Physicist discovers computer code in equations

[Piggy]

I fear that "information" is becoming the latest place to hang our mysticism hats.

You got that right!

I've noticed a recent uptick in the assertion that "reality is fundamentally informational"... whatever this may be construed to mean... and from there, you can imagine all sorts of wacky scenarios.

 

[Complexity]

When has FORTRAN ever been even tenuously connected with reality?

Even less than you thought...

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable pi can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Even less than you thought...

Haven't you often run into the case where you need to rapidly switch to non-euclidean geometry?

 

[ddt]

Haven't you often run into the case where you need to rapidly switch to non-euclidean geometry?

Or when the Peano axioms of natural numbers turn out to be wrong, you can simply state in your Fortran program that

2 = 3

and well, whenever you write "2" it will use the value 3.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Hm, apparently pi isn't defined as the ratio of circumference and diameter anyway. It's the limit of the ratio as the radius goes to zero, which applies even in distorted geometry.

 

[Ziggurat]

Haven't you often run into the case where you need to rapidly switch to non-euclidean geometry?

Pi is always pi in any geometry, it's the relationship between pi and various geometric properties which changes.

But actually, there are possible cases where you might want to change the value you use for pi. Since you're declaring pi as a finite-length number, you're obviously working with some approximate value of pi to begin with, not pi itself, since it's not even possible to declare pi itself with such a method. And the degree of precision you want to use could very easily change, making a change in the declaration of pi possibly of real use.

 

[icerat]

Without reading the paper it seems to me he's simply referring to idea that the universe may be fundamentally digital in nature, or more specifically, boolean.

 

[steve s]

Even less than you thought...

Originally Posted by FORTRAN manual for Xerox programmers
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable pi can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.

If the creationists get their way, it will have to be changed to 3.0.

Steve S

 

[Complexity]

Or when the Peano axioms of natural numbers turn out to be wrong, you can simply state in your Fortran program that

2 = 3

and well, whenever you write "2" it will use the value 3.

Think of the debugging hell...

 

[Verde]

No Hell is in Basic, Heaven is in HTML and reality is in FORTRAN!

Nope. Hell is actually in APL.
Anyone that has tried debugging that code will know what I mean.

V.

 

[shadron]

He seems to be saying that the theory of error-correcting codes are actually being found in string theory equations; as though the equations were engineered with redundancy for error detection and correction. This might be a mirage; seeing a pattern where the functionality doesn't exist, or it might be a deeper reality. Of course. like Lawrence Kraus believes, string theory may just be hogwash, in which case so is this.

"Doubly-even self-dual linear binary error-correcting block code," first invented by Claude Shannon in the 1940's, has been discovered embedded WITHIN the equations of superstring theory!

Claude Shannon built the theory that allows us to tell the effectiveness of various forms of error detection and correction, but I don't think he actually invented any such codes himself; the state of the art at that point in time was simple check digits and checksums, and he pointed out that there were ways (not knowing how to implements them) that correction could be done. Hamming and other codes were quite a ways after Shannon's time.

 

[dasmiller]

Think of the debugging hell...

This is not as hypothetical as you might think.

When I was a wee lad, learning to program using punch cards on an IBM 1130, we'd been told to include "CALL FERR(3) as the first line in our programs because FERR would ensure that some particular errors would be printed on the output rather than showing up as an interesting pattern of lights above the rarely-used keyboard.

A couple of the older guys, as a prank, had hacked the OS (or whatever they called it back then) so that whenever it got a JOB card with the right user name, subroutine FERR(X) would be implemented as "X=2"

So whenever it got a job for the user in question, all of the 3s in his code would be interpreted as 2s. And, yes, it caused some intense frustration . . .

ahh, memories. And, no, I was not the target of this prank, nor was I an instigator.

/derail

 

[epepke]

Nope. Hell is actually in APL.
Anyone that has tried debugging that code will know what I mean.

V.

Bad memories of APL on a DecWriter. Make them stop!

 

[alphahelix]

No Hell is in Basic, Heaven is in HTML and reality is in FORTRAN!

If heaven is in HTML then which browser can actually render it properly?

reality in FORTRAN? I was thinking COBOL

 

[BravesFan]

If heaven is in HTML then which browser can actually render it properly?

reality in FORTRAN? I was thinking COBOL

i just figured anyone can code in html, so it had to be lowest common denom., hence heaven!

COBOL! what are we barbarians?

 

[mike3]

Funny. "Computer codes" in an arbitrary setup where in my computer language, 11001 is "a" and in your version, 11001 is "j"?

Here's the answer to the God question: 111001010110001, as long as you use the right compiler to spit it out.

This is Bible Code for mathematicians and points out something about how the equations work (the parity and error correcting duality) but not much about anything external to the math. The question they didn't ask him was, "What do you think the significance of this is?"

I fear that "information" is becoming the latest place to hang our mysticism hats. We will miss religion when it finally dies off. We will miss the easy target.

What do you mean "easy target"? You mean the feeling of something "more"?

 

[Pulvinar]

Bad memories of APL on a DecWriter. Make them stop!

"Swish, swish!"

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

When I was a wee lad, learning to program using punch cards on an IBM 1130, we'd been told to include "CALL FERR(3) as the first line in our programs because FERR would ensure that some particular errors would be printed on the output rather than showing up as an interesting pattern of lights above the rarely-used keyboard.

A couple of the older guys, as a prank, had hacked the OS (or whatever they called it back then) ...

ahh, memories.

It was called the Disk Monitor System.

Just to help keep the memories alive:

~~ Paul

 

[joseph8th]

Heheh...

Or when the Peano axioms of natural numbers turn out to be wrong, you can simply state in your Fortran program that

2 = 3

and well, whenever you write "2" it will use the value 3.

#define 2 3

 

[Apathia]

Without reading the paper it seems to me he's simply referring to idea that the universe may be fundamentally digital in nature, or more specifically, boolean.

Precisely!
But he's so close to it that he can't see the forest for the trees and is baffled by something logicians and mathematicians of Group Theory would simply expect and gives an ignorant/mysterious twist to it.