Researcher Writes A Machine Language For The Universe (typepad.com) 102
Slashdot reader smugfunt shares a blog post from systems scientist George Mobus:
"There is a fundamental language of systems that provides a way to describe both structures and functions that is universal across any kind of system... I am nearing completion of the basic specification of the language and will be presenting my results at the next ISSS conference in Boulder CO this July... This language, which I formally call SL, but privately call "systemese", is like the machine language of the universe. Any system you choose to analyze and model can be described in this language...!
The beauty of the approach is that the end product of analysis is a compilable program that is the model of the system. The language does not just cover dynamics (e.g. system dynamics), or agents (agent-based), or evolutionary (e.g., genetic algorithms) models. It incorporates all of the above plus real adaptivity and learning (e.g. biological-like), and real evolvability (as when species or corporations evolve in complex non-stationary environments)... Systemese and mentalese (the language of thought), a concept advanced by philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor, are basically one in the same! That is, our brains, at a subconscious level, use systemese to construct our models of how the world works.
The beauty of the approach is that the end product of analysis is a compilable program that is the model of the system. The language does not just cover dynamics (e.g. system dynamics), or agents (agent-based), or evolutionary (e.g., genetic algorithms) models. It incorporates all of the above plus real adaptivity and learning (e.g. biological-like), and real evolvability (as when species or corporations evolve in complex non-stationary environments)... Systemese and mentalese (the language of thought), a concept advanced by philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor, are basically one in the same! That is, our brains, at a subconscious level, use systemese to construct our models of how the world works.
Peter Parker says (Score:5, Insightful)
My BS sense is tingling!
Re:Peter Parker says (Score:5, Informative)
Well you can tell him about it here: http://questioneverything.type... [typepad.com]
Re: (Score:1)
That page is tedious. The author provides no real description of his language other than to say it 'has a basic lexicon, syntax, and semantics' and 'is like the machine language of the universe. Any system you choose to analyze and model can be described in this language!' He asserts that his 'systemese' is based upon the way the human brain models systems. He reaches further at points to try to tie in the notion of sapience (read 'wisdom').
My instinct as a programmer tells me that once one actually tries
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me put it this way...
Now any modelling problem is simply reduced to expressing the desired system in this language...!
Remember the buzz around formal specifications in software engineering (Z, how I love thee) about 25 years ago? Ever wondered what happened to that? Well, it turned out that for the vast majority of non-toy problems, writing and debugging the formal specification was just as hard as writing and debugging the
Re: (Score:2)
The "U" in UML means "unified", not "universal". And that's not what this is anyway.
I made one too. (Score:3)
I call it "Physics".
Re:I made one too. (Score:5, Funny)
But with his language, no matter how you program it . . . the output is always is 42 . . .
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I made one too. (Score:2)
Other approaches to hacking the universe are called "Quantum Computing" and "LSD".
Computable universe (Score:5, Funny)
For the past couple of months I've been idly trying to deduce how the universe works from the point of view of a computable machine. (It's sort of a relaxing hobby I use to cleanse my mental palette from the day job.)
Basically, assume that the universe is computable. This means that all information must be represented by a *finite* amount of information - position, probability, and so on. Computability in this sense means that any operation must complete in a finite amount of time(*).
This implies that space must be quantized, because having infinite precision in position requires an infinitely long floating point number, which would be uncomputable. So far so good.
A quantized space is roughly analogous to binary B/W images, and in order to prevent "jaggies" we have Bresenham's algorithm [wikipedia.org] and anti-aliasing [wikipedia.org].
So the wave nature of particles seems like the universe's answer to anti-aliasing: you have the probability of particle position be in multiple places at once depending on it's movement, and you choose one when you do an interaction. The "position" of a particle is held as a sum of waves, and this can be represented as a bit field, where each "1" in the field indicates that the wave of that frequency is part of the position, and "0" says that the frequency is not(**).
The advantage is that you can calculate a sin wave to arbitrary precision depending on your needs. If you want a particle position in order to do an interaction, you start rolling binary dice bit-by-bit until you get a "1" on your dice. Each time you roll a "0", you calculate the position to finer and finer levels of detail. When you roll a "1", that sets the position of the particle and you then do the interaction.
The problem with all this is that a complete description gets wildly complex. Each pair of entangled photons has a link to the other, so that if you collapse the waveform on one you have to collapse the other as well.
When a photon hits a semi-silvered mirror, the path becomes *two* paths that have to be added together. When it encounters a regular mirror, the sin() and cos() terms are swapped.
When you get to the point of interaction, you have to add together for *all* possible paths the photon could have taken, including all the non-straight lines, and blocked direct paths.
This is wildly complex, and defies conventional representation! What data structure is needed to keep track of all these paths?
(As a thought problem, consider a photon emitted from a galaxy. An ever-expanding sphere of probability extends from the point of origin, with pieces of the sphere interacting with everything it encounters, said pieces can be reflected or bent or modified in various ways, and this goes on for billions of years. When it reaches a point of interaction, all these myriad pieces get added together to make the probability that the photon appears at the interaction point. And yet, we encounter photons from distant galaxies all the time.)
If someone has sorted this out and created a truly universal representation of the universe, it would be a landmark paper and sit alongside Einstein's discovery of relativity and QM, and Newton's discovery of gravitation and integration.
(*) With one-and-only-one *possible* exception being the entire program. Individual interactions must be resolved in a finite time, but the total universe is allowed to go on forever.
(**) A little more complicated than this, because the amplitudes can be +1/0/-1, and there's sin() and cos() components, but I don't want to cloud the description with details.
Re: (Score:2)
What you describe is fascinating, and I'd love to read more.
That said, because quantum physics seems to tie reality to perception, doesn't that suggest that only the paths of photons which are perceived need to be computed? That's kind of what Schrodinger's Cat is trying to tell us, isn't it? Detailed computations for the unobserved are unnecessary, but some bulk calculation will have to be made, when they become observed. A cat in a box remains in its living state, until the box is opened, at which point,
Re: (Score:2)
What you describe is fascinating, and I'd love to read more.
I am exactly nowhere on this. I'm starting to believe that position is an emergent phenomena, and not an attribute of particles.
For example, suppose you set up an interference experiment where a photon has 90% chance of going into one detector, and 10% chance of getting into the other. How much resolution is there in these numbers?
Experimentally, it would appear that probabilities are precise to hundreds of digits... for each and every photon.
No matter what data structures I come up with, nothing seems to a
Re: (Score:2)
That was very cool, thank you.
IANAP but... How to allow very high precision?
Not so bad (except for us) if you
have a feedback to limit the number
of pesky observers.
Also might not be a bad reason for
c and the expansion of the universe, since
our local processor need only worry
about what is in our light cone.
Less even than that if you have mortals
without fast space travel and you occlude
the nearby interesting bits with clouds
and supernovae. Sorry.
How to handle infinite superpositions?
Perhaps we need another sys
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I may have just solved the Fermi paradox. Either due to system enforcing a hard limit on observers especially if they can talk and corroborate observations, or due to other civilizations / virii trying to grab more processor resources by getting rid of the competition.
It also might mean you can do more cool, magical things if you keep a lid on it.
I hope I'm wrong. :/
Re: Computable universe (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While some physicists might disagree, I think your post shouldn't really have been modded 'funny'. Stephen Wolfram also likes the idea that the universe could be a finite automaton. Some people also claim that there is a disconnect between physical laws and the way they are formulated: If real numbers existed in physical reality, they would violate various physical laws, e.g. the laws of thermodynamics. This problem is rarely addressed by physicists, probably because it's a bit too philosophical and concern
Re: (Score:2)
Really, isn't the question: when does collapse happen? And really, what constitutes an observation? I know that was a piece of Von Neumann's Automata as well, and it really gets at the heart of the issue - because if you need a person to do it, then you have most of the universe that is entangled with most other parts of the universe and nothing to ever stop it until a photon gets into our region of the universe... and then does everything entangled with that photon collapse entirely as soon as it hits a hu
Poppycock (Score:1)
General Systems Theory was bullshit 50 years ago and it hasn't changed since.
Re: Poppycock (Score:2)
BSD and LSD
geez, kidstodayitellyawhat
Any system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? How about non-computational mathematics.
Re: (Score:1)
how about just goedel's theorem?
Re: (Score:2)
They are related.
Inconsistency. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Inconsistency. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that in specific cases, it is not possible to obtain a formal system that is effectively generated, complete, and consistent.
That's what I said, yes. But thanks anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it would be silly to make an inconsistent language, rather it would be incomplete.
Not necessarily: paraconsistent logic [stanford.edu]
In summary (Score:5, Insightful)
At a subconscious level (Score:1)
So this guy just invented a language that we already use "at a subconscious level"? How practical that there's no looking into the subconscious mind, so what it does is up to anybody's imagination. Can't he also invent Chomsky's "Universal Grammar" that we supposedly use at a subconscious level, but that nobody has ever been able to describe?
where is the paper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I miss the paper, or is the blog post everything there is? I remember the good old days when crackpot scientists at least went through the trouble of producing a scientific looking paper in LaTeX with lots of formulas and graphs.
Re: (Score:2)
Its in progress, and will be delivered in July. It says that right in the summary you illiterate moron. I guess you figured you would sound smart but that backfired. Good job.
Next time, think before you post and save everyone time.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, what we can conclude from the summary is that not only is there no paper, the work isn't going to be peer reviewed either (because if this was a peer reviewed conference track, there would have to be a completed paper). Another sign of a crackpot.
Re: (Score:2)
So why comment? Did you mean to make this point earlier? If so, you should have made that point earlier.
Were you being rhetorical in front of an audience that may not understand rhetoric? Stop it.
Make a point, or don't ask a stupid question.
Re: (Score:2)
Its in progress, and will be delivered in July.
Then report it in July.
Until then, only the highest degree of skepticism is justified.
Universal (Score:1)
It's called a "Turing machine". (Score:2)
Turing already did this back in 1936. It's called a "Turing Machine". See his essay on computable numbers: http://www.dna.caltech.edu/cou... [caltech.edu]
Mathematica? (Score:2)
Is this not, then, Mathematica?
https://reference.wolfram.com/... [wolfram.com]
^F wolfr (Score:2)
The computational universe [youtube.com]
Current Job Posting (Score:1)
We are looking for an entry level person with an Engineering, CS, Math or natural science degree with at least 2 years of SL programming, MS SQL, Java, Javascript, C/C++/C#, Oracle, DB2, Linux, Windows, OS X, AS400, AIX, RPG, COBOL, assembly: x86, 68000, PowerPC, IBM360, DEC.
You must be passionate about your work.
We are a dynamic fast paced organization.
H1-bs Prefer....welcomed.
Dirac-Robson Notation (Score:3)
Use Dirac notation [archive.org] as extended for big data by Robson in "The New Physician as Unwitting Quantum Mechanic: Is Adapting Dirac’s Inference System Best Practice for Personalized Medicine, Genomics, and Proteomics [researchgate.net]".
This "notation" actually emphasizes certain primitive operations that can define the "machine language". Syntactic sugars should be used for parsimony, as well as and pragmas for efficient semantic heuristics are appropriate layers atop the primitives.
universal language (Score:2, Funny)
That's nice, honey, you work on your universal language.
Watch: This language will be a piss poor re-implementation of Common Lisp.
Obligatory XKCD reference (Score:3)
http://xkcd.com/224/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Or this one [xkcd.com]
.
Nothing to see (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The point about philosophy is that there is no "need to understand" it. ...
You just talk and think about "what ever you want to think about".
Thats it
Nathan Brazil . . . (Score:2)
. . . says "amateur".
George Mobus is Nathan Brazil (Score:2)
..on second thought, let's help him instead, I think the Universe could use a Reset.
Re: (Score:2)
Partly in Python, except for the older section which is in C++ and Perl which was then compiled and linked to jar files. Since they couldn't afford real programmers they then had grad students use .Net to set up a website running on IIS and written in VB. Just copy and paste your statement into a form and press "compile".
So it was all pretty straight forward.
Impossible without a verified GUT (Score:2)
Without a working and verified Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) in Physics, this cannot be done. And we are probably farther removed from achieving that than ever. This is, as presented, nothing but a scam, masking as Science.
But... (Score:2)
can it decide if any simulation written in this language terminate in a finite time?
How is this language marked-up? (Score:2)
Does it involve an intricate mesh of nested brackets, braces and parenthesis?
Mandatory tabbing and trailing semicolons?
Conditions expressed by single punctuation makrs, which are reversed if the character appears twice?
Variables, commands and functions chained together with periods?
Does it support oodles of ways to disguise and execute destructive code?
Am I going to have to repeatedly insist to my boss that just because I can replace a blown PSU that I'm not his man to code the website?
No, that would have to be based on String Theory. (Score:2)
When we see claims such as those made by George Mobus we need to consider if they are nothing more than a symptom of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Not really. Math can be made to match ANY universe (at least a wide variety). The trick is finding a symbolic abstraction that matches this particular universe to chop out all the side distractions, somewhat like the Cartesian coordinate system being a subset of all possible coordinate systems.
Or music notation assuming a 12-tone equi-spaced octave. This is because a general purpose notation that considers all known tone systems would be far more complicated in order to be more gen
Universal Opcodes... (Score:2)
Wolframs New Kind Of Physics book (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
Turing machines and GUTs (Score:2)
How does this relate to Turing machines and Grand Unified Theories in physics? The former is well understood, solid theory in computer science. The latter is an unachieved goal of physics. Like many others here, my BS meter is in action; but I've got an open mind.
Hokum & Bunkum (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's clearly written in perl [xkcd.com] [/obligatory xkcd]
Re: (Score:2)
Yup.
BS Detector Pegged Immediately (Score:2)
A long, text-only blog entry with merely "claims" that "I have done this amazing thing", is stupid.
How did this garbage make the Main Page?
Shall I write a FaceBook Post on the perpetual-motion machine that I invented, and built, but refuse to show anyone because they might steal my ideas? It would hold more water than this guy's incomprehensible gobbledygook.
Schrodinger++ (Score:1)
The language is made of cat emoticons, some semi-transparent.
God developed the universe (Score:1)
In LISP....with a couple of PERL scripts to tie it all together.
All programming languages are equivalent (Score:2)
in their theoretical expressive power to describe any computable function. See Turing-Equivalent
At least, all deterministic programming languages.
Languages vary mostly in how compressed and/or comprehensible it is to express this versus that type of operation or type of datatype.
I guess a machine-language for the universe would have to be expressive enough to take advantage of everything a quantum computer could do, whatever that set of capabilities actually is.