much water with me. We might not figure it out for 100 years. We might figure it out tomorrow. We might NEVER figure it out, but simple logic says that there is a unified equation. It might not be simple or pretty, but if the universe operates on a consistent set of physical laws, it's out there.

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[electron sponge]

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[guyminuslife]

Simple logic says a lot of things, some of which it turns out are not true.

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[MortimerGraves]

I wonder if it may be an example of Clarke's First Law:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[Chris Burke]

Allowed, yes. Guaranteed, no. The point, hopefully received.

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[petermgreen]

Well, that seemed strange to me, so I looked back over the textbook's diagram for a NOR gate. I thought, "Surely this can't be correct. If you switch the pMOS transistors and the nMOS transistors, then you've got a logical AND gate.
Really the important rule is that there has to be voltage in the right direction between gate and source to turn a transistor on. So if you try to use a N channel in the top side of a logic circuit (or a P channel in the bottom side) you will get a follower (output voltage follows input voltage at some offset) rather than a switch.

You can try building it if you want and with the right transistors it will work up to a point but the output levels will always be lower than the input you feed in (unlike with a proper CMOS gate that relies on switch-like behaviour).

Re:Wisdom from DS9

[guyminuslife]

See, I knew I could get someone to help me with my homework!

What kind of semantic bullshit is this?

[RobinEggs]

Instead, they propose a "family of interconnected theories" might emerge

Which, if you read them all at the same sitting and follow all the connections, just might read like one big...unified theory.

This seems very, very close to a distinction without a difference.

Re:What kind of semantic bullshit is this?

[onionman]

Instead, they propose a "family of interconnected theories" might emerge

Which, if you read them all at the same sitting and follow all the connections, just might read like one big...unified theory.

This seems very, very close to a distinction without a difference.

No, there is a very important difference. Hawking is stating that there may be "locally everywhere solutions" without a "global solution." This is a very important concept in advanced mathematics. Go read about the mathematical terms "sheaf" and "local-global principle."

Hawking is essentially saying that there very well may not be one single theory which explains everything. Instead, there may be a bunch of theories, each of which is valid only in certain areas, and which agree with one another where they overlap, even without a global solution.

For a simple example which many readers may already be familiar with, consider the complex logarithm (e.g. the natural log on the complex numbers). To make it well defined, you must make a "branch cut" and decide which branch you want to take. Different branches agree where they overlap, but there is no single global solutions... just a patchwork of solutions that agree where needed (blah, blah lift to a covering space). Pick up a book on complex analysis for details.

Emergence might be infinite...

[RyanFenton]

I don't actually mind if this is the case. What it means then, is that new properties of aggregated matter emerge as you go up, and up in scope and scale, and that there does not have to be a set relationship on what rules must emerge.

Other than aesthetics, those emergent rules don't have to carry a thread of logic visible at all scopes. Rather, you just need to have the large number of interactions actually occur in relationship to eachother to see the combined effect, with many aspects unforeseeable by only observing the elements many magnitudes smaller.

Whether this might make the universe a more or less beautiful puzzle to figure out is open to interpretation.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Emergence might be infinite...

[entrigant]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the very idea of emergent phenomenon the result of a complex system emerging from less complex interactions? I was always under the impression the idea of a "theory of everything" is to isolate those simple interactions that all emergent behavior stems with the idea being that perhaps, in time, the emergent behavior can be predicted or even constructed.

Perhaps emergence can go both ways.. somehow? There is no base set of rules, and no matter how far in either direction you look you find more? I don't know, but it does seem that was we increase scale the trend is one way. The larger scale systems that we can explain are explained by smaller scale systems (at least from our point of view) and not vice versa.

In the end and for all we know we may be so far from the truth that if and when we do discover it it will look nothing like what we currently understand. We have no scale or basis for comparison. I find it amazing anyone would even attempt make claims as to what "the end" of knowledge looks like.

Excuse me, Dr. Hawking?

[Theory of Everything]

I'm right here. I promise I do exist. Really.

Re:Excuse me, Dr. Hawking?

[neo-mkrey]

I'm torn -- do I give you +1 Funny or +1 Informative?? Ooops, seeing as I have now posted, you will get neither.

Re:Excuse me, Dr. Hawking?

[gangien]

here*

aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggg

Re:Excuse me, Dr. Hawking?

[toddles666]

My mind would have been blown if his UUID was 42...

Just a result of age

[Troggie87]

As scientists age they become somewhat jaded, it happens to a lot of people. Hawking has seen a problem he thought was about to be solved get ever more complex while little new progress has been made. I don't blame him for changing his stance. I had a professor during my undergrad who had been a part of some of the first fusion research, and he would occasionally bring up that he didn't think it was possible. According to him, "the kids today are trying what we tried and couldn't get to work back then" (Paraphrased). Maybe doubting there is a solution to the problems you have struggled with all your life is the best way to find peace as your life winds down?

Oh, on a personal opinion note, I doubt we will ever find a *provable* theory of everything. Eventually someone will put together something that relates a lot of complex fields, but I suspect it will be something ad hoc and beyond the practical limits of humanity to test. (*cough* string theory variant *cough*)

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[oldhack]

It's about time they rethink this artificial theoretical/experimental barrier if all the "theories" being cooked up are so far out of the realm of verification that they might as well move to philosophy department.

You forget important addition to Goedel's theorem

[Cyberax]

You forget important addition to Goedel's theorem. Namely: "all philosophical consequences of Godel's theorem are bunk" (including this one).

Regarding your comment: there ARE complete and consistent formal systems. For example, real number theory is complete.

You can't have consistent, complete system if it's _complex_ _enough_ to describe integers.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[guyminuslife]

String Theory says there is.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[XxtraLarGe]

It's about time they rethink this artificial theoretical/experimental barrier if all the "theories" being cooked up are so far out of the realm of verification that they might as well move to philosophy department.

Maybe they should call themselves theoretical metaphysicists....

In other news...

[djupedal]

...Theory of Everything held a press conference today, stating "There is no Stephen Hawking."

When asked what the implications were as to whether or not there could ever be a Stephen Hawking, ToE replied "The door is open for a Stephen Hawking in the future, but it can only be a possibility if graphene birds fly out of my lily white butt..."

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[ColdWetDog]

It's about time they rethink this artificial theoretical/experimental barrier if all the "theories" being cooked up are so far out of the realm of verification that they might as well move to philosophy department.

I mean, it wouldn't it be surprising if they were given advanced degrees like "Doctor of Philosophy" or something like that?

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[Chris Burke]

It's about time they rethink this artificial theoretical/experimental barrier if all the "theories" being cooked up are so far out of the realm of verification that they might as well move to philosophy department. ...Said the blowhard in the 60s about the theoretical prediction of the W and Z boson twenty years before a device capable of detecting them was built.

It's not an artificial barrier, by the way, it's a practical arrangement. Both coming up with theories, and conducting and executing experiments, take substantial amounts of time that don't leave much left for the other. You might as well say we should eliminate the artificial barrier between academic computer architecture research and production circuit design. It don't work that way.

Re:Old news

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

When "Everything" is defined for certain values of "Kurt Godel"...

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[FrozenFOXX]

I always figured that when they found the theory to everything, they would find God. But since the don't believe in Him, they'll never find the theory to everything. At some point, science requires faith. On the religious side, God said the laws are irrevocable and He cannot break them - he knows the science and we are just trying to catch up. (In other words, science and religion/philosophy aren't necessarily at odds.)

I can't say my own views are too far off but there's a critical distinction that needs to be made. "Science" does not require faith (though the scientific COMMUNITY usually does...any non-physicists here test every law of thermodynamics lately?). "Science" is observation and experimentation. If you cannot experiment, you cannot demonstrably repeat it, it's usually not science. This isn't a Bad Thing because there are most likely some things we will never be able to classify under science.

I DO agree that science/religion aren't at odds...but only because when done properly the two have nothing to do with each other. One's about the How of the world working and the other's about the Why.

It's important to understand the difference between Religion/Philosophy and Science. The communities and people may have issues (kinda like our "faith" in Open Source...I haven't personally inspected the Linux kernel, but I believe that others have and what they tell me about it. Until I test it for myself I can't claim I'm doing science with it) but they are very, very distinct.

Re:Linux not work on 48 cores?

[rubycodez]

it will by the turn of the century. the 22nd century will be the century of Linux on the dozens-of-cores desktop.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[MaWeiTao]

The problem is that most young people who think they care about science are merely infatuated with the latest gadgets. Any venture that doesn't result in shiny toys to ogle and possess is a wasted endeavor.

from a previous story

[night_flyer]

'If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God.' Hawkins - 1988

What about Dr. Cooper's work?

[JAZ]

I've been watching documentaries about Dr Sheldon Cooper's work out at Caltech and I'm lead to believe that he's very close to proving String Theory as a Grand Unified Theory.

Surely, Professor Hawking is aware of this research?

Clarke said it best

[MpVpRb]

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong

/. mistake

[ObliviousMnd]

i don't agree with the last line of this, "The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century." He did NOT claim that physicists would discover a theory of everything, he simply asked what the chances were that physicists would find a complete unified theory of everything by the end of the century. It appears that there is a difference! Once again someone decided to skim read an article, or went off what they thought they remembered. way to go slashdot! rabble rabble rabble.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[spun]

I can prove to myself that space or antarctica exist without having to rely on someone else's experience. The difference between space and Antarctica, on the one hand, and God, on the other, are that, at least according to people who have been there, space and antarctica are physical, tangible things with discernible properties. God is not. I can watch a rocket taking off. I can not watch a person experiencing God. That experience is entirely subjective, and exists only in the person having it. Space and Antarctica are things that can be seen directly or videotaped. Sure, someone may be faking those videos, but that is stretching the definition of faith. Do you have to have faith to walk? According to you, you do. You need to have faith that the ground is solid, because you have not experienced the solidity of this piece of ground at this time. But don't you see that defining "faith" that way destroys any meaning the word has?

Science is not based on faith, because science does not even claim to tell us what is "true." If you think science tells us what is true and what is false, you drastically and fundamentally misunderstand what science is and how it works. True and false aren't part of it. It doesn't matter if a theory is true or not. We still use theories we absolutely know to be false, like Newton's theory of gravity. We use that instead of Einstein's theory in almost all engineering, because it is useful, that is to say, it makes accurate predictions in known circumstances. And it is much simpler to calculate. As long as your building is not traveling at light speed, Newton's theories are close enough to be useful. And that is all science tries to do, find theories that are useful, that make accurate and important predictions in given circumstances.

The thing about theories, you can test them. Science works because anyone can look at a theory, see what it predicts, and look at the real world, and see if it matches the theory. Personally, I have tested a great many theories of God, and none of them work as purported for me. I've lived as just a life as possible, believing in God. I've opened my heart. I've prayed. I've fasted. I've meditated. You know what I got for my troubles?

Nothing. Do you understand? I have done everything that the people who claim to have personally experienced God told me would work, and it didn't. That is the cold hard truth for most people. But I bet they said they did, because who wants to look impious? Now, science has given us other tools for looking at this dilemma. I could, with the help of science, personally experience God. Just shoot a beam at the right spot on a person's head, and they will experience everything the saints and mystics do, direct personal experience of God. Even knowing it came from a beam of electrons, most people who have experienced it still believe it was real, because it "felt real." But it wasn't really God, it was a particular region of the brain getting triggered by electricity.

Now, I have two possible explanations for this God thing. One is, he exists but is hiding from me personally. The other, everyone who had a direct experience of God just had a particular region of the brain triggered by some event.

And just to be clear, I do not want your advice on how to find God. Whatever you have to say, I've tried it already and it didn't work. No God for me. But that is really okay, I do not need a God. I do not need an external reason for this. This exists, and that is enough. All else is fantasy. There is no ultimate meaning or purpose to life or the universe, and that is a good thing, because it means we are free to create any meaning or purpose we like. I know that kind of freedom scares some small minded people, which is why they invented a God that, according to their books, is far, far less awe inspiring than the real universe.

I'll take reality, you can keep your useless schizophrenic God. You want to know who created reality? I did. Everything I see, I have given it all the meaning it

Inifinte States

[Roger W Moore]

And the same goes for the universe itself; it has a bounded number of observable states.

That is not clear. A free electron has no quantized energy and, since current evidence points to the universe expanding for ever, there is no limit to the accuracy with which we can measure that energy (as boring as that measurement may be). Hence a single free electron has an infinite set of states as long as the universe's lifetime is unbounded.

Feynman agreed...though much earlier

[PerlHeadJax]

From Gleick's "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman"...

"'People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not...If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it--that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers...then that's the way it is.' He believed that his colleagues were claiming more success at unification than they had achived--that disparate theories had been pasted together tenuously. When Hawking said, 'We may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature,' many particle physicists agreed. But Feynman did not. 'I've had a lifetime of that,' he said on another occasion. 'I've had a lifetime of people who believe that the answer is just around the corner.... But again and again it's been a failure. Eddington, who thought that with the theory of electrons and quantum mechanics everything was going to be simple...Einstein, who thought that he had a unified thoeiry just around the corner but didn't know anything about nuclei and was unable of course to guess it...People think the're very close to the answer, but I don't think so....

Whether or not nature has an ultimate, simple, unified, beautiful form is an open question, and I don't want to say either way.'"

(From the epilogue of the book, pp. 432-433, emph. added.)

Re:Old news

[Artifakt]

Putting it into a single simple phrase means losing a lot, but it's pretty fair to say Godel's second great proof shows that Formal Systems (like mathematics) have statements that are true, but can't be proven within the system. The more powerful a system is, the more (in general) it has such truths, and doing something that extends such a system's power actually makes the situation worse, not better.

If you want to condense that to a single, clipped phrase: "Truth extends beyond provability."

By the way, Godel's third great proof shows that God exists - sorry to bother all the Atheist slashdotters with that bit of trivia.

For those of you who don't know who Godel was, Einstein kept him around at Princeton to check Einstein's calculations and help with the hard parts, and the greatest work on Math of the 19th century, the Principia Mathematica, was overturned entirely by that pesky second proof.

And it was the quantum mechanicians who 'disproved reality'. Google "Copenhagen Interpretation", "Many Worlds Theory" "Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger", or "Werner Heisenberg" for details.

Re:Old news

[walshy007]

By the way, Godel's third great proof shows that God exists - sorry to bother all the Atheist slashdotters with that bit of trivia.

You fail to specify what godels interpretation of 'god' is, spoiler: it's not the anthropomorphic zombie human/spirit that has super powers like what most religions preach.

I would of course assume you are speaking of Godel's ontological proof. Which he himself did not publish until his dying days because he did not want people to mistakenly think he actually believed in god.

The proof starts off arguing that there are infinitely possible worlds, therefore in at least one of those infinitely possible worlds there must be a god etc.

There are numerous arguments against such a proof, not the least of which some of them predate godel himself by a few hundred years. (Immanuel Kant rejected existence as a property some time before this proof was made)

Not to mention the problems of incoherence in regard to god being considered omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent,

Those that have read the many problems with his proof (even theologians) have usually found at least one if not more that satisfy to them that it is flawed.

That you have not is most surprising, there really are that many.

Re:Celebrity physicist troll train

[Artifakt]

I have seen Elephants personally, so I have very high confidence that Elephants exist. On the other hand, if someone tells me there are about 12,000 African elephants worldwide, I don't know offhand how reliable such a figure is. It's not just the really unlikely cases, i.e. that elephants have gone extinct since the last time I actually verified one's existence and there's a massive conspiracy to hide that fact, that affect that reliability, but the other, much more probable cases, such as people doing elephant surveys maybe missing some, or someone accidentally adding or dropping a zero while writing a newspaper article, or someone misremembering old information. (Hint, I just pulled that figure from my posterior, deliberately without looking it up, to make an example).
        I'd be a fool to think the two facts were equally reliable. If I carefully specify that at least 3 elephants existed the last time I went to the local zoo, I can approach 100% confidence, but as soon as I get outside that carefully selected area, it is actually the more reasonable thing to do to assume that there is some significant uncertainty. For some propositions, the amount of uncertainty that is likely is very great indeed.
        Now consider this proposition: "The scientific method is the most reliable means of determining the truth that can possibly exist". Can that be proved? Either there is a proof within science of that claim, which means the proof is only as reliable as science itself is, and science still could have any level of reliability including a very poor one, or there's a proof outside of science, which means there is some superior method to proving things and so the claim is actually false by counterexample.
          If I put in in terms of reliability, I would have to, reasonably, claim that it seems more reliable to say that the scientific method is the most reliable method yet developed than to claim nothing better can possibly be discovered. I'd think it very unreliable indeed to declare that there are not even any minor improvements to the scientific method even remotely possible. So yes, in that sense, science requires faith. I have faith that I should continue using the scientific method on many problems, I have both a logical opinion that, where science does not yield ready answers, I should try various forms of logical or philosophical reasoning and a rule of thumb that is derived only from my own experience that says much the same thing. I may even hold the same opinion as a matter of cultural condition as well. Note that I did not say I have a scientific opinion that I should use logic where science doesn't yield immediate results, as that too makes no sense. How can science tell me what to do when science isn't producing results (at least yet)?

           

UUID maths

[josh washington]

Theory of Everything ( 696787 )

My mind would have been blown if his UUID was 42...

You may be onto something – adding each digit in his UUID (6 + 9 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 7) yields 43...

Of course, maybe it only equals 43 to us because of approximations in our generalised equations, but for him using his localised maths it's actually 42?