[A candidate simple program for generating fundamental physics]

[A candidate simple program for generating fundamental physics] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

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A candidate simple program for generating fundamental physics
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Posted by: Paul B. White

On page 434 of the NKS book, Stephen Wolfram wrote:

Underneath the laws of physics as we know them today it could be that there lies a very simple program from which all the known laws -- and ultimately all the complexity we see in the universe -- emerges.

With this quote in mind, I invite everyone to read my paper "Particle Genetics and Expression" (see attachment below). I believe that the system developed in the paper is a strong candidate for being the "simple program" for fundamental physics that Wolfram is talking about here.

The paper is 23 pages. Section 12.10 is where I explicitly show that the system is literally a simple program running on a fundamental computer, but you need to read all the stuff before that section to know what I'm talking about there.

In section 13 the system predicts new phenomena that may surface in LHC experiments.

(Note: You should read my paper, "Dark Energy and Logical Substructure", posted here, before reading the "Particle Genetics and Expression" paper.)

Paul White
BS Physics

Posted by: tomjones

I don't quite understand how your paper represents anything as a simple program, since there are no operators and your levels and boundary conditions don't seem to work like for example a CA or other NKS simple programs. I guess I just don't see how what you have written describes a simple program.

I also didn't quite follow how you theory gets us closer to a theory of everything, since as I said you have no operators in your theory, just variables and no rigorously defined relations?

And where is your predictive apparatus for making predictions that are verifiable?

Maybe you could work an example for me like the two slit experiment and show me how you would deal with it in your theory (levels and boundary conditions) and how this would lead to the results of the two slit experiment?

It seems to me that your paper is essentially a set of ideas but has yet to show any validity since no current results are duplicated it casts doubt on the predictions made sub-quarks...

Also do you have some test of your sub-quarks idea to test the prediction?

Thanks

Posted by: Paul B. White

"I don't quite understand how your paper represents anything as a simple program, since there are no operators and your levels and boundary conditions don't seem to work like for example a CA or other NKS simple programs. I guess I just don't see how what you have written describes a simple program."

Indeed, it's not like any of the CAs or other simple programs in the NKS book, as far as I can tell. But it is a simple program of a different kind; I think the whole paper in general, and section 12.10 in particular makes this pretty clear.

The boundary conditions are the rules, operations or "operators" in the system. All possible combinations of these boundary conditions act on the set of displacements (dn) at each level, producing symmetries and couplings as basic output.

"Charges" emerge at the nexuses (or dn) where the boundary conditions (dependence and independence relations) combine. So we might think of a dn as being a kind of blank coin, and imagine that the independence relations "stamp" the back side of the coin, yielding a background of symmetries; and the dependence relations stamp the front side of the coin, yielding a foreground of couplings. The result is that dependence and independence relations are, in a sense, two sides of the same "coin", or charge. (I don't know if that is a great analogy, but I'm trying...) And I think that's what we find in physics: charge is just a shorthand way of talking about a nexus of associated couplings and symmetries. (I mean "charge" in a general sense; e.g. energy, electric charge, mass, baryon charge/number, and color charge are all "charges"; and we might even think of space, time, Planck's constant, etc, as charges.)

Of course, I've only talked qualitatively about how charges and their associated couplings and symmetries arise. I haven't yet provided any rigorous derivation of a particular symmetry or coupling that we are familiar with in physics. So, yes, as pointed out in section 14 of the paper, the theory is not yet as rigorous as it needs to be. The paper presents what I've figured out so far. The next step will hopefully be to derive or compute stuff in a more rigorous way.

But, as Stephen Wolfram has pointed out many times, to derive things at a fundamental level in physics we may need to just run the simple program (once we discover it), as opposed to the traditional notion that a fundamental theory of physics will contain some pretty equation that we plug numbers into, or find solutions for, in order to derive things. One problem with the traditional equation-based methods of physics is that you always have to assume too many things as primitives; e.g., space, time, energy, mass, electric charge, baryon charge/number, color charge, h, c, couplings, all the different symmetries, etc. With a simple program, on the other hand, you may only need to start out with a few bits of pure information, and a few simple rules to generate something from that information. When you're trying to generate the universe, the trick is to figure out what simple rules, acting on what few bits of information, can possibly produce the variety of stuff that we see in physics.

As an exercise, let's see if we can take the so-called primitives of modern physics (as listed in the previous paragraph) and, using the imperative of simplicity and the process of elimination, arrive at the primitives postulated in my Particle Genetics paper.

First, as already alluded to above, let's just assume that space, time, and all the "charges" emerge from the nexuses of symmetries and couplings. So that leaves us with just the symmetries and couplings as "primitives". But there are lots of important symmetries in physics (e.g., spatial isotropy and homogeneity, homogeneity of time, parity, gauge invariances). And there are several couplings, associated with four different forces. Do we have to accept all of these things as primitives? Have we hit rock bottom in our pursuit of simplicity? Is there a way to reduce all of these "primitives" to something even simpler? Yes there is.

Symmetries, when boiled down to their essence, are just statements of the form: "Something is independent of something else". And couplings can be boiled down to statements of the form: "Something is dependent on something else". So, instead of having to provide many different causes for many different symmetries and couplings, we can simplify everything greatly by just having one generic independence relation as the cause or source of all symmetries, and one generic dependence relation as the cause or source of all couplings. Then, if we throw in the levels 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., and displacements (dn) from the levels as the "somethings" in the above statements, we get the following statements:

Level(s) 0, 1, ..., n are independent of dn, and

dn is dependent on level(s) n, n-1, ..., 0.

We now have only four basic primitives in our system: the levels; the displacements; the independence relations; and the dependence relations. I would suggest that this is the simplest system of primitives that could possibly generate all the varied phenomena of physics. In other words, I think we have hit rock bottom in our pursuit of simplicity. Even though such simplicity doesn't necessarily guarantee that this system is the right one, if we assume that nature always chooses the simplest way to do things then we have a strong indication that the system described above is the one which our universe is based on.

The above argument provides some motivation or justification for the primitives used in the particle genetics paper. Can I connect this a little more concretely with events in physics? Yes.

As discussed in the paper, a photon is an object of level 1, and electrons/positrons are objects of level 2. So when you see a photon turn into an electron and positron, you are seeing a step from level 1 to level 2 in the simple program. Likewise, when you see an electron-positron collision that produces baryons, you are seeing a step from level 2 to level 3 in the program. If the LHC is able to produce a step to level 4, then a new force (probably stronger than the gluon force) and quark substructure (i.e. seven subquarks for each quark) should occur, as outlined in section 13 of the paper. Likewise, if a step to level 5 could be produced, there should be yet another force, and the subquarks themselves would have substructure of a definite kind.

Consider this. When a photon turns into an electron and positron, where does the information come from to tell the electron and positron how to be different from the photon that they came from? Well, according to the paper, the difference in raw information between an electron and a photon is just one bit, which we call d1 (or in binary form, 010). And the difference in raw information between an electron and proton is also one bit (d2, or 100 in binary form). It's the nature of the boundary conditions or "rules" (i.e. dependence and independence relations), and the fact that all combinations of the boundary conditions yield physical properties, that produces such a large increase in output and complexity as you step up the levels of the program. This is similar to what happens with some of the CAs and other simple programs in the NKS book -- complexity increases as the program steps to successive levels -- except that the particle genetics system gets a lot more complexity from each step, due to the fact that the displacements (or the binary strings that represent them) are overloaded by all the combinations of dependence and independence relations that come into play at a given level; e.g. d1d0 can be expressed as mass, space-time, or the quantum of action, depending on which combination of boundary conditions are considered. (One other, trivial, difference between the NKS book and my system is that the simple programs in the former step down the page, whereas the tables in my paper show the program starting with level 0 at the bottom, and then working up the page on successive steps.)

"I also didn't quite follow how your theory gets us closer to a theory of everything...?"

Particle Genetics is not a theory of "everything", it's a theory of the universe and the objects and phenomena that occur in it. I personally don't believe that the universe is "everything"; I believe that the universe is a proper subset of existence.

"And where is your predictive apparatus for making predictions that are verifiable?"

Section 13 of the paper contains current predictions for the theory. Hopefully, in time, we will be able to produce more predictions.

"Maybe you could work an example for me like the two slit experiment and show me how you would deal with it in your theory (levels and boundary conditions) and how this would lead to the results of the two slit experiment?"

The results of the two-slit experiment (i.e. wave-particle duality) are not so much of a problem for physics as they are a problem with the "classical aesthetic" being hard wired into the human brain -- our brains don't like duality, ambiguity, uncertainty, etc. Maybe this is a survival mechanism or something; e.g. if you ponder too long about whether that guy aiming a spear at you is friend or foe, you might not survive long enough to have offspring.

As discussed in my paper (particularly in section 12.8), with the universe as the output of a generative system (i.e. the output of a simple program running on a fundamental computer), everything that we see and experience is constructed...nothing is inherent. This construction happens at the fundamental level in physics via the micro-boundary conditions already discussed; it also happens at a higher level via macro-boundary conditions (e.g. setting the width of a slit); and it happens at a very high level in our brains (e.g. our brain constructs such things as the "chairness" of a chair, etc.).

A problem for physics is, why does anything appear to be wave-like and why does anything appear to be particle-like? All I can say right now is that, according to my theory, the particle or "quantum" aspects of matter come about at level 2 or higher, due to the combination of d1 and d0, i.e. d1d0, acting as an irreducible unit at those levels. Light (a level 1 phenomena) acts purely as a wave when it is left alone, but acts also in a particle-like way when it interacts with objects at level 2 or higher. Thus we can think of light as being wave-like in its default state, and becoming also particle like in cases when it interacts with "matter". An electron, on the other hand, seems to have both wave and particle aspects built-in by default. This seems to be because the electron is itself an object of level 2, and thus the d1d0 unit is always in effect, allowing particle-like behavior to manifest all of the time.

"It seems to me that your paper is essentially a set of ideas but has yet to show any validity since no current results are duplicated it casts doubt on the predictions made sub-quarks..."

For current results: Table 3 shows that the system produces the basic structure of the stable particle spectrum. Of course, one thing that doesn't seem to fit is the neutrino. If neutrinos have mass, then they should be level 2 objects; but then why don't they have electric charge? Does everything at level 2 or higher need to have electric charge? Well, the neutron is a level 3 object, but has zero net electric charge; but that's supposedly because the neutron has substructures (quarks) whose charges cancel out. My system has no mechanism for producing substructure at level 2. So I believe it has to do with what we were just discussing: that all properties are constructed due to combinations of boundary conditions acting at a given level. Thus neutrinos (if they have mass) are possibly a mode at level 2 in which one of the boundary conditions critical for producing electric charge is left out of the mix, or somehow cancels out. In other words, because some boundary condition or combination of boundary conditions is not acting in that mode, then that potential aspect of level 2 objects is not expressed. This is similar to what happens in biology when the gene for a protein is present in the DNA, but it's not being expressed because some necessary operator (e.g. enzyme) is not present or is inactivated for some reason.

Another current result: The system produces three extra charges and corresponding substructures at level 3. An arbitrary system could conceivably have produced some other number of extra charges and substructures; but this system produces exactly three, making it natural to interpret the charges as color charges, the substructures as quarks, and the whole object as being the basis for baryons.

"Also do you have some test of your sub-quarks idea to test the prediction?"

No, I don't have a specific test for that at the moment.

Thanks for your questions and comments.

Posted by: tomjones

My initial reaction is there is still a problem with what your saying but I have not isolated it yet so I'll post again when I do. But what I would like to see is something like an equation or a more formal layout of the rules and primitives and how they interact. For example in mathematics I can write an equation that models some phenomena and if I put in values for the variables it gives me a result. What values do you put into your variables and what result comes out?

Maybe I am misunderstanding something but the only proof of being a program that seems to be offered in section 12.10 is sticking some binary on the front of things (this is not a program).

If we take something like the example of CA there a set of primitives (black or white cells) and a set of rules that tell how to manipulate the cells and what the next row should look like.

In your program how does one do that, so given a system of particles what can you tell me about. (if I give you a row of cells can you tell me what the next row will be?) I think you're relying on some magic here to get from what you have to a program.

You speak of how your boundary conditions and rules are operators but that is just not true since you have never formally defined how they behave. If you want the rules and the boundary conditions to be part of a program you have to layout some formal way they behave. The only operator I saw in your paper was the word "apply or applied" you apply x to y... this does not work it does not define a formal relation between x and y and the output z.

If you have some level 0 and you then apply boundary conditions and rules to it what does that mean?
Is it level0 * rules * boundary conditions = output? (this is just an example)
This defines a formal way that each part relates, this is the kind of thing you need before you can say you have a program.

As for the reply on two slit experiment, I would be happy to hear if you have some reasoned explanation of how its irrelevant, but what you presented merely sounds like you just don't know how to deal with it.

If you don't want to reproduce the two slit experiment then pick some other physics experiment and reproduce that, with formal relations and all and that is testable. I eagerly await your reply.

The other nagging question is why do we need levels? What do these levels let us do that can't already be done? You can't translate your paper into a program on a computer without formal relations and without the formal relation your input will never make an output. So having levels and boundary conditions and rules, how does it help you?

If I give you two idealized particles and they collide can your theory tell me anything about the collision or the energy released or anything else? Or is it just that the particles are in this level or that?

Thanks

Posted by: Paul B. White

In my paper I use a lot of analogies to biology to help explain things. And the last paragraph of the paper says, "The next 60 years of physics may be a lot like the last 60 years of biology...".

If you look at the timeline of biological genetics, in the early 1940s they still weren't sure whether proteins or DNA carried the genetic information. As the decade went by it became more and more clear that DNA was the genetic material, until finally Watson and Crick clinched it in 1953 with the double helix structure which critically provided a mechanism for replication. In that same year, Watson and Crick speculated that "it...seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is a code which carries the genetical information". But they didn't really know if this was the case, or what the code was and how it got turned into proteins, organisms, etc. They were just speculating, hypothesizing, conjecturing ... whatever you want to call it.

It took another decade after 1953 to determine that a triplet of nucleotides specified an amino acid, and to determine which triplets specified which amino acids, i.e. to "break the code". And it took longer to figure out zillions of other details about the process. Indeed I'm sure that microbiologists are still spending their entire careers trying to better understand specific aspects of the process. And I don't think any biologist would tell you today that they understand how whole organisms are formed.

So it's a long process.

Similarly, if my particle genetics system turns out to be basically correct, then what I have presented so far is just the start of a long process. I would hope that within 10 years we might have something a la Watson and Crick that will clinch the system as being the basis for physics. But I don't pretend for a moment that my system clinches anything so far. There are a million unanswered questions with my system, just as there were a million questions at every point in the timeline of biological genetics.

The system that I have presented is what I have figured out so far. It could be right, or it could be wrong. Time will tell.

Some people think that you should sit on your ideas until you have everything nailed down nice and perfect. Well, I wrote 90% of the content of the paper in early 1992; so I have been sitting on it for the last 5 1/2 years. I dusted it off a few months ago and started revising, updating and adding a few things here and there, improving it a lot. But it won't do anyone any good if I put it back on the shelf for another five years. Besides, due to a lack of time and/or resources, it's unlikely that I will be able to do much work on it for the next five years, or maybe ever. So, by putting it out there now, albeit with a lot of shortcomings, maybe someone else can take the baton and move it forward in some way.

That's simply the best I can do for now.

Posted by: tomjones

I believe the flaw here is that your theory and the discovery of DNA are really not comparable. For example DNA was discovered by people in labratories working with real experiments... The theories were based on said data. Your theory has not been shown to be based on a similar basis.

The questions I asked were not meant to discourage you but these are the questions you have to consider to be taken seriously. There is a lot you can still do to formalize your theory, but I have a hard time thinking that if you leave it as is anyone will take it the least bit seriously.

So on that note I would suggest that you at least try some real science and try to formalize your ideas and turn them into something that would be taken seriously by the scientific community and this is something you can do.

"Some people think that you should sit on your ideas until you have everything nailed down nice and perfect. Well, I wrote 90% of the content of the paper in early 1992; so I have been sitting on it for the last 5 1/2 years. I dusted it off a few months ago and started revising, updating and adding a few things here and there, improving it a lot. But it won't do anyone any good if I put it back on the shelf for another five years. Besides, due to a lack of time and/or resources, it's unlikely that I will be able to do much work on it for the next five years, or maybe ever. So, by putting it out there now, albeit with a lot of shortcomings, maybe someone else can take the baton and move it forward in some way."

I realize that it can take a while to refine theories some of my projects I have been working on for over 10 years and there still far from finished. I would never advocate merely sitting on your ideas until they are perfect, I merely think you should sit on them until you have a reasoned formal paper that can be taken seriously.

Thanks

Posted by: Paul B. White

I would never advocate merely sitting on your ideas until they are perfect, I merely think you should sit on them until you have a reasoned formal paper that can be taken seriously.

Your premise seems to be that only ideas which meet the rigorous standards of a peer-reviewed science journal should ever be �taken seriously� and thus presented or discussed anywhere. That's obviously absurd, and it's not how science or anything else in this world actually gets done. At any given moment, science is a cauldron of ideas, theories, conjectures, hypotheses, speculations, etc. It's an essential part of the process in science. A sine qua non for progress. Yes, when it comes time to present your findings in a peer-reviewed journal the bar for being �taken seriously� is necessarily set very high. But up until that point, it's catch-as-catch-can.

The NKS forum is not a peer-reviewed journal last time I checked. It's a part of the cauldron of science in which NKS-related ideas can be presented and discussed. Thus I think this forum is the perfect place to present and discuss my paper.

Posted by: tomjones

Not the implication at all, the implication is that you must show your work as being worth someones notice, ie you must show that if someone picksup the baton its worth doing that there is some result that is useful.

Peer review is exactly what happens on a forum when you post your paper, you don't like it then don't post your paper.

NKS is a forum about NKS which some claim to be science if that be the case then one should be posting science and not pseudo-science on said forum.

Thanks

Posted by: Paul B. White

Not the implication at all, the implication is that you must show your work as being worth someones notice, ie you must show that if someone picksup the baton its worth doing that there is some result that is useful.

Peer review is exactly what happens on a forum when you post your paper, you don't like it then don't post your paper.

NKS is a forum about NKS which some claim to be science if that be the case then one should be posting science and not pseudo-science on said forum.

If the administrator of this forum thinks that the posting of my paper and my responses to your questions and comments make no contribution to the advancement of NKS issues then I will withdraw them from this forum.

I appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to ask questions and make comments. It's given me the opportunity to suss out aspects of my system that I wasn't totally aware of. For example, though some of the ideas that I posted giving some justification for the primitives of my system have been in the back of my head for a while, it didn't all crystallize until I wrote that post. I may incorporate that into a future version of the paper.

One caution I can give you is that a lot of pure math and logic types can get themselves into trouble because they sometimes have an almost pathological need for perfection in everything. The problem is that, outside of pure math, logic, and God, such perfection does not exist. In fact, outside of math and logic, there is no such thing as "proof". The farther you get away from math and logic, the messier things become. The process of science is messy, dirty and even dangerous sometimes.

But I think we should end this discussion now, because we're starting to get away from talking about NKS-related issues, and talking too much about nitty-gritty process issues. Whether or not my paper and this thread that I started are of value to this forum is solely for the forum administrator to decide. And I am happy to leave it there.

Posted by: Paul B. White

A couple of my posts in other threads expand on the ideas of the present thread. Those posts are here and here.

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