The obnoxious break from physics paper writing conventions on Wolfram’s part is just stupid. He has a physics PhD, he’s perfectly capable of writing papers, his choice not to do so is making it very difficult for graduate students in physics to work on his program at all. Right now working on this is career suicide for a graduate student. You don’t publish your new theory of everything in a book aimed at a popular audience if you want anyone else to seriously work on it. You don’t get to claim to have solved fundamental physics in a popular book and then cross your arms and complain that you aren’t getting the recognition you deserve, that is the arrogance that people are bothered by, not his writing style. Yet his ideas might very well have merit, even if he isn’t the first one at all to consider that the universe might be fundamentally computational in nature.
Isn’t it also arrogance on the part of the professional physics community that working on his theories is considered “career suicide” just because he wrote it in an unconventional format? Not saying Wolfram is blameless here, just that it seems sort of silly for that to be such a sticking point.
I think the problem is that Wolfram wrote things up in a manner indistinguishable from a perpetual-motion-believer-who-actually-can-write-well’s treatise. Maybe it’s instead legit, but to discover that you have to spend a lot of translation effort, translation effort that Wolfram was supposed to have done himself in digestible chunks rather than telling N=lots of people to each do it themselves, and it’s not even clear there is something at the heart because (last time I checked which was a couple years ago) no physics-knowledgable people who dived in seemed to come up and say “ah, yep, it’s legit, there’s real insight and truth here beyond cataloging really cool computational phenomena”.
I have seen
I don’t have sufficient technical background to really judge the output of this physics work itself but it stills seem (at least) very intriguing!
this sentiment a ton, and also stuff like
Folks. I do not live under a rock. Have I heard of Stephen Wolfram’s physics project? How could I not given that his PR people rammed it down my inbox. Why do I not comment on it? I looked at it and don’t think it’s interesting, that’s why. Now please move on.
[...] I spent two days reading the stuff, trying to make sense of it. I eventually wrote some questions to the Wolfram folks and have since waited for a reply. Why do you think I have to waste my time on some guys’ self-promotion?
this from folks who do have sufficient technical background.
I happen to think there probably are lots of really import insights to be had, and also that most or all of the ones that Wolfram has had so far are equivalent to existing results in existing branches of mathematics, and he’d realize that himself if he did try to break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks, but all of that’s off of my intuition, not expertise.
I think it’s fine if someone else does the work to “break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks” for the benefit of other academics.
My naive outsider impression of physics is that, at least on the theoretical side, basically no one really knows what the promising avenues to pursue might be.
Having just read his post about the writing of the book (NKS), I’m hopeful that he will, eventually, publish a ‘bibliography’ that does a better job of translating the book, and its voluminous notes, into a form that’s ‘more accessible’ to the relevant academics.
I absolutely sympathize with what you describe. It certainly seems like he was both capable of doing what you claim he should have done and that, had he done so, his work would have probably been ‘better accepted’.
But, on the other hand, this just seems like a really terrible argument – that the only way to discover any new and important things is thru ‘The Official Channels’. Physics isn’t, AFAIK, the worst academic discipline, but it’s not obvious to me that that ‘academy’ is providing more value to the world than it is ‘rents’ to its members.
I haven’t seen him directly and explicitly complain about not “getting the recognition [he] deserve[s]”. If anything, he seems too optimistic about the recognition he’s supposedly already received!
I think it’s fine if the work to integrate whatever it is he’s discovered with all of the relevant academic disciplines is work that someone else does later. I don’t think he’s obligated to have done that work himself.
I myself greatly appreciate that he did not write a whole series of academic articles, written in an interminably dry and stuffy academic style, and published in journals that I couldn’t reasonably afford to access. (I think most mathematics papers are now freely available, but I don’t know that the same is true for physics papers. I’m not sure even that most computer science papers are freely available.)
I’m imagining the situation from the perspective of a graduate student in physics interested in Wolfram’s ideas. In the current system, such a student could not justify to their advisor why they’d work on Wolfram’s project, you can’t work on an unorganized cluster of ideas published in a pop-science book without sacrificing some of your capital as a graduate student. Potential departments where you’d like to post-doc will look at you weirdly, no one will cite your papers because no one is working on this, etc. By doing things as he hid, Wolfram is asking everyone who might work on his theory to pay a large social and professional cost. I agree that the current physics publishing equilibrium might not be the optimal one, but the establishment has two hundred years of glorious, shining history to back it up, basically everyone who ever found something important about math or the universe wrote it in a paper, that’s a hell of a thing to throw away on your own. Going with the tradition is a lot more productive than screaming at the sky trying to change the equilibrium single-handedly.
I’m much more confident that there are in fact ‘enough graduate students’ working on Wolfram’s physics project after watching some videos that someone else kindly shared elsewhere in the comments on this post.
The ‘math lead’ of the project – Jonathan Gorard – has mentioned work being done by both former and current students. This video includes some of that (and is otherwise really interesting):
(Some of his current students are working on some really cool experimental tests of the Wolfram theory/model!)
My ‘model’ of the ‘current system’s resistance’ is some mix of: (a) Wolfram being a (HUGE) ‘asshole’ (or maybe ‘literally disordered’ in personality or temperament); (b) basically all of the old guard ‘sticking to’ continuous mathematics and dismissing any ‘fundamentally discrete’ alternatives out of hand.
Wolfram’s emphasis on ‘computation’ over ‘mathematics’ is probably also contributing to this somewhat, but, in the video above, it seems like younger physicists/academics might be much more receptive to this than ‘the oldguard’. Apparently some areas/branches of physics are already pretty, or heavily, ‘computational’. Fundamental (particle) physics seems like the big holdout in that sense.
The obnoxious break from physics paper writing conventions on Wolfram’s part is just stupid. He has a physics PhD, he’s perfectly capable of writing papers, his choice not to do so is making it very difficult for graduate students in physics to work on his program at all. Right now working on this is career suicide for a graduate student. You don’t publish your new theory of everything in a book aimed at a popular audience if you want anyone else to seriously work on it. You don’t get to claim to have solved fundamental physics in a popular book and then cross your arms and complain that you aren’t getting the recognition you deserve, that is the arrogance that people are bothered by, not his writing style. Yet his ideas might very well have merit, even if he isn’t the first one at all to consider that the universe might be fundamentally computational in nature.
Isn’t it also arrogance on the part of the professional physics community that working on his theories is considered “career suicide” just because he wrote it in an unconventional format? Not saying Wolfram is blameless here, just that it seems sort of silly for that to be such a sticking point.
I think the problem is that Wolfram wrote things up in a manner indistinguishable from a perpetual-motion-believer-who-actually-can-write-well’s treatise. Maybe it’s instead legit, but to discover that you have to spend a lot of translation effort, translation effort that Wolfram was supposed to have done himself in digestible chunks rather than telling N=lots of people to each do it themselves, and it’s not even clear there is something at the heart because (last time I checked which was a couple years ago) no physics-knowledgable people who dived in seemed to come up and say “ah, yep, it’s legit, there’s real insight and truth here beyond cataloging really cool computational phenomena”.
I have seen
this sentiment a ton, and also stuff like
-- Sabine Hossenfelder (https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1252124072512757761)
this from folks who do have sufficient technical background.
I happen to think there probably are lots of really import insights to be had, and also that most or all of the ones that Wolfram has had so far are equivalent to existing results in existing branches of mathematics, and he’d realize that himself if he did try to break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks, but all of that’s off of my intuition, not expertise.
I think it’s fine if someone else does the work to “break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks” for the benefit of other academics.
My naive outsider impression of physics is that, at least on the theoretical side, basically no one really knows what the promising avenues to pursue might be.
Having just read his post about the writing of the book (NKS), I’m hopeful that he will, eventually, publish a ‘bibliography’ that does a better job of translating the book, and its voluminous notes, into a form that’s ‘more accessible’ to the relevant academics.
I’m torn about this.
I absolutely sympathize with what you describe. It certainly seems like he was both capable of doing what you claim he should have done and that, had he done so, his work would have probably been ‘better accepted’.
But, on the other hand, this just seems like a really terrible argument – that the only way to discover any new and important things is thru ‘The Official Channels’. Physics isn’t, AFAIK, the worst academic discipline, but it’s not obvious to me that that ‘academy’ is providing more value to the world than it is ‘rents’ to its members.
I haven’t seen him directly and explicitly complain about not “getting the recognition [he] deserve[s]”. If anything, he seems too optimistic about the recognition he’s supposedly already received!
I think it’s fine if the work to integrate whatever it is he’s discovered with all of the relevant academic disciplines is work that someone else does later. I don’t think he’s obligated to have done that work himself.
I myself greatly appreciate that he did not write a whole series of academic articles, written in an interminably dry and stuffy academic style, and published in journals that I couldn’t reasonably afford to access. (I think most mathematics papers are now freely available, but I don’t know that the same is true for physics papers. I’m not sure even that most computer science papers are freely available.)
I’m imagining the situation from the perspective of a graduate student in physics interested in Wolfram’s ideas. In the current system, such a student could not justify to their advisor why they’d work on Wolfram’s project, you can’t work on an unorganized cluster of ideas published in a pop-science book without sacrificing some of your capital as a graduate student. Potential departments where you’d like to post-doc will look at you weirdly, no one will cite your papers because no one is working on this, etc. By doing things as he hid, Wolfram is asking everyone who might work on his theory to pay a large social and professional cost. I agree that the current physics publishing equilibrium might not be the optimal one, but the establishment has two hundred years of glorious, shining history to back it up, basically everyone who ever found something important about math or the universe wrote it in a paper, that’s a hell of a thing to throw away on your own. Going with the tradition is a lot more productive than screaming at the sky trying to change the equilibrium single-handedly.
I’m much more confident that there are in fact ‘enough graduate students’ working on Wolfram’s physics project after watching some videos that someone else kindly shared elsewhere in the comments on this post.
The ‘math lead’ of the project – Jonathan Gorard – has mentioned work being done by both former and current students. This video includes some of that (and is otherwise really interesting):
Eigenbros ep 138 - Wolfram Physics Project Pt. 2 (w/ Jonathan Gorard) - YouTube
(Some of his current students are working on some really cool experimental tests of the Wolfram theory/model!)
My ‘model’ of the ‘current system’s resistance’ is some mix of: (a) Wolfram being a (HUGE) ‘asshole’ (or maybe ‘literally disordered’ in personality or temperament); (b) basically all of the old guard ‘sticking to’ continuous mathematics and dismissing any ‘fundamentally discrete’ alternatives out of hand.
Wolfram’s emphasis on ‘computation’ over ‘mathematics’ is probably also contributing to this somewhat, but, in the video above, it seems like younger physicists/academics might be much more receptive to this than ‘the oldguard’. Apparently some areas/branches of physics are already pretty, or heavily, ‘computational’. Fundamental (particle) physics seems like the big holdout in that sense.
I really have a lot of sympathy tho for anyone trying to “change the equilibrium single-handedly”, even if it’s not likely to succeed.
I’m not sure I’d every expect the equilibrium to change otherwise!
Are there specific obstacles to ‘moving to a new equilibrium’ that you’d also expect to no longer apply at any specific point in the future?
My intuition is that it’s most likely to be disrupted or changed because of a significant ‘defection’ and not because of some future coordination.