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0 pointsPyxl10110y ago0 comments

I haven't voted on your comment, but here's what stands out to me: (1) It's not written in good style. People who care about how their ideas are received by others take the time to write properly, including capitalization and punctuation.

(2) It reads like a middlebrow dismissal. It's critical but doesn't add much of substance on its own through the criticism. Wolfram certainly realizes that he hasn't proven his case, that current science is indeed incredibly useful, and that the current path will only be a "detour" if network- or automata-based models are proven correct in the end. That's why he says he "suspects" it "may" have led us to a detour. He certainly understands that the theory needs to be developed further. Put simply, Wolfram would probably agree with your overall sentiment, so the remarks are not insightful, but they're presented as if they'd likely be at odds with his position.

(3) Beyond style, the diction is unclear, such as the choice of the word "use-case". It's unclear to me what you're referring to. It's unusual to refer to physics as "use-cases". If that's intended as an analogy, then for me it doesn't connect or succeed.

(4) The ideas themselves are not clear. "... reveal those use-cases untouched by contemporary thought"; "an existence where every new finality conjures new questions". It's not clear what you're trying to convey with those phrases. You probably could say what you're trying to say in a simpler, more direct, and less critical way way. You might benefit from this advice: http://paulgraham.com/talk.html

> Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write in spoken language. Something comes over most people when they start writing. They write in a different language than they'd use if they were talking to a friend. The sentence structure and even the words are different. [...] But perhaps worst of all [mistakes], complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are.

If I was to try to rephrase what you've said in simple language, then I end up with something like: "The ideas need to work to be useful. We need to think up new ideas. I think we'll always have more questions to answer", which isn't that interesting. With the current phrasing it reads like a middlebrow dismissal.

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justifier10y ago

i appreciate the thought out response.. i'll try to address your points

1) sorry, it's the way i write

2) solid response:

   It's critical but doesn't add much of 
   substance on its own through the criticism.

what you said there mirrors my immediate reaction to the linked piece by wolfram, and in all fairness i felt it myself of my comment and intended to reply with a more directed response to the piece but found it difficult to find anything to riff off of

    So then the question arises: could one of these simple
    programs in the computational universe actually be the
    program for our physical universe?

this seems to be the base line on which his potential final theory is predicated, but this just reads as a rewrite of the infinite monkey theorem

if the universe is programmable, then surely within the bounds of every possible permutation of computation therein must lie a representation of the universe..?

3) 'use case' and 'science as directed utility' seemed explicitly to go hand in hand

4) "... reveal those use-cases untouched by contemporary thought"

one such important use case that showed the inherent utility of relativity was understanding retrograde motion(o), this was the sort of use case i was referring to one where the contemporary thought was unable to reach insight

"an existence where every new finality conjures new questions"

here i'd agree i erred on poetics to allow for some self discovery, what i hoped to express was that every 'final theory', as wolfram puts it or finality as i put it, i think will introduce more questions mocking the title of final

relativity is sussed out and people, as wolfram attested, assume it to be true, but then later find it only reveals, seemingly by conjuring, questions they were unaware of

even einstein, the one person who stood to gain the most by espousing that his theory was 'the final theory', knew relativity to be wanting

it is my impression that i do write 'in spoken language'

when was the last time you heard a capital letter? or 'proper' punctuation?

these are the words i would use to talk to you about this topic

the diction may seem off because i avoid negative constructions:no, not, never, none,etc; with hopes that the a subsequent generation will have the patience to write out even negating prefixes: un-,i-,a-,etc;

i find removing negative constructions is a means of making discussion more inviting and less authoritative

next time someone asks if you've seen some new media, instead of saying 'no' see what reaction something like 'i've yet to have seen it' will afford

if a sentence comes easily as "which isn't that interesting" i will take whatever time necessary to rewrite in order to write out the negative

reading your rewrite:

    The ideas need to work to be useful. 
    We need to think up new ideas. 
    I think we'll always have more questions to answer

could placehold as a rewrite of wolfram's piece

i'll express it as your rewrite on one side of a colon and applicable sections from wolframs piece on the other, ctrl-f confirmation encouraged

    ideas need to be useful: "provides the only successful way 
    we have of describing spacetime"

    we need to think up new ideas: "started on my long journey 
    to go beyond traditional mathematical equations and instead 
    use computation and programs as basic models in science"

    I think we'll always have more questions to answer: 
    "But what would such a program be like?..what’s the basic 
    “data structure” on which this program operates?.." and on and on

so yes, i agree, markedly uninteresting

(o) http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node60.html

.. an aside, can we talk to the fact that middlebrow seems the only brow held in contempt, i feel low brow and high brow each have their accepted merits(i) but i've yet to have seen something quantified as being middlebrow used in promotion

i wonder what the says about adjudged middles

(i) http://nymag.com/nymag/culture/approvalmatrix/archive/

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