And here is a review, written by an expert on physics and computation. It does not address all claims in the book, specifically not the ones you mentioned. But I think it explains why people who know a lot about these things are not necessarily impressed by “the new kind of science”.
In the second paragraph of the introduction in the review by Aaronson:
As a popularization, A New Kind of Science is an impressive accomplishment.
With regard to Aaronson’s criticisms with respect to the content in NKS about quantum mechanics, I’m pretty sure Wolfram has addressed some of them in his newer work, e.g. (previously) ignoring ‘multiway systems’.
One thing that jumps out at me, in Aaronson’s ‘not compatible with both special relativity and Bell inequality violations’ argument against Wolfram’s (earlier version of his) ‘hypergraph physics’:
A technicality is that we need to be able to identify which vertices correspond to x_a, y_a, and so on, even as G evolves over time.
Funnily enough, it’s Aaronson’s ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ paper that now makes me think such an ‘identification’ routine is possibly (vastly far) from “a technicality”, especially given that the nodes in the graph G are expected to represent something like a Planck length (or smaller) and x_a and y_a are “input bits”, i.e. some two-level quantum mechanical system (?). The idea of identifying the same x_a and y_a as G doesn’t seem obvious or trivial from a computational complexity perspective.
Tho, immediately following what I quoted above, Aaronson writes:
We could do this by stipulating that (say) “the x_a vertices are the ones that are roots of complete binary trees of depth 3”, and then choosing the rule set to guarantee that, throughout the protocol, exactly two vertices have this property.
That doesn’t make sense to me as even a reasonable example of how to identify ‘the same’ qubits as G evolves. Aaronson seems to be equating vertices in G with a qubit but Wolfram’s idea is that a qubit is something much much bigger inside G.
I can’t follow the rest of that particular argument with any comprehensive understanding.
I wonder how much ‘criticism’ of Wolfram is a result of ‘independent discovery’. Aaronson points out that a lot of Wolfram’s ‘hypergraph physics’ is covered in work on loop quantum gravity. While Wolfram was a ‘professional physicist’ at one point, he hasn’t been a full-time academic in decades so it’s understandable that he isn’t familiar with all of the possibly relevant literature.
It’s also (still) possible that Wolfram’s ideas will revolutionize other sciences as he claims. I’m skeptical of this too tho!
Thanks! I just read another Aaronson paper recently – his ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ – and thought it was fantastic. (I’ve been following his blog for awhile now.)
I definitely appreciate, not even having (yet) read the paper to which you linked, that Wolfram might not be entirely up-to-date with the frontier of computation complexity. (I’m pretty sure he knows some, if not a lot, of the major less-recent results.)
Wolfram’s also something of a ‘quantum computing’ skeptic, which I think satisfyingly explains why he doesn’t discuss it much in NKS or elsewhere. (He also does somewhat explain his skepticism, and that he is skeptical of it, in NKS (IIRC).)
I can also understand and sympathize with experts not being impressed with the book, or his work generally. But Robin Hanson has expressed similar complaints about the reception of his own work, and interdisciplinary work more widely, and I think those complaints are valid and (sadly) true.
I don’t personally model academia as (effectively) producing truth or even insight as a particularly high priority.
And here is a review, written by an expert on physics and computation. It does not address all claims in the book, specifically not the ones you mentioned. But I think it explains why people who know a lot about these things are not necessarily impressed by “the new kind of science”.
In the second paragraph of the introduction in the review by Aaronson:
With regard to Aaronson’s criticisms with respect to the content in NKS about quantum mechanics, I’m pretty sure Wolfram has addressed some of them in his newer work, e.g. (previously) ignoring ‘multiway systems’.
One thing that jumps out at me, in Aaronson’s ‘not compatible with both special relativity and Bell inequality violations’ argument against Wolfram’s (earlier version of his) ‘hypergraph physics’:
Funnily enough, it’s Aaronson’s ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ paper that now makes me think such an ‘identification’ routine is possibly (vastly far) from “a technicality”, especially given that the nodes in the graph G are expected to represent something like a Planck length (or smaller) and x_a and y_a are “input bits”, i.e. some two-level quantum mechanical system (?). The idea of identifying the same x_a and y_a as G doesn’t seem obvious or trivial from a computational complexity perspective.
Tho, immediately following what I quoted above, Aaronson writes:
That doesn’t make sense to me as even a reasonable example of how to identify ‘the same’ qubits as G evolves. Aaronson seems to be equating vertices in G with a qubit but Wolfram’s idea is that a qubit is something much much bigger inside G.
I can’t follow the rest of that particular argument with any comprehensive understanding.
I wonder how much ‘criticism’ of Wolfram is a result of ‘independent discovery’. Aaronson points out that a lot of Wolfram’s ‘hypergraph physics’ is covered in work on loop quantum gravity. While Wolfram was a ‘professional physicist’ at one point, he hasn’t been a full-time academic in decades so it’s understandable that he isn’t familiar with all of the possibly relevant literature.
It’s also (still) possible that Wolfram’s ideas will revolutionize other sciences as he claims. I’m skeptical of this too tho!
Thanks! I just read another Aaronson paper recently – his ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ – and thought it was fantastic. (I’ve been following his blog for awhile now.)
I definitely appreciate, not even having (yet) read the paper to which you linked, that Wolfram might not be entirely up-to-date with the frontier of computation complexity. (I’m pretty sure he knows some, if not a lot, of the major less-recent results.)
Wolfram’s also something of a ‘quantum computing’ skeptic, which I think satisfyingly explains why he doesn’t discuss it much in NKS or elsewhere. (He also does somewhat explain his skepticism, and that he is skeptical of it, in NKS (IIRC).)
I can also understand and sympathize with experts not being impressed with the book, or his work generally. But Robin Hanson has expressed similar complaints about the reception of his own work, and interdisciplinary work more widely, and I think those complaints are valid and (sadly) true.
I don’t personally model academia as (effectively) producing truth or even insight as a particularly high priority.