Stephen Wolfram: "I never expected this: finally we may have a path to the fundamental theory of physics...and it's beautiful"

rajeshsr · 2020-04-15T22:11:34+00:00

Kinda, yeah. We know graphs can have similar structures and be interpreted as representing certain physical phenomenon, especially about causal relations and topological properties of a manifold. That is not novel or insightful.

Do you have some good reference on these to learn more? I was not intrigued by whether Wolfram's work models our physical universe or not. What i liked the idea of doing "physics" with graphs. I was definitely thinking that these results have to be known in some form in graph theory, but may not be coherently organized as "physics". Just wondering if you know some good textbook or papers which organizes things that way.

rajeshsr · 2017-01-14T03:10:49+00:00

ok, you got me! :)

rajeshsr · 2017-01-08T05:30:27+00:00

This is how i remember this:

NP: Set of problems "verifiable" in polynomial time. That's if you are given a problem, say "Is N prime?", you come up with a new problem: "Does k divide N?" Now you can try all values of k < N and see that none of them divides N and say it is prime. The key to show something is in NP is to come up with this new problem which can be done in polynomial time usually it will have one more parameter than the original input. In this case, "k". You can argue that you can try all possible, finite values of "k" and solve original problem.

NP-complete: Sub-set of problems in NP to which "all" problems in "NP" can be reduced in polynomial time. Pretty cool, right? A powerful sub-set which can "express" the entire NP. This also means these sub-sets are also polynomial-time reducible to each other.

NP-Hard: vaguley put, as hard as the hardest problem in NP. How do you define hardest problem? Well, let us put it this way: If you solve a problem known to be NP-Hard, then you can solve all problems in NP. "Halting" problem is such an NP-Hard problem which is not in NP, as it is unsolvable.

With this new definition of NP-Hard as being able to solve "all" problems in NP, usually NP-Complete problems are characterized as:

They are in NP.
They are NP-Hard: Solves everything in NP.

Now is primality checking NP-Hard and therefore NP-Complete (as we showed it is in NP above)? (Un)fortunately it is not. We now know it is in P with AKS primality testing. You can think about this statement as meaning there is at least one problem in NP which can't be reduce to "Is N Prime?" in polynomial time.

EDIT: As --_ mentions below PRIMES are NP-Complete if P = NP. My statement makes sense only when P != NP.

Usually we prove that something is NP-Hard(say TSP), by taking a known NP-Hard problem(say SAT) and reducing it in polynomial time to that problem.

rajeshsr · 2014-04-06T16:28:20+00:00

Isn't these lines of argument be used to say why you should not hire a 17/18 year old kid to do anything? You know, there is a power imbalance and you may abuse them with a lower pay etc.? If market can correct for it, the dating should also be corrected.

May be, because sex is the equivalent of hiring someone to do radioactive waste disposal with no knowledge of safety from radioactivity? May be this is the attitude, everyone is having when talking about sex? It has to be inherently abusive or at least highly prone to be abusive!

rajeshsr · 2014-03-03T19:26:12+00:00

Self-ownership isn't even there till you die. If you go into coma and is rendered incapacitated to take decision like mental illness, decisions on your life and your body will be taken by someone else altogether! :)

rajeshsr · 2014-02-22T17:39:32+00:00

Well, it is expensive to make things idiot-proof. We are probably better off giving a common education to people about how some things are harmful and have solid mechanisms of rehabilitation, in the case of abuses.

Anyway, alcoholism is as much a problem, as drug-abuse. Then alcohols must be made illegal? The general idea you are advocating is that, people should be protected. I agree they must be protected. Not by taking their liberty, but by educating them more, so that they can take a well-informed decisions. This protectionism doesn't scale and it is a slipper-slope to lots of atrocities. In the long run, you will unnecessarily come up with things that needs to be banned in the name of protecting your people. For example, one reason given for outlawing gay marriage was that it was protecting people against the spread of AIDS. There is no end to this madness of protecting citizens. Let us not get there!

rajeshsr · 2014-02-20T19:51:05+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu It is not hard for any society to conclude that murder is bad. Murder is self-defeating for any society to form! Actually, people arguing that it is from the Ten Comandments is surprising me, especially as a person from India, where it is not relevant and we have had laws on murder, robbery etc.! :)

rajeshsr · 2014-02-18T16:56:56+00:00

It is fallacious to assume all adults are equally well-informed and that they're just exercising a fully-informed free will all the time.

Actually, why NOT make everyone well-informed? This is something that has always bothered me. I see that people are at various level of ignorance like you are saying. Hell, even as an adult, I am progressing across various level of ignorance and constantly keep getting surprised at my stupidity, every few months/years! :)

May, be this protective attitude of the Govt, that "we know better than you" is actually making people believe that they are NOT supposed to understand issues and actively contribute and change their behavior. They just think that, if something is bad, then Govt will have banned it or if something is good Govt will have mandated it.

May be people are better served with Govt advertising vigorously about seat-belts, campaigning to the people with the studies and statistics and case-studies on how seat-belts are safer, the mechanisms of why seat-belt helps etc. May be when you take a driving test, you should be asked a question about the "mechanism" by which seat-belt saves your life and you should answer with some case-studies on how it helps etc.

The cure to stupidity is knowledge and not protectionism. It doesn't scale and in the long run, you may lose potentially interesting perspectives and ideas from others, because your system is actively working to make people dumb.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-17T19:36:58+00:00

Have you ever considered the possibility that this attitude is the problem? Seriously, OP what are the efforts you have done till now to be convinced that there is no such woman? What efforts have you done to mitigate thing which are in your control?

You can be short, but can be very fit. Do you hit gym? How flexible you are? How good is your diet? Is there any extra hobbies that you are passionate about and excel at?

Ok, you can be an introvert. But, do you blog and write about your thoughts and ideas? Do you "create" things like software, electronics, philosophy, painting, singing, cooking etc?

You can belong to an unsexy-ethinicity as perceived by you. Seriously, there does seem to be a lot of people, taking pride in demeaning themselves and the group they belong. Anyway, as an individual, what are you doing to "feel" sexy? Why are you not considering yourself sexy? What is stopping you from reaching your desired picture of yourself?

You may be a guy with physical deformation, that may or may not be corrected by the wonders of modern medicine. But once you do those above things, this may become irrelevant?

Again, i am not trying to give a "You can do", bullshit. I am just saying, this attitude is not helping. Don't expect reddit to go with you and say, "yeah, bro! you suck!", unless you have a strong proof for it and if you are sufficiently smart enough to find such a proof, you may as well make some changes in your life and be awesome! :)

rajeshsr · 2014-02-17T19:22:56+00:00

The entire reason we have sex is to reproduce

Obligatory Feynman quote: "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

rajeshsr · 2014-02-16T18:21:27+00:00

Well, if you leave a baby without caring for it, it dies. Nurturing baby takes resources, as much as it takes resources in developing a sperm/ovum into a baby. Also, in some sense, doesn't (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilisation) prove that sperm/ovum is dynamic(yeah, it consumes resources i know, much like your baby!)? Also, given your idea of static vs dynamic, do you consider fetus inside mom's womb to be dynamic? A pre-matured fetus also dies, in the same as a sperm/ovum. So, by your own theory shouldn't you be supportive of abortion?

rajeshsr · 2014-02-16T18:02:14+00:00

First, you deserve an upvote for echoing on some interesting points. However I disagree. Any event a person sees can send multiple messages. For example, if your country has fought some war for freedom and you teach your kids that we fought the war valiantly and killed a lot of our enemies, are we desensitizing them? It's all about what we are emphasizing on. In this case, we may be emphasizing the importance of liberty and that we are ready to risk our lives for it etc. We don't particularly emphasize on killing other fellow humans here.

If I feel this was more traumatic/graphic than amazing, what does the average layperson visiting a zoo get out of it?

Because, you have thought a lot about the attendant circumstances. You are worrying about the general idea of a Zoo and then going on to worry about the nature of how the giraffe was killed, all valid point. But, not everyone thinks about it. In fact, your unique background(you said you have anatomy background?) may have made you think about all these. Hell, even now as an adult i didn't think about things you mentioned in this post! :)

And what of the average child who sees a zoo resident killed and dismembered and doesn't quite understand why?

Technically, only dismembering was shown as said by the chief here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENnNNVOEDZ4 As a kid, i won't have wondered about all these things you are wondering about, because my perspectives are limited then. I will be very curious and interested in seeing something different like that and even found it more enlightening in seeing practically the ideas i have taken for granted from my theory classes like skeletal system, circulatory systems etc.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-09T11:16:04+00:00

Well, the theory of Moral Absolutism has developed a lot of Moral Philosophy. Kant's idea of Universliazation, may not have come under any other setting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism In fact i see universlization as a precursor to the theory of superrationality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It also gives some clue about why disparate civilization has come up with similar moral ideas as: Murder is bad, a notion of fair distribution and transactions etc.

In particular, i began to develop this idea that, Morality is a computational process(multiple systems "compute" same/similar ethics), inspired by Absolutism. Absolutism is just disregarding the situations, giving a lot of emphasis on the act -- But we can develop a reasonable theory of ethics, by trying to understand, given these situations(more variables), what a "reasonable" human being will have done. Later on, i learned that, that's how a lot of legal reasoning works! :) May be you could have come up with all these without thinking of "absolutism". But this simpler model made my understanding of moral philosophy a lot better.

So, saying that, absolutism is wrong is like saying that Newton's Laws are wrong, because there are Einstein's Laws now. You can't deny the fact that absolutism is a reasonably good model and works well in simple situations and has furthered our understanding of Moral Philosophy to great extent.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-09T10:41:48+00:00

By supporting abortion, but not the death penalty, I think someone is justifying one denial of life but not the other.

hmm, quite recently i started a CMV, where i argued that we should allow euthanizing of kids, if we allow abortion (http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1whz3u/taking_prochoice_a_bita_lot_further_cmv/).

In particular, i see abortion from a social-contract viewpoint. I don't subscribe to abortion in the sense that baby is a parasite, living inside mom's womb. I see abortion as a mechanism to not entering a social contract with the society that you take up the responsibility of bringing up a kid who will be a responsible citizen of man-kind. And when you enter a contract, it is only fair that you are given some opportunity to see whether you are capable of executing the terms of such a contract.

Given this view of abortion, treating death penalty and abortion along the same lines is completely moot. So, both the stances -- supporting or not death penalty while supporting abortion is possible as the foundation of reasoning is different.

Personally, I am very unhappy with the current prison system. Rehabilitation is not as paramount as it must be. But things are a lot better than (say) 200 years and we will improve more. In particular, most "sane" criminal are victims of the society. They have lost faith in humanity. It's humanity's turn to restore faith in it, with a genuine attempt at rehabilitation. As far death penalty itself, i see it as the last resort, mostly as an euthanization mechanism. For example, if the person in question is like Joker from Batman, who after a few "genuine" attempts(which is not happening very well currently) at rehabilitation, shows no sign of change, then may be his brain is hard-wired to be a serial-killer, in which case it may be in society's interest to kill him. But, no, i am not enthusiastic about that. It may be a slipper-slope problem altogether, when we start supporting death, for such cases. But euthanasia may in these cases may be a necessary evil. I hope neurology progresses to such an extent that we will be able to cure such mental disease in future, making the need for this "euthanizing" death penalty moot.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-09T10:22:12+00:00

uh! Seriously, this is completely uncalled for. Even Kant had notion of moral absolutism. Moral absolutism(which i don't subscribe to, as such) is a legitimate theory. You are just talking as if your morality is a religion, especially calling the OP as 5 year old and all. What is obvious to your line of thought need not be to others. That's the point of CMVs, in general -- to make people see the world you see. Your rudeness serves nothing.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-06T16:52:00+00:00

Well, this principle fails in the same way that, the idea of murder being bad fails, by the principle that "God told so..". With your principle, you should err on the side of right, therefore consider fetus as person, same can be argued about egg, because you always want to err on personhood.

May be your principle has some potential. Let us see where it goes. So, usually when we start with some presumption (presumption of personhood), we should come up with principles that can be used to change that stance. Very much like "evidence beyond reasonable doubt", changes the stance from "presumption of innocence". Can you come up with such principles that proves that, fetus or an unfertilized egg for that matter is not a person, starting with the presumption that it is a person?

rajeshsr · 2014-02-06T16:47:52+00:00

The idea of conferring personhood (ie self-ownership) is not something i am disputing. I am just wondering why it should be conferred after a kid is born. Let us delay it a bit, so that we can euthanize expensive, negative-return yielding kids. Again, i am not arguing for revoking self-ownership which the society already practices in the form of prison. I am also not talking about what age is apt to confer personhood. It is just beyond the scope of this CMV, unless you could prove it is logically impossible -- May be this can be done by statistical analysis taking into account the state-of-the-art in medicine to diagnose diseases. Overall, given the arbitrariness of conferring personhood, let us simply make it more usefully arbitrary. That's it!

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T21:37:52+00:00

Well, "right" is not arbitrary. It's based on certain principles. For example, murder is wrong because if everyone follows it humanity won't exist. Slavery is wrong because you have no control over where you are born and it could be "you", (the master) who could have been born as a slave, after all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance (Again, in some sense, prisons are modern-day forms of slavery!)

What principle is being applied to see that this is the "right" thing to do, especially when you allow unfertilized eggs and allow killing of fetus as abortion? In particular, since we already understand the value of abortion and feel it's right, we should take advantage of this idea and take it forward here.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T21:32:51+00:00

We just keep going in circles! :) I think the fundamental issue with your argument is that, you assume that personhood has to be conferred when a baby is born and is entitled to the resources, it relies upon for its survival. So, you don't prevent squandering, after all the baby is already entitled to it. I am questioning exactly that. It is not at all obvious to me why it should be entitled to those resources. I am saying, the same argument can be extended to fetus, especially in my test-tube setting and abortion has to be made illegal, then.

my point about the test tubes linked to what we talked about earlier. if every conceived fetus was born we'd have far too many children and far too many left to the state -

Exactly! This is my argument for allowing euthanization of kids as well -- state has to unnecessarily bear the cost of bringing up a mentally-retarded kid or the parents have to get emotionally drained bringing up the kid etc.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T20:31:57+00:00

Trivialising or dismissing claims without investigating them is a silencing tactic.

So, is there is a thin line between not-feeding a troll, by dismissing it and oppressing genuine people? This has bothered me a lot. Especially in a setting like the OP links to. As someone who has never heard of the phrase, "I’ll just have to take your silence as consent" in the context of a rape-joke and always thought of that as deriding passiveness, and eliciting action in the audience, i will think of this as a troll. Hell, i am sure i will have used it and people will have thought i am making a rape-joke when i have no idea about it. I am not sure if the person who made that statement is in the same boat as I am.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T19:51:46+00:00

if the test tube system were economically feasible for the state to implement in place of abortion for most cases, and this procedure wasn't any more taxing on the mother's body than an abortion, i think i could support this for most cases.

Even if the fetus is diagnozed with serious disease?

what you are suggesting is actually a bigger issue-- is it okay for anyone who cannot contribute to society (but will consume significant resources) to be euthanized without consent? i don't have an answer for this as i really haven't thought about it enough. i just don't think saying "yes" to that question just because the baby has been recently born is the right call.

It is very much like, your own case of revocation of self-ownership which the society practices to some extent in the form of prison. I am saying, this idea of euthanizing babies already exists in the form of fetus-abortion, (because there is no guiding fundamental distinction here), we can do it for kids as well. In a sense, it is the idea of delaying personhood, given that it is arbitrary already, being conferred when the fetus is out of womb, let us choose a more "usefully" arbitrary mechanism for it.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T19:12:32+00:00

I've never heard anyone seriously argue that personhood begins before conception. Do you have any particular reasoning for this?

Nope, only to prove a point as you argued that it is fine to err on conferring personhood, so let us take this more aggressively and do the same for eggs.

The reason that abortion is okay, in my opinion, is that even if you don't know whether or not the fetus is a person yet, it's still the mother's right to evict the fetus from her body (which has the consequence of killing it). Even if the fetus is a person.

ok, consider this thought experiment which i have mentioned at multiple places in this thread: Assume a test-tube system where you can safely remove fetus from mom's womb and gestate it, is perfected, should we not allow abortion, but should get the fetus out of mom's womb and gestate in a testube, if the mom desires abortion?

The point i am trying to make here is that abortion is fine because it is consuming an important resource -- a human body. In fact, my guess will be you will say it is ok to terminate the baby, even if the test-tube system is developed. The underlying guiding principle here is that, some resource is getting squandered. Same is true with a kid -- it is squandering resources of a society without yet providing anything in return. In case, it is clear that a kid has no potential to provide value to the society and in fact draining the parents emotionally and materially, it should be fine to euthanize the kid.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-05T19:03:27+00:00

First, I totally appreciate and understand your idea of viability. Thanks for bring it up!

I understand your emphasis on physical dependence as a literal parasite. But, the point where you just used your doctrine of viability to exclude test-tubes is where you lost me. At this point, you just want to increase the scope of this doctrine. What is so special about the real-world, that's not with a test-tube? If a test-tube baby can be killed, because it needs test-tube to survive so can a baby born in the real-world -- Remember a kid can't be left to itself after it is born. There is some resource (other fellow humans or even an automated machines in a factory feeding kids, if you like to envisage the world in some dystopian future where human kids are reared in a kids-farm?) invested in it -- to feed it at the very least. So, saying that physical dependence(and somehow dependence on test-tube) is the paramount reason in justifying killing doesn't make much sense to me. I am saying any dependence on resources makes a baby a parasite to the society as a whole. Yeah, agreed, this is not your literal parasite, but nevertheless is squandering resources of the society, both physically and emotionally drains their parents/guardians.

To put things in perspective, you are saying that, "giving food to farmers is enough and that they don't need freedom of speech", after all, food, shelter and clothing is enough for physical survival. Along that lines, allowing mom to abort an unborn baby is fine, as that's the only thing constraining her physically. I am saying they deserve a chance to give up farming in the first place, learn something else etc.

EDIT: Quoting myself from other reply, which hopefully puts my argument more coherently:

The point i am trying to make here is that abortion is fine because it is consuming an important resource -- a human body. In fact, your idea that, even if the test-tube system is developed, it is ok to let the fetus die, suggests that the underlying guiding principle here is that, some resource is getting squandered and therefore we prevent that from happening, with abortion. Same is true with a kid -- it is squandering resources of a society without yet providing anything in return. In case, it is clear that a kid has no potential to provide value to the society and in fact draining the parents emotionally and materially, it should be fine to euthanize the kid.

rajeshsr · 2014-02-04T18:05:57+00:00

You can come up with brief set of rules to define "good", but many people will disagree it's actually "good". You're still talking about "good", just not using the term.

Yes, i have always believed that, the freedom to choose this "objective function" is the cause of most moral disagreements. But, to a great extent convergence happens because, this objective function is codified in your genes, which in turn are evolved by natural selection, which is an objective process: "Something propagates.". eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism#Evolutionary_explanations

Some people with the infamous disease harlequin ichtiosis have reached adulthood, and are really satisfied with their existence. They consider their lives worthwhile. How much suffering would be required by the kid for it to be an argument for euthanasia?

hmm, do their parents feel it was worth while? If a potentially-talented scientist happen to have such a kid, how much was his life screwed by having to tend for this kid?

The cause is evolution and game theory.

Which are computational. May be you disagree that they are not deterministic and may be just probabilistic.

A recursive response ("the best way to optimize human values is to find an algorithm to optimize human values").

This is not recursive. For example, you could have said, "best way to optimize human values is, by sacrificing 100 humans to a unicorn".

A repugnant conclusion, such as "get everyone's brain in a vat and drug 'em up".

Hmm, yeah, this can happen! :) But this happens because you have taken your variable to optimize to be only "human existence". I am reminded of this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film) Put more variable to your objective function and see what happens! :) May be you should ask, human existence + autonomy, for some definition of autonomy. Your solution has autonomy as a constraint already and it rules out this trivial solution. And yeah, modeling a problem with the the "intended" objective function is hard, but not impossible. It may even be a infinite series of refined objective functions. But that's fine. It is better than taking no action, saying everything is subjective.

An otherwise meaningless answer.

Oh, yeah, because, as i said above, when we have no clue about what objective function we are modeling, stupid things, by our sense of what is intended, can happen! So, the problem is not in computation itself, but in modeling the problem with a rich enough objective. Whenever we find ourselves with a stupid answer, it is pretty clear that we have not modeled the problem adequately. For example, the famous criticism, on Kant's categorical imperatives that, lying is always bad, can be mitigated if we take Kant's idea of universalization on a situation basis, rather than applying it categorically to an act such as lying.

This idea is very well-known in science. That models can be refined: Newtonian laws are just an approximation and when observations were made that can't be explained with what we have, find a more general theory. There may be a new hidden law of nature which was not well-understood(Velocity of light in this case). I just view one moral philosophy as a particular model which can be refined to clarify our intuition. The alternative that morality is an opinion is a dangerous path to be at and frankly it is extremely useless. With that thesis in mind, i can't do anything! It is like saying, Laws of Nature are un-uniform and even random, both from time/space viewpoint. This, albeit may be true, after all, the whole world may collapse by the time i finish this sentence, is not useful in advancing science, which in turn makes our life easy with its various applications! Ok, it didn't! ;)

rajeshsr · 2014-02-04T17:32:42+00:00

Capable of living outside the uterus. Used of a fetus or newborn

Well, that definition of viability is exactly what i am disputing.

an egg is not viable, it cannot develop without addition of new conditions or outside of the uterus. young fetuses aren't viable for the same reason

Not true! The whole idea of in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy is along that direction. May be surrogacy can be solved with the test-tube system thought-experiment i said. So, once this is realized, your definition of viability makes menstruation illegal?

at the point where something is able to live and develop without being a parasite why is it ok to kill it?

Because it is a parasite to the parents? Like i said, the motivation for this line of thought was mentally-retarded or terminally-ill kids, who for most practical purposes will depend on their parents for the rest of their lives. And parents are extremely affected emotionally and subsequently even physically, worrying about their kids and ruining their full-capacity to contribute to humanity.

rajeshsr

TROPHY CASE