The articles are not necessarily written for a software engineering audience. Going through the lambda calculus would be a necessary prerequisite for the part he actually wants to tell you about at the end.
Especially for physicists and mathematicians who primarily study things other than computation.
If you found the visualizations pointless, then you aren't the intended audience.
This is a straightforward continuation of his existing research into computation, which started with cellular automata.
If you're reading a Wolfram blog, then you're in part coming for the pretty pictures.
> The probably invented term "ruliology" is not even explained anywhere.
The "ruliad" is what he calls the "space of all possible rules" where a rule is like a program that dictates the next state of the system.
The ruliad is one of the few rigorous approaches to answering why the laws of physics are the way they are.
Stephen's theory is something like "every possible rule for evolving the system is in fact happening, and we are likely to be observing phenomenon that are convergent among more than one rule".
His physics project is a good example of what real physics looks like outside of academia.
Stephen is financially independent. He can research whatever he wants and doesn't have to worry about tenure, or sucking up to department heads or people with grant money.
Even so, he's not a crank, other physicists understand and engage with what he's doing, and all the math involved is very real.
Whether or not anything "breakthrough" comes out of his work, I'm very sympathetic to the kinds of explorations he does ... especially since new things go through a messy phase before clarity arises.
> I'm very sympathetic to the kinds of explorations he does
Yes, and I think there is a success criterion that most people are not considering, which is: success as a less complicated explanation for the same phenomenon.
When people ask for new testable predictions as the only way a new theory can be successful, they are revealing that they don't consider parsimonious explanations to be a scientific goal.
Stephen's work with hypergraphs shows a lot of promise as a simple theory that implies other successful theories of physics. It focuses on emergent phenomenon that exhibit "pockets of computational reproducibility". The behavior of those pockets can then be predicted with tools in the physics canon like Riemannian geometry or complex numbers.
> When people ask for new testable predictions as the only way a new theory can be successful, they are revealing that they don't consider parsimonious explanations to be a scientific goal.
It doesn't have to be new testable predictions, but it should at least reproduce some testable predictions of the conventional theories.
As far as I know, these discrete graph models have been shown to reproduce some broad features of QM and GR (mostly the work of Jonathan Gorard rather than Wolfram), but they don't make any actual numerical predictions, which in my view is a basic requirement of a physical theory.
At the moment it seems like some intriguing toy models, similar in many respects to t'Hooft's cellular automaton model of QM, but there's no physical theory here
True, and I always appreciate how he built the wolfram language to allow himself these kinds of explorations, which would be next to impossible without it.
I think Stephen is willing to ask really deep questions and then do the work to pursue the answers to completion. Sometimes he’s a little bit long-winded, but he’s frequently coming back with interesting results.
Stephen Wolfram has done real worthwhile physics. He's an exceptionally smart dude, even if that doesn't come across in some of his writing.
Just to pour some more opinions on the fire, I think he's been descending into crankery slowly, but steadily, since the 80s. Have a sconce at what his output was like before he took m-expressions and built a paywall around them, become a fairly wealthy demigod of science in the process. https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/all/
The academy (in physics at least), is crusty and traditional, but not to the point of ignoring good work. It's like alternative medicine, do you think if essential oils cured cancer you wouldn't have all the big pharma companies leaping from their high horses?
Wolfram does some cool stuff with cellular automata, and has lots of students doing cool stuff too. What he's not done, neither with NKS nor anything since, is make some contribution to understanding the physical universe that was significant in eyes other than his own.
If basic interventions in public health could widely prevent or improve chronic conditions, would big pharma or big food voluntarily change its business model for the public good?
If wellknown land management practices could cure the decline of soil health, would big ag suddenly change its tune?
I've never been in a physics dept, but the parts of the academy I have seen absolutely would (and do) ignore good work if it's inconvenient or somehow unpalatable. This is of course, though not exclusively, related to the marriage of academy and industry.
> The academy (in physics at least), is crusty and traditional, but not to the point of ignoring good work.
I think experimental physics is always looking for theories that explain what they see, but theoretical physics hasn't delivered in the last few decades and the people employed doing theoretical physics have mostly succeeded at a political game, not a scientific one.
> It's like alternative medicine, do you think if essential oils cured cancer you wouldn't have all the big pharma companies leaping from their high horses?
There are effective chemicals offered in Europe that are not offered in the US. Sunblock is better outside the US for example.
This is because of pharmaceutical interests and the US regulatory framework (which are really the same thing).
If an essential oil cured cancer, I agree that word would get out, but the idea that things that work in any capacity for a specific ailment are automatically adopted by whatever corporation deals in that ailment is just not true.
If you found the visualizations pointless, then you aren't the intended audience. This is a straightforward continuation of his existing research into computation, which started with cellular automata. If you're reading a Wolfram blog, then you're in part coming for the pretty pictures.
> The probably invented term "ruliology" is not even explained anywhere.
The "ruliad" is what he calls the "space of all possible rules" where a rule is like a program that dictates the next state of the system. The ruliad is one of the few rigorous approaches to answering why the laws of physics are the way they are. Stephen's theory is something like "every possible rule for evolving the system is in fact happening, and we are likely to be observing phenomenon that are convergent among more than one rule".
His physics project is a good example of what real physics looks like outside of academia. Stephen is financially independent. He can research whatever he wants and doesn't have to worry about tenure, or sucking up to department heads or people with grant money. Even so, he's not a crank, other physicists understand and engage with what he's doing, and all the math involved is very real.