RE: Algorithmic Revolution?
Colin Hales wrote ... Not really TOE stuff, so I?ll desist for now. I remain ever hopeful that one day I?ll be able to understand Bruno?. :-) Ah! Thanks for that optimistic proposition :-) Let us forget the AUDA which needs indeed some familiarity with mathematical logic. But the UDA? It would help me to understand at which point you have a problem. For example I understand where Hall Finney stops, although I still does not understand why. I got a pretty clear idea where and why Stephen King disagrees. This can help me to ameliorate the presentation. You could also help yourself through the formulation of precise questions. Perhaps you did and I miss it? (*) Bruno (*) My computer crashed badly some weeks ago and I use the university mailing system which is not so stable. Apology for funny spellings, RE:RE:-addition in replies, lack of signature, etc.
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
Colin Hales wrote: Here is another possible confusion: emergence as a descriptive artefact vs emergence as real layered behaviour in a real system. The wording initially looks as if you think emergence is not real. The emergence is real (whatever we consider real is!). Example: There are at least 6 fundamental layers of emergence from quantum froth to mind. The agreed view appears to be that any formal mathematics of each layer stops at each layer whereas an algorithmic approach generates/spans the layers, which are delineated by an appropriately sensitised observer. Both styles of description seem appropriate and able to coexist provided their character is understood. Remember my insistence on the models being good (by whatever criterion good is). Emergence in a poor model is most definitely not real. But we expect good models to be capturing something about reality, so emergence in these models is in some sense a real phenomenon. However, all I really insist upon is that two observers discussing a phenomenon agree that a particular model (or language as it were) is good. Then they can agree upon the emergence in that case. For the billions of people who believe in God, presumably God is equally a real emergent phenomenon. Not really TOE stuff, so Ill desist for now. I remain ever hopeful that one day Ill be able to understand Bruno . :-) Same here! Cheers A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
RE: Algorithmic Revolution?
Russell Standish wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Hi Folks, I have chewed this thread with great interest. Our main gripe is the issue of emergent behaviour and the mathematical treatment thereof? Yes? This is the area in which Wolfram claims to have made progress. (I am still wading my way through his tome). ***Isnt the 'algorithmic revolution' really a final acceptance that there are behaviours in numbers that are simply inaccessible to closed form mathematical formulae? - That closed-form mathematics cannot traverse the complete landscape of the solution space in all contexts? If this were the case, the 'algorithmic revolution' is at least 200 years old, as people have known at least this long that most integrals cannot be written in closed form. Of course, from a practical point of view, it was so expensive to solve mathematical problems numerically, that hardly anyone bothered until the advent of the electronic computer. Since then, of course computational science has taken off like a rocket, and keeps the likes of me employed. But this is hardly new news, or philosophically interesting. Cheers We have a small confusion here (probably caused by my own choice of words). Im not talking about the numerical solution to a given mathematical formula. Agreed: Mundane++. Memories of laboriously iterating on my calculator come to mind! :-) What Im saying (as you seem to agree) is that for some aspects of the universe (including those aspects we identify as emergent phenomena) there are no formulae possible in the first place. I think I find the answer to my original question in the last 2 paragraphs of your paper section 2. http://life.csu.edu.au/ci/vol09/standi09/, as well in your emergence thread para where I think you have nailed it: . As to mathematics predicting emergent phenomena, I believe that the answer is categorically no. Emergent phenomena are a result of a modelling process - eg what a brain does, not an analytic process. Mathematics can be used to describe the emergent phenomenon after it is discovered, but I don't think the discovery process can really be called mathematics.. Here is another possible confusion: emergence as a descriptive artefact vs emergence as real layered behaviour in a real system. The wording initially looks as if you think emergence is not real. The emergence is real (whatever we consider real is!). Example: There are at least 6 fundamental layers of emergence from quantum froth to mind. The agreed view appears to be that any formal mathematics of each layer stops at each layer whereas an algorithmic approach generates/spans the layers, which are delineated by an appropriately sensitised observer. Both styles of description seem appropriate and able to coexist provided their character is understood. I think we do have a revolution and it is a revolution that will force us to use a wolfamesque rule-based numerical combination descriptive/predictive method to deal with emergence whether we like it or not because its the only technique that can traverse the layers and there are a multitude of problems where we need to do exactly that. It seems more than a passing fad. I can foresee industry based on derivation of elaborate CA to fulfil useful requirements that cannot be achieved otherwise. I can see scientific method and Cog. Sci. in particular undergoing a transformation of a sort as a result. Not really TOE stuff, so Ill desist for now. I remain ever hopeful that one day Ill be able to understand Bruno . :-) Cheers, Colin Hales
RE: Algorithmic Revolution?
Hi Folks, I have chewed this thread with great interest. Our main gripe is the issue of emergent behaviour and the mathematical treatment thereof? Yes? This is the area in which Wolfram claims to have made progress. (I am still wading my way through his tome). ***Isnt the 'algorithmic revolution' really a final acceptance that there are behaviours in numbers that are simply inaccessible to closed form mathematical formulae? - That closed-form mathematics cannot traverse the complete landscape of the solution space in all contexts? My own approach has been to regard emergence as the repositioning of the observer of a system such that the mathematical descriptions you have been using fall over/cease to be relevant. The idea that the math can seamlessly transcend an observers scope is, I concluded, simply meaningless as the math is defined by the observers scope. The prejudices of our position as observers are therefore automatically destined to be embedded in our descriptors of things. If this is the case then one cannot overlook the use of computers or the AIT approach if you need to study, understand and replicate real-world phenomena (in particular, MIND) that transcend the boundaries of emergence. Will the historians look back on our obsession with closed form math and see it as the machinations of mathematical youth? Para *** above is the clincher and I have been unable to distil a definitive stance from all the writings. Clues anyone? regards, Colin Hales * somewhat perplexed *
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
My caveat before commenting: I'm an opinionated person, but I really don't have any particular theory of everything to share with you. No dreams theory, no soap bubble theory, no 18-dimensional cellular automaton theory. I'm currently doing a lot of reading in logic, topos theory, quantum mechanics, and math in general. I'm more interested right now in really grasping why the Kochen-Specher says what it says, for example. Some of you are way ahead of me. Anyway, these are some of my caveats before plunging in. On Sunday, November 24, 2002, at 04:26 AM, Colin Hales wrote: Hi Folks, I have chewed this thread with great interest. Our main gripe is the issue of emergent behaviour and the mathematical treatment thereof? Yes? This is the area in which Wolfram claims to have made progress. (I am still wading my way through his tome). ***Isnt the 'algorithmic revolution' really a final acceptance that there are behaviours in numbers that are simply inaccessible to closed form mathematical formulae? - That closed-form mathematics cannot traverse the complete landscape of the solution space in all contexts? And I believe Charles Bennett said all this more clearly and convincingly with his logical depth arguments. (See, for example, his long essay in an excellent book called Fifty Years of the Turing Machine.) The argument goes like this: suppose one is walking on a beach and finds a gold watch. The watch has many moving parts, many non-natural things like the crystal, the case, and much internal structure. (I'm deliberately mixing in parts of Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker, as the arguments are closely related.) The watch shows evidence that a lot of processes have run for a very long time. Not computer processes, but processes of manufacturing the components, of fitting them together, of learning what doesn't work and what does work, and of a serious industrial infrastructure. Or consider an e. coli organism. Something like 4 GB of genetic material, measured in bits and bytes (if I recall this correctly...it doesn't affect the argument if I am off by some factor). The complexity of the e. coli genome is, by some measures, just this 4 GB. But nearly all 4 GB strings (which is a very, very large number!) produce dead organisms. In the space of 4 GB strings, some relatively small patch of them produce functioning, reproducing organisms like e. coli. Both the watch and the e. coli appear to have been the result of a lot of shuffling and processing of the apparent number of bits. Charles Bennett calls this logical depth. This is closely related to algorithmic information theory, where the shortest description of a string (or other object) is essentially the program or process which produces the object. Bennett has placed more emphasis on the depth of a series of iterated processes, but the idea is basically the same. (And there may have been good syntheses of the ideas in recent years...) Another way to look at this, metaphorically, is in terms of compression of a spring. The evolutionary pressures and differential reproduction rates with e. coli, or with watches!, takes a spring and puts more energy into it...the energy to do things later. Even a fixed-length string, like 4 GB in e. coli, can be seen as being compressed in this sense. More and more logical depth is compressed into a string of fixed length. (Imagine a program in a competing robot, perhaps in one of those Battlebots arena shows, where the program is perhaps, by coincidence, limited to about 4 GB of Pentium 4 main memory. The program gets shuffled and changed, via either genetic algorithms (GA) or genetic programming (GP) or whatever. The same 4 GB program space (string, seen abstractly) gets more and more capable. A cellular automaton can also have high logical depth. In fact, back when I read (some of ) Wolfram's earlier book on CAs, Cellular Automata and Complexity, I believe it is called, this is the viewpoint I was reading it from. But the fact that cellular automata exhibit this kind of logical depth does not mean that gold watches and e. coli are proof that the universe is a cellular automaton! Q.E.D. Now, pace Zuse, Fredkin, Lloyd, and all the others, it may in fact be the case that a Theory of Everything somehow involves CA-like computations or interactions at perhaps the Planck scale. But nothing in Wolfram's recent book is at all convincing to me that he has shown this in any meaningful sense. The phenomena he has been experimenting with are at least 25-30 orders of magnitude away from the Planck scale. Believing snowflakes, crystals, and sea shells accrete material in CA-like ways, which I think physicists and biologists have been convinced of for a long time, does not mean the universe is in any meaningful sense itself a cellular automaton. (And, pace Gleason's Theorem and the aforementioned Kochen-Specker Theorem, and the work of Bell, I am suspicious for other
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
One more point with regard to Wolfram and our list's theme. I think that implicit in his conception of the underlying rules of the universe you have to assume some kind of all-universe model. The reason is that he does not expect our universe's program to be particularly special or unique. He thinks it will be relatively short, but given the kind of computational structures that might be the basis for the universe, the program is expected to be basically random. Every computational system has a certain percentage of its programs that can produce interesting-looking structure, and the expectation is that the same thing will hold for whatever computational model turns out to most simply express the universe's program. Whatever our program is, it will turn out to be one of the ones that produces structure. But these are almost certainly a tiny percentage of the whole, based on Wolfram's results. And the specifics of which ones will produce structure are very difficult to define. Making a tiny change in a program will often produce a completely different output, at least with the computational systems Wolfram investigates. The ones which produce structure are scattered very randomly throughout the space of all possible programs. For example, among the nearest-neighbor, 2-state, 1-dimensional CAs that Wolfram uses as his simple exemplars, there are 256 possible different programs, which Wolfram numbers from 0 to 255. As it turns out, only one of them, program number 110, produces a certain kind of complex structure that has particle-like behavior with very complex kinds of interactions. Of all of them, this is the one which at least superficially would be the most likely to be able to evolve life (although it's almost certainly too simple to actually do so). But let's suppose that we learned that we lived in a universe based on rule 110. Why would that be? Why, of all the 256 possible programs, would only rule 110 exist? Well, there are two plausible answers. One is that someone selected rule 110, but that raises all kinds of insurmountable problems of its own. The other is that all of the programs were instantiated, and then of course we turned out to live in rule 110 because it was the only one that could sustain life. So Wolfram's approach leads very naturally to the assumption that all possible programs are being run. If it does turn out that our universe's program is relatively simple but still densely packed and random among a vast space of comparable programs, most of which would produce sterile universes, then I think we would be forced to seriously consider that all of the other programs were being run, too. My one concern is that if Wolfram is right and our universe is a random program from some set, and if there are much more than on the order of 100 bits in the program, we will never be able to find the right program. If the nature of the program space is similar to what Wolfram's explorations suggest, that most of the space is unstructured and there is no way to identify the likely fruitful programs, there will be no way for us to know if we are on the right track or not. We won't have the hope of finding a program that almost works and then successively refining it to get closer and closer, because the true program will be completely different from an almost-true program. The situation will be something like the search for a cryptographic key, where you can't really hope to get closer and closer until you get it. You're stabbing totally in the dark until you fall upon the right one. And if the search space is too large, you will never find the answer. Hal Finney
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
Hal Finney wrote: My one concern is that if Wolfram is right and our universe is a random program from some set, and if there are much more than on the order of 100 bits in the program, we will never be able to find the right program. If the nature of the program space is similar to what Wolfram's explorations suggest, that most of the space is unstructured and there is no way to identify the likely fruitful programs, there will be no way for us to know if we are on the right track or not. We won't have the hope of finding a program that almost works and then successively refining it to get closer and closer, because the true program will be completely different from an almost-true program. The situation will be something like the search for a cryptographic key, where you can't really hope to get closer and closer until you get it. You're stabbing totally in the dark until you fall upon the right one. And if the search space is too large, you will never find the answer. Hal Finney This is exactly the problem I have with the idea that we live within one particular computational history, for all time, but can never know which. There will be constraints on the set of possible histories in which can be lived, which can be uncovered and linked to a theory of conscious observation. All else is pure contingency. So other ideas proposed on this list - that we can be identified with a whole sheaf of computations that are continually diverging - seem far more appropriate. A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
I don't think I received the first of my two messages written today on Wolfram, but it made it to the archive. In case anyone missed it I'll just point to it rather than re-sending. It's available at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4156.html. Hal Finney
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
George, beautiful. Maybe I propose a line at the end: With a LOT of ego attached Best wishes John Mikes - Original Message - From: George Levy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 12:55 AM Subject: Re: Algorithmic Revolution? When you look at the bottom of the well, all the way deep down, you see yourself staring right back at you. And right now you look like an algorithm. Oh well, there was a time when you looked like clockwork Maybe tomorrow you'll be a brain. And the day after tomorrow maybe a quantum device. The universe that we perceive is in our own image. It can only be in our own image. Bruno is right, the foundation of physics may well be psychology. It could even be neurology. George
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
RS wrote on one level how the algorithmic revolution was epistemological. I objected to this partly. let me quote the dictionary defn of epistemology epistemology-- the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and theory of knowledge. now in newtons time, science was seen as a branch of philosophy. however in modern times, philosophy has become somewhat disconnected from science and followed its own course. so to me to label a genuine scientific paradigm shift epistemological seems to downplay its significance somewhat as a little too abstract. the scientific revolution is not merely about a different way of seeing the universe, but a different way of interacting with it. (experimental method, etc.) this is exactly the way in which I insist the algorithmic revolution be interpreted as I outlined.. not merely a shift in the way we view the world. (unfortunately paradigm shift terminology sometimes implies a merely conceptual, subjective shift in view, partly due to kuhns perspective, but a paradigm shift means much more than a mere psychological rearrangement.) next, RS defines the clockwork metaphor in terms of the newtonian revolution. this is very reasonable and there is a high correlation. however I would argue the clockwork paradigm is ongoing. the clockwork universe involved multiple new ways of seeing the world. one of them, indeed, was newtonian mathematical laws for physics, gravitation, etcetera. another was determinism, ala the famous laplacian quote re: atoms as billiard balls. however another was simply, universe as mechanistic. the clock is a machine. the clock metaphor proposes the universe runs like a kind of automated machine subject to mathematical/physical laws. lets be very careful to define clockwork universe metaphor in terms of the accurate history of its origination, not from our modern point of view. note that in the middle ages, prior to the newtonian revolution, the previous paradigm for the concept of force was something sometimes involving supernatural aspects. the world was presumed to be set in motion by god influenced by various spirits, entities, etcetera in ways not fully conceivable. this is what the clockwork metaphor replaced. the universe as mechanistic theme from the clockwork metaphor persists to this day. einsteins relativistic theory involved the consideration at clocks in moving frames. when physicists analyze particle dynamics, or even search for a TOE as we are here, I would say the clockwork metaphor is still alive. its still ticking, so to speak.. wink again, let me contrast the algorithmic metaphor for the universe with the clockwork one. even in newtons time, the idea was that the universe ran **like** a clock. it was a metaphor. but the zuse-fredkin-wolfram idea of the universe is that the universe evolves not merely **as** a computation, but that it **is** a computation. therefore, imho the algorithmic metaphor is actually more than a metaphor, more than the clockwork model was a metaphor. its not merely a paradigm shift I would say, its something more. its a new model, a new system, a new framework. its comparable to newtons discovery of the law of gravitation if the program can be successfully carried out. is the algorithmic idea incorrect? someday we will probably notice that it has its deficiencies just as the clockwork idea did, but we will not discard it entirely, just as we have not discarded the clockwork universe idea. so imho to say the clockwork metaphor for reality is wrong, is (uh) wrong. imho its a simplistic/facile rejection of a still-legitimate paradigm.
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
There seems to be more heat that light in this discussion. There's several things going on here: 1. A social revolution in the use of information technology (mobile phones, internet and all that). This is beyond dispute, I believe, and I didn't see anyone on this list disputing that. 2. A scientific revolution - use of computer simulations as a 3rd way from theory and experiment. This is using computing technology, as opposed to information technology, and is about 2 decades older thatn the social revolution. Again, there is little dispute in this. 3. An epistemological revolution - a paradigm shift that sees reality cast in terms of a computational or algorithmic metaphor. This is how Tim May interpreted algorithmic revolution, as did I. 4. A mathematical revolution - algorithmic information theory has been explosive since it was founded in the mid-60s. It has profound consequences to the roots of mathematics. No. 3 is the type of thesis promoted by Wolfram, and goes back at least to Konrad Zuse in the 1960s. It is worth treating with a considerable grain of salt - it is a paradigm, as potentially wrong as the clockwork model in the late 19th century. No. 4 - I think the jury is still out. Practical applications of AIT are still rather meagre compared with more traditional areas of mathematics. But I do think it is a fascinating area of study. Cheers A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RS reformulates/reduces the term algorithmic revolution as: 1. A social revolution.. 2. A scientific revolution.. 3. An epistemological revolution.. 4. A mathematical revolution.. all true. however, wolfram-fredkin-zuse et al are not merely proposing a mere epistemological revolution as you state with (3). they're saying, the next state of the universe _really_is_ a computation, that we really are (and all reality is) built out of cells in a very large 3D or 4D cellular automaton. its not merely a metaphor. in this sense it probably cannot be seen on the same level as the clockwork mechanism for the universe, or the universe-as-energy from the thermodynamic/industrial/steam engine perspective. Where did the mere come from? Epistemological as in a revolution of our understanding of the world. Zoom back 150 years, and you will find that people believed that the universe really did follow Newton's equations of motion exactly, and that all you needed to know everything about the universe at all times was the positions and velocities of all constituent particles _at one moment in time_. This is what is described by the clockwork metaphor. The Wolfram-Fredkin-Zuse thesis that the universe is a Turing machine is described metaphorically as a computer universe - just as real computers are only metaphors for Turing machines. I'm afraid I don't appreciate the difference here. The clockwork universe was shown to be wrong with Qunatum Mechanics. My gut feeling is that the computer universe will also be shown to be wrong. this is a physical hypothesis about the universe. so far it is not yet testable or falsifiable. but I would argue there is very good circumstantial evidence. RS says (3) is potentially as wrong as the clockwork model of the universe. but, I would argue the clockwork model is not really wrong, only that it was a steppingstone that is now obsolete or incomplete relative to new data. it was an outstanding metaphor for reality is arguably still a very strong element of all modern scientific thought. with 4, RS says this refers to algorithmic information theory and the jury is still out on it. technically this is the name for the field that is involved with compressibility, i.e. chaitin-kolmogorov ideas (is this what RS meant?). which is mostly seen as a specialized subfield of computational complexity theory. this is a strange reduction from my point of view is definitely not the mathematical revolution associated with the algorithmic revolution I referred to earlier. Yes - the usual name for it is algorithmic information theory, and Greg Chaitin was probably the prolific contributer. Ming Li has demonstrated some very interesting applications for the theory in solving mathematical problems otherwise unsolvable. I wouldn't be surprised if AIT turns out to be as important as differential equations or Hilbert space theory, for example. As I said though, it is still too early to say. Cheers A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
At 11/21/02, you wrote: The clockwork universe was shown to be wrong with Qunatum Mechanics. My gut feeling is that the computer universe will also be shown to be wrong. In my view there are two types of universes. Type 1 have internal rules of state succession that are like computers - UD's and the like could generate them. Type 2 have rules that have a degree of do not care in determining the valid next state and this do not care component is a channel to an external random oracle. However, I attempt to show in my approach that Type 1 are also subject to the external random oracle but the channel differs. This means that all universes have open logic systems and can have exploding cows and other white rabbit events. I believe ours to be a Type 2 universe with a rule set that allows few rabbit events of a macro nature and many of a micro nature. I suspect that in some aspects we agree. I also think that Bruno's UDA to the extent I think I understand it is a candidate for one of a Type 1 universe's channels to the external random oracle. I believe Juergen's work to be a candidate for the rule set of some Type 1 universes. However, I see no bias towards one type or the other in terms of quantity or in terms of any any other system wide measure. Hal
Re: Algorithmic Revolution?
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.
