Refuting Eric Weinstein's and Stephen Wolfram's Theories of Everything | Scott Aaronson & Tim Nguyen

Computer scientist Scott Aaronson and mathematician and AI researcher Timothy Nguyen discuss Eric Weinstein's and Stephen Wolfram's recent proposals at a "Theory of Everything".

#theoryofeverything #quantumphysics #physics #mathematics #ericweinstein #wolfram #quantum

00:05 : What Aaronson and Nguyen have in common
01:08 : Aaronson: "I've met Eric Weinstein"
02:16 : Aaronson's review of Wolfram's "New Kind of Science"
05:26 : Bell's inequality and entanglement
09:56 : "Free Will Theorem"
11:08 : quantum randomness, Ethereum, and proof of stake
13:13 : a phone call from Stephen Wolfram
15:28 : Aaronson on the response paper to Eric Weinstein's "Geometric Unity"
16:25 : Brian Keating and experimental tests of Theories of Everything
17:02 : Aaronson on the tragedy of Wolfram
19:21 : quantum cellular automata, Loop Quantum Gravity, string theory, quantum computing
21:31 : Eric Weinstein and Brian Keating's Clubhouse response and Theo Polya's anonymity
23:00 : Aaronson: Accountability and when anonymity does and does not matter

Background Material:

Eric Weinstein's Geometric Unity paper:

Stephen Wolfram's Theory of Everything:

Brian Keating on experimental tests of Theories of Everything:

Scott Aaronson's Book Review of a New Kind of Science:

Timothy Nguyen & Theo Polya. A Response to Geometric Unity:

Twitter:
@iamtimnguyen

Webpage:

[markcarey]

A hypergraph and a shiab operator walk into a (h)bar...

[randymartin]

Timothy you are an excellent host for letting your guest speak their concept in a reasonable amount of time without interrupting them like most hosts do.

[pmcate]

@2:35 This guy read and wrote a review of a massive physics book when he was 19 AND a he was grad student. I hate the fact that at that age I was just being a typical college kid. I didn't even know the beauty of physics and math until I was in my late 20's. Life isn't fair.

[mitchellhayman]

Wolfram seems to me to be incredibly intelligent and insightful. His conversation with Lee Smolin was amazing. The way he picked up what Lee was saying, and saying it back to him in his own language was amazing. He seems to me as competent as any other mathematical physicist

[tonytanner]

Awesome podcast I think Wolframs exploration is very different and lot more thought out than given credit. In my opinion it is what physics needs it is not necessarily a deep theory as yet but what is cool is that it is playing with graphs as a fundamental structure which is a really flexible yet tangible mathematical structure. Another interesting thing about the project is the parallel to computational category theory and computational chaos theory. I believe ultimately if the project does not further physics it will atleast further computational mathematics.

[Woollzable]

When will the full episode be released? Thanks. 😃

[Sock]

Appreciate that both these men are focused on trying to determine the scientific truth and that its not about discrediting or mocking the other 2

[tantzer]

The question of who deserves credit for an idea is uninteresting to me. “A New Kind of Science” is an amazing book, not only because of the visualizations, but also because of its clear and thought provoking discussions of many, many different topics in a unified framework. My favorite is its discussion of “computational irreducibility, ” a concept that is philosophically significant. This is to say nothing of the countless historical and technical discussions in its endnotes. No “tragedy” here; just a book that should be celebrated for discussions that can be explored or criticized. And if through criticizing one of its ideas, Scott hit upon some original ideas, that too speaks to the value of book, i.e., its potential to stimulate a scientific debate.

[markdavidson]

Gerard 't Hooft has a very similar theory to Stephen Wolfram's for quantum mechanics as a cellular automaton. He clearly shows how Bell's theorem does NOT rule out a local hidden variable theory of this type, because this theory is completely deterministic, and therefore the counterfactual logic used in discussions of Bell's theory are completely invalid. This has been termed "superdeterminism" of course, and even early on it was recognized by Clauser et al. as a loophole which was dismissed and termed a "conspiracy against the experimenter" back in the 1970s. One can even make the argument that the simplest interpretation of the Bell experiments is exactly the opposite of what most physicists think, and that is that the universe is simply perfectly deterministic, local, and causal.

[buttlesschap]

Hi wondering about how adult learners/mature students tend to do in physics programs. I went to UBC for biochem right after high school but dropped out after a year after some big family issues. I'm nearly 28 now and have been in plumbing/pipefitting ever since. I go through my old textbooks sometimes and do some basic problems, listen to science podcasts/talks, read scifi and generalist science books from rovelli, susskind and greene. No kids and wouldn't need student loans. Thinking of going to school for maybe mining engineering, geophysics or physics if there is a recession and im out of the job.

[randomracki]

I don't think Stephen Wolfram has produced a model of the universe as yet the project is ongoing.

[caparn]

From wolframphyiscs:
Q: How can your models be consistent with Bell’s theorem?
A: Despite the deterministic nature of the Wolfram model, consistency with Bell’s theorem is actually a very natural consequence of the combinatorial structure of the multiway causal graph. By allowing for the existence of causal connections not only between updating events on the same branch of evolutionary history, but also between updating events on distinct branches of evolution history, one immediately obtains an explicitly nonlocal theory of multiway evolution. More precisely, one extends the notion of causal locality beyond mere spatial locality, since events that are branchlike-local will not, in general, also be spacelike-local. Therefore, one is able to prove violation of the Bell-CHSH inequality in much the same way as one does for standard deterministic and nonlocal interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the de Broglie–Bohm or causal interpretation.

[eismscience]

This is awesome, Tim. I look forward to listening to this.

[brothermine]

What does Scott mean by "freshly generated randomness" when he says that's implied by Bell's theorem? Bell's theorem showed that local hidden variables can't explain entanglement correlations. But it doesn't imply the correlations cannot be explained by *nonlocal* hidden variables. I don't see why nonlocal hidden variables can't offer a deterministic quantum theory, in which "fresh" randomness is not fundamental randomness.

[shwifty]

Just came across your podcast &this is exactly the content I've been looking for. Keep up the work, highly appreciate it!

[trishankkarthik]

Hey Timothy, finally watched this video. A few comments:
1. One could argue that Wolfram does take too much credit for some ideas (such as the universe is computational in nature), but it is true that no one else has explored them to the depth that he has.
2. Aaronson is correct about the limitations of the ANKOS deterministic cellular automata model in describing quantum phenomena (such as the Bell inequality).
3. However, his "refutation" of the hypergraph model is disappointing: it's not much other than, "Well, I don't see how these low-level machine code could lead to the higher-level physics I am familiar with, so who cares?" Like I said above, I am not aware of a theory of everything that is as fundamentally computational as this one, and it is disappointing to see the current generation of physicists like Aaronson and Hossenfelder dismiss it so easily.
4. Your following observation is on point: even if Wolfram turns out to be wrong, he is willing to handle criticism, unlike Weinstein and Keating. IMHO, one is far more intellectually deep and honest than the other. The worst intellectual mistake to make is to even begin to compare Wolfram and Weinstein's theories of everything, which are not at all at the same level.

[arthurrimbaud]

By the way, Tim, if you and your colleague would have written a paper CONFIRMING the claims of Eric Weinstein regarding Geometric Unity, Eric's obdurate and absurd dismissal of the critique would disappear.

[CINEMARTYR]

@17:32 basically making Wolfram sound like Terrance Howard with his pretty shapes lol

[maxwelldillon]

Bell inequality violations just mean that at least one of the assumptions of Bell's Theorem is wrong.

[AG-urlj]

Stephen said plain and simple, you can literally go on his website and click the peer review button. He made you a button to click so you can _actually refute sections of his work_ . If you know what you’re talking about, anyway.