Hey, we give string theorists tenure! But for real, while it doesn't seem like this is going anywhere, I'm not sure I wouldn't be convinced by something similar that was. If I walked out of my room with a set of equations that made few additional assumptions and allowed for derivation of both relativistic and quantum equations, it kind of seems like that would be good evidence. Like even if all the predictions are the same as those two systems, the fact that it's much simpler would give it Occam's approval.
Now would such a single simple system fail to make new predictions? Probably not. There are holes in our understanding, and a unified theory couldn't really be simple and still tiptoe around those holes. But in the hypothetical scenario that there really was a simpler model with the same predictions, I wouldn't be opposed to it.
To make a comparison that a lot of people use to justify fringe research, Einstein came up with general relativity mostly by himself, and it was a fringe concept, but it came with a set of predictions that could be verified with observation. Eventually those predictions were tested, and his idea “won”.
Until Wolfram’s ideas come bundled with refutable predictions that deviate from the standard model, it’s a smoke without a fire.
To restate the comparison, Einstein wasn’t writing pamphlets, going on speaking tours, or writing books about his “universal laws” for years before actually presenting the idea in a refutable form.
Einstein waited until he saw flames, to raise the smoke alarm, I’d that makes sense. Wolfram has been raising the smoke alarm for a while, but not providing any images of the fire.
It’s not a very good look, IMO, but reasonable people can disagree.
I thought his goal was a sort of parallel reconstruction (to unnecessarily abuse a shady law enforcement term), and so I'm not sure the above captures goals well...?
Disclosure: biochemist and technologist who happens to get a kick out of Wolfram's meanderings.
So far, I think (please someone correct me if I'm wrong) he's claimed the latter but not the former, and has it as a medium-term goal to claim the former but he is "not there, yet, but close".
I don't know if he's actually produced more efficient methods of computing results, if anybody knows of links, that'd be interesting to read.
I also think that he's heading down an interesting path (parsing the universe as a graph / cellular automata), it's an interesting choice of primitives. It does seem to be a Dual of fields, though, so I don't believe it can give us any more predictive power than modern Field Theory, but I guess we'll see!
Also remember it took decades before all of Einstein's 1905 predictions had been commonly accepted.
Does than mean we shouldn't judge Wolfram until 2031 at the earliest? I don't know...
Oh wait, he never actually did.
Of course one feels inadequate in an article supposedly about fire if all we ever get presented with are different shades of grey smoke and "as it turns out it's beautiful" and "I've researched this smoke since the 80s".
The CTO gave me his copy of a "New Kind of Science". I don't know why. It sat on my office shelf for years, hopefully convincing a few people that I was thoughtful and intelligent. It sure looked good, inside and out.