hi all. re the term "algorithmic revolution" here are a few more ideas along this thread Id like to point out.
TCM wrote >My belief is that basic mathematics is much more important than >computer use, in terms of understanding the cosmos and the nature of >reality. ok, fair disclosure, I have a BS software engr, writing code since age ~10, and it affects my worldview bigtime. or, one could say, I really know how to pick a winning horse, haha.. seriously, I recognized & planned my life around the "algorithmic revolution" from a young age. at an early point I realized that software is like "animated mathematics". this is a very,very deep & cosmic way of looking at algorithmics. it captures some of the revolutionary flavor. we can suggest that mathematics has previously attempted to grasp the concept of change, via calculus, differential eqns etc. but something is fundamentally new about simulation. it captures worlds that cannot be expressed via mathematical generalities. there are no equations we can write down that describe the outcome of, say, a climate simulation-- its all locally defined & then globally simulated & the outcome is "emergent". & what are the differential equations that describe the game of life?? imho algorithmics captures the extraordinary, currently very poorly understood property of "emergence". just as in the game of life there are thousands of glider types, none of which one would expect/anticipate from the simple rules. we can argue that algorithmics is a fundamentally new way to look at mathematics. and one could argue, all mathematics up until now has been transformed. at this point, it seems much more correct to classify mathematics as a subbranch of algorithmics than vice versa. I believe much mathematics of the future will be taught from the "algorithmic point of view" instead. imho, the invention & harnessing of the algorithm is roughly as significant in human intellectual development as pythagoras's original realization about how mathematics modelled nature. its easily on that order of magnitude as far as a milestone in human thought, possibly surpassing it. it seems to me, fundamentally, algorithmics entails and surpasses mathematics as a new simultaneously conceptual and physical tool for analyzing the universe and its variegated phenomena. so think. we've basically got several millenia of mathematical thought, dating all the way back to the babylonians (who played with perfect triangles, fractions etc), and quite well developed in greece 2000 years ago. reaching heights of sophistication with calculus, or the abstraction in the 20th century. Im saying to some degree, all that is childs play compared to the new universe of algorithmics. re: TCMs questions about some of my points. 1st, I believe that we will eventually get the math for a TOE that matches accelerator/particle physics so perfectly that it will be considered redundant or wasteful to do the expensive supercollider experiments, because the accelerators will never find anything that does not match the comprehensive theory. that is, after all, one of the big reasons to look for a TOE. but I agree, until that point, physicists are not going to give up the "big science".. a crazy thought? perhaps. but lets look at atomic weaponry testing-- thats essentially whats happened. the US has been simulating atomic weapons testing for many years now with powerful supercomputers. and obviously the results are considered ***extremely*** accurate. it can indeed be done on some level. 2nd-- alas, I wish I could cite a reference. but software is used extremely heavily in particle physics experiments to automatically analyze particles and classify them & find anomalous events. its basically AI-like software, extremely sophisticated. it can look at very complicated particle tracks & collisions and name all the particle tracks based on analyzing the "big picture". this used to be done by humans & by hand, and (as I understand it) the discovery of many particles from the last decade or around that range could not have been done with this highly sophisticated sorting software that can run through millions of events very quickly. so there is a hidden story behind massive particle accelerators. the software infrastructure for them is all invisible and mostly unknown to the public, but its a vast edifice at the core of the analysis, and has gone through revolutionary changes in a short amount of time, mirroring the algorithmic revolution elsewhere. how much is that software worth?? I cant really estimate, but I wouldnt be surprised if a significant percent of supercollider budgets was spent on developing it. if anyone knows references on software used in particle physics analysis, I would really like to know myself. a nice reference on the culture behind accelerators is "beamtimes & lifetimes" by sharon traweek.
