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

Thu Oct 31 14:32:51 EDT 2024

See

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255569778_Actual_Causes_and_Thought_Experiments

For details

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 12:29 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>
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