> We’ll be talking not about the actual model of space in our Physics Project, but instead about the cellular automaton systems I’ve studied for many years in which space is effectively predefined to consist of a rigid array of cells, each with a discrete value updated according to a local rule.
And here we go again. I'm sorry, but when it comes to physics I'm not interested in beautiful pictures of mathematical models. Show me the real world! Show we experiments and show me how your model can predict the result. That's the baseline. Once you've been able to do that then we can talk about the beautiful mathematical structures which emerges.
> Copernicus’s model didn’t fit the data as well as Ptolemy’s epicycles. But the math was so elegant that it led to a better model
I think the evolution here is really fascinating. Copernicus was correct in that he put the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of the solar system, but was wrong in that he assumed the planetary orbits were circular. It wasn't until Kepler showed that the orbits were elliptical, with varying speeds, that the predicted positions better matched reality, and Newton's maths explained the effects (but not the mechanisms) of gravity.
> It wasn't until Kepler showed that the orbits were elliptical, with varying speeds, that the predicted positions better matched reality, and Newton's maths explained the effects (but not the mechanisms) of gravity.
And while all of them had nice/elegant math, none had empirical evidence that anything of what they said matched reality.
Things came close with Bradley and stellar aberration in ~1728:
It is a common fallacy that studying physical world, materials and time-space is somehow more “true” than math and philosophy.
People seem to forget that all of the modern “hard science” came from philosophy, that the core assumption of causality pointing from the observed world to the observer (environment->neurons->thoughts) is unfalsifiable, that by digging deeper into material world we may well be studying pixels on a map as opposed to features of the true territory.
To me it's blindingly obvious that the physical world is reality, and that math/philosophy/etc are merely descriptions. Some people see it the other way around
Yes. “Physical world is reality” is a conjecture that is unprovable and even nonsensical within the scope of natural sciences, the very statement is in the realm of philosophy.
You confirm you’re taking a philosophical stance, which is miles above the baseline level of discourse I’m observing (and may not be as much of a fallacy in your case). However, are you doing that consciously, with rigour and analysis, after considering the merits of alternative positions? Do you make an effort to compensate for own biases?
There is a very strong implicit bias towards physicalism, which largely hinges on the popularity of natural sciences (in other words, since sciences that study materials and time-space are all the rage, it’s very compelling to see the reality as having materials and time-space at its root; if all you have is a hammer then everything seems like a nail) and requires constant compensation to keep an open mind (especially if you are anything like me and are really into physics and adjacent fields).
For a philosopher you seem really combative and defensive of a really specific philosophical position.
Isn't the whole physicalism vs otherwise (Cartesian duality?) debate inherently unfinishable? It would be quite a statement to say that physicalism is a fallacious position that's "only popular", while other positions aren't.
>Do you make an effort to compensate for own biases?
It’s fallacious when adopted uncritically and especially with the claim that it is somehow backed by natural sciences (even though it is not). I am combative when I encounter such attitudes but otherwise I hope I’m open to constructive discussions.
> Isn't the whole physicalism vs otherwise (Cartesian duality?) debate inherently unfinishable?
“Otherwise” could be Cartesian duality, though I am in particular looking at idealism. Kant, Leibniz (minus the religious-sounding aspects). More recently D. Hoffman[0] seems to be digging in that direction (or adjacent).
None of those, including physicalism, seem to be provable with experimental method at this time, but it doesn’t mean they offer no utility. The map vs. territory distinction, for example, may have big implications for medicine and mental/physical well-being.
> Do you make an effort to compensate for own biases?
I’m trying to fight my bias towards physicalism (with varying success).
I think physicalism helps the natural sciences a lot with our current understanding of experimentation, and other positions help endeavors like phenomenalism.
I am really having difficulty imagining an understanding of the natural sciences that is implied by something other than physicalism. But I am open to such hypotheticals, maybe you could give a concrete example?
One way of thinking about it is by treating consciousness as the territory, and space-time as a simplified and accessible map of that territory. Not “neurons fire, hence we think”, but “we think, which shows itself as neurons firing”.
In a very, very poor analogy, natural sciences could be seen as studying the map with a magnifying glass, then based on those findings coming up with and performing some magic rituals which somehow end up changing the territory (and thus updating the map). We are unaware that those rituals involve stomping around on land, which is what that map describes in a simplified two-dimensional way; we don’t really know that territory exists at all, it’s all covered in darkness and we only see the map. Our dances grow more sophisticated and more precise at causing map updates that we desire (via changes in the territory that we don’t know about), so we really invest in those rituals. Naturally, when it comes to that patch of territory where the map physically resides (a.k.a. medicine), the rituals don’t work so well; sadly, suggestions that territory exists are generally discarded as crackpot theories.
Physics is a description, math is about what various assumptions imply, and it is independent of the universe because it's qualified by the assumptions made.
Circlefavshape, it’s a really good point. I think it is a position, too, which can be disputed. Does a star approximate a sphere or a sphere describe a star? Obviously the latter, right?
Right, I see it the other way. But I don’t think it is obviously true that math is real, or even more real than “stars.”
Pythagorean-Platonism and modern physics give lots of good reasons, however, why spheres are more real, more fundamental and more universal than stars.
Both stars and math are real, each in their own way.
The way maths are real is as ideas within human minds trying to describe unambiguous assumptions in a detailed formal system; mathematical objects like spheres certainly don't exist in nature, so their definition of 'real' is quite different from the definition of 'real' for physical entities.
Ontology ("the science of 'being'") is a whole branch of philosophy that has varied widely during history and won't fit in a forum comment and I'm in no way an expert, so I won't try to. I'll rather give a few strokes of how I use it myself as derived from epistemology ("what can be known?"); I would say that my view is close to (weak) social constructionism[1] - i.e. even though knowledge can be inferred directly from study of the material world, most of it is mediated by the ways we have learned to think about it.
In short, what matters to me as "real" is what can potentially be experienced and studied to make sense of it. The vast majority of "what's real" comes from a physical world external to us; and thanks to modern science, we know that even the part we perceive as thoughts and emotions comes from material processes in our bodies, without the need to postulate the reality of a supernatural substance as its basis.
However, it is a useful shortcut to consider these mental processes in themselves, without always referring to what physical processes underlie them, but looking at them from our own inner perceptions. So, the 'real' things are the material entities outside our brains, and also the thoughts, feelings and perceptions we hold about those external entities and about our own mental processes. Mathematics would belong to this second mode of being real. (This is different from classic Dualism, which would assert that what I see as 'mind entities' do have an existence outside our own minds, but their essence is different from that of material entities).
In the case of math, the concrete ways we communicate them to our peers and the representations we use are of great relevance. Even though two very different representations of a phenomenon can be claimed to model the same 'underlying mathematical reality', I see no need to assert the reality of a mathematical object existing in the celestial sphere somewhere above the orbit of Uranus, which is how Plato imagined the actual reality of the mathematical objects on which the imperfect real things were based.[2] I'm content to say that such reality is a logical consequence of the axioms we have socially chosen to use as the basis of our mathematical theories (and that, starting from other axioms, the mathematical reality of such objects could be slightly or totally different. I'm currently studying Category theory to see how precise one can be in studying such differences and similarities).
(However, if somewhere found a way to demonstrate empirically that such realm exists and show the way how physical objects are connected to it, I would change my position and would be eager to study whatever can be known from that approach - I just don't expect it to happen anytime soon). For this latest position, see the classic Carl Sagan's The Dragon in My Garage [3]; I find that arguments from Dualism about the existence of mathematical entities often tend to parallel those from religion, as they stem from the same Western tradition of ontology.
I hope all this wall of text makes sense and your curiosity has been satisfied :-) What ontological tradition do you come from, and how do you see this perspective of mine?
Thank you, somehow missed this reply. To keep it short, I tend to get stuck at the point of “exist outside our brains”, since the very assessment that something exists outside our brains and what that something “really” is comes via our brains.
Thus the circularity, to break which at some point we must make a leap that something “magically” exists despite us having no direct access to it.
That's what is usually confusing about mathematicians. They don't think using a depth-first tree going straight to the goal like someone from IT would, but rather go breadth-first, painting plenty of interesting concepts along the way, and chaining them seemingly aimlessly together until they crystalize right toward the right solution seemingly magically.
In his Physics Project Wolfram when talking about "Branchial space" is toying around the idea of recombining trees. Where one configuration of the state-space can be reached by various ways. This general concept of recombining trees has for example been used in generative flow networks https://yoshuabengio.org/2022/03/05/generative-flow-networks... where they use it to directly generate molecule graphs that have useful properties among the sea of useless ones.
> breadth-first, painting plenty of interesting concepts along the way, and chaining them seemingly aimlessly together until they crystalize right toward the right solution seemingly magically.
Breadth-first is very usable when you need to find unknown ways/destinations or unknown ideas. Depth-first is good when you are sure of your destination.
No, it is to map side roads which can lead to more discoveries. E=mc^2 is several nice letters, but is an equation which leads to many different discoveries outside of destination. Wolfram just sees a new promising land and he tries to show potential for new discoveries, but he needs people to help discover it.
it's like an "object" (as in OOP) is just bunch of attributes.. (“conceivable (persistent) features” there)
and it depends which subset one chooses - or can - see, and there might be very different resulting views..
Motion is like seeing a bunch of pictures in sequence at 24 FPS. We call these movies. It gives the appearance of something moving to the observer, despite no movement existing between frames.
Funny thing is that in movies we also see sequences of pixels called pictures, that give appearance of solid objects to the observer despite nothing existing between those pixels to hold them together.
> Does anyone defend this as being useful for anything?
Extreme relativistic phenomena like "spooky action at a distance" or the Alcubierre's warp engine folding space may be intuitively easier to grasp if you think of space as a structure made of wobbly interacting elements approaching or receding from one another, rather than extreme deformations of abstract euclidean geometry or probabilistic waveforms.
For example, time ticking at different rates in different places could be explained by a constant rate of causal propagation through regions with a different density of these elements. Or, alternatively, by causation propagating at different rates going slower through elements with very high energy. This can create two competing models, which could be tested experimentally to see which one is closer to reality. (This capability to ultimately being tested empirically is the main thing that differentiates theoretical physics from scholastic speculation; if not for that, both would be rationalistic masturbations to see how far you can push your logic models, without a way to put them to the test).
For a scientific theory, "being easier to grasp intuitively" may be the basis for more rapid advances over the previous version based entirely on a complex formal notation.
Ok I think we mostly agree, so… /is/ there anything in there that could be tested, even in principle? Or make any sort of prediction about anything observable? It all seemed quite vague to me…
You are looking at an idea which is pretty much starting to get defined as you watch it. Mathematicians are still trying to map all implications of this. Don't expect that everything is known already.
It's essentially a pitch for the Wolfram Physics Project. How useful is it to work through a system which has some probability $p$ of modelling the basic nature of the universe to some degree $d$? Reasonable people may reasonably differ on the answer depending on $p$ and $d$, and on the values of $p$ and $d$ in any given instance.
And here we go again. I'm sorry, but when it comes to physics I'm not interested in beautiful pictures of mathematical models. Show me the real world! Show we experiments and show me how your model can predict the result. That's the baseline. Once you've been able to do that then we can talk about the beautiful mathematical structures which emerges.