[FRIAM] 6 to 1, 12/2 to the other

[Frank Wimberly]

Some of you know that in my last position at Carnegie Mellon I was working
on causal reasoning.  We made a distinction between probabilistic causation
(smoking causes cancer) and actual causation (dropping the bottle caused it
to break).  In the former case we used graphical models, specifically
parameterized Bayes networks to model the causal relationships among a set
of variables.  In the latter case a simple directed graph suffices.  In the
Wolfram, Gorard, Sorkin work do they make this distinction?

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 8:46 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since we're talking about Sabine and anastomosis, I found this video
> interesting"
>
> This Theory of Everything Could Actually Work: Wolfram’s Hypergraphs
> https://youtu.be/-yzdjziS-bo?si=w5av9XcTUqjodJ5V
>
> "The idea that the laws of physics are a sort of computation has a rather
> basic problem. It's incompatible with Einstein's theories of general
> relativity and it's not a small mismatch. You see, any type of computation
> works in steps. If it doesn't, then calling it a computation is really just
> a weird way of talking about the laws of physics that we already use. A
> computation has some sort of update rule. [snip] The problem with this idea
> isn't just that Einstein's theories don't use graphs. But that we know you
> can't use graphs to even properly approximate them. The gaps in the graphs
> and the updates in time steps can't be hidden away. They will always be
> observable. And we haven't observed them. [snip] As a consequences, you
> can't approximate general relativity with a graph while respecting all its
> symmetries."
>
> She then mentions her paper: A No-go theorem for Poincaré-invariant
> networks <https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06070>, which I'm incompetent to
> read. She continues:
>
> "The new Wolfram approach uses what they call 'hypergraphs'. Instead of
> just using graphs to describe space-time and particles in them, they
> collect these graphs into groups. So the hypergraph is really a collection
> of graphs. The points in this graph describe space-time and can also
> describe matter in the space-time, depending on their properties. But the
> lengths in the hypergraph are not physical. They have no length. They just
> quantify the relations between the points. And since they have no length,
> there's no problem with them becoming shorter or longer for different
> observers. It's actually a clever idea. I had an exchange with the guy who
> works for Wolfram Research who did most of this work, I think, Jonathan
> Gorard, in 2020. I came to the conclusion that this is indeed possible. But
> it's been done before. This is exactly the idea an approach called 'Causal
> Sets' put forward by Rafael Sorkin. As the name suggests, in this approach
> space-time is a set of points, like the points in the hypergraph. And these
> points have causal relations, which you can depict with arrows. So that
> gives you a graph. And this will, indeed, respect Einstein's theory. If you
> look at what they've [Gorard et al] been doing after that announcement in
> 2020, they've worked more on the relation between Wolfram's hypergraph and
> causal sets. Most of this work has been done, it seems, by Jonathan Gorard.
> He has also looked at how to use that to do general relativity and how it
> prevents singularities, which the causal sets people never figured out how
> to do. [snip] However, the causal sets people already showed that it's
> possible to put discretized versions of differential equations on these
> graphs. So maybe it isn't as difficult as it sounds. So when I look at this
> today, I honestly think this research program is going very well. And I
> think it's about time that physicists pay a little more attention to it."
>
> [Gorard et al]
> https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ItG_Nz0AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
>
>
> On 10/30/24 17:21, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 12:32 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:
> gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     The idealists will never stop idealizing and then reifying their
> ideal. To Engineer is Human. But those of us who know (or merely
> confidently believe) reality is made up of a diverse non-wellfounded set of
> ... what? ... urges? ... nano-agents? ... IDK, whatever, will always
> anastomose that built environment ... or at least reclaim it like a hermit
> crab squatting in a tin can.
> >
> >
> >   I like the visual and deeper concept, Glen. A kind of wuwei attitude.
> >
> > sequeing impermanence of political structures to over-reified software:
> >
> > Today at lunch, John Zingale lamented that the residence time of code in
> the system seems to be decreasing. Perhaps Anastomotic Computing is the
> next big thing.  :-)
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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