[haskellandchill]

Why are none of these things wikipedia articles? Or getting any traction in google scholar? I actually am not against what Wolfram is saying and it's interesting to see the link between general relativity and quantum mechanics in this line of thinking, but come on, something is fishy.

[thatguysaguy]

You can see him talk to an actual physicist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bMYtEKjHs0

Sean Carroll is more of a "just let the guest say what they want to" interviewer, so he doesn't grill him very hard. Despite that, I think it comes across pretty clearly in the interview that Wolfram doesn't actually have any compelling reason to think that this is the way the universe actually is.

[crispyambulance]

> Why are none of these things wikipedia articles? Or getting any traction in google scholar?

Wolfram is a very smart fellow and deserves much credit for Mathematica. But these little side projects are very much outsider physics. No one is actually interested in pursuing his ideas because they're not particularly compelling. He has a couple of folks on his payroll doing work on it, and he'll show up on Lex Fridman or other internet talking head shows but that's pretty much the extent of it.

There's no harm in it, I guess. He's not a crank... though maybe somewhat crank-adjacent.

[MichaelRazum]

Guess two reasons

- the theory is not mainstream, guess it is not attractive enough to study it right now

- the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet). This has to change I think to get traction.

[crispyambulance]

> the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet)

AFAIK, the theory is not able to make _any_ predictions yet.

It purports to be one of those "theories of everything" in the form of a kind of "universe building kit".

But all it produces are a bunch of pretty "hypergraphs" that have some loose analogies with some physical theories.

If, at the end of the day, one's "theory of everything" can't replicate classical mechanics, the spectra of Hydrogen atoms, and the laws of thermodynamics, then it probably doesn't warrant bloviating on the big bang, black holes and information theory as Mr Wolfram is apt to do.

[aik]

I agree. Though I know things like classical mechanics are emergent phenomena that I believe are many many levels up from what he has been dealing with thus far (quantum scale) as well. Given computational irreducibility and how poor we are in general at predicting/estimating phenomena in complex systems (chaos), it’s likely we’re far from “simulating” most physics at this scale anytime soon.

[drdeca]

Hasn’t the project produced software which they claim is useful for simulating black hole mergers?

[haskellandchill]

things to predict would be "the maximum entanglement speed ζ" and "dimensionality of space won’t always be precisely 3" but he seems to be making no real effort there, I've seen other non-wolfram research on a lower bound for the speed (4x the speed of light woosh) which doesn't cite him, the dimensionality thing I don't even know what to look for. Anyway you'd think he'd do something or not whatever not my life, I met him once and he was just an eccentric yet boring dude.

[MichaelRazum]

Exactly, if something come out - guess it would be a funny nightmare to the physic society. As you said, it doesn't seem to be the case a right now.

On the personal level, maybe you are right - but it doesn't matter, if he is right...

[WhitneyLand]

Really, this is the reason:

“…theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or careless thinking.

Rudolf Peierls documents an instance in which "a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views.

Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong'."”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

[adgjlsfhk1]

the thing that is fishy is that Wolfram doesn't understand the difference between an analogy and a model.