Process Physics does include some initial ideas/structures that do feel a bit like functional programming I agree but I think that actually it swings far away from that once the rubber of the idea (speculatively, of course) hits the road.
Specifically the way that it explicitly avoids using syntactic information (ie anything symbolic (like how space is symbolic in the standard model)) and instead models the universe with only semantic (indeed ultimately self-referential) information instead. This is curiously similar to Neural-networks where the details of how it arrives at a result may be very well hidden in the details of the entire behavior of the network. A framework to think about bootstrapping the universe when there was no universe before is kinda a major component of the whole PP thing in my opinion.
This does seem to move the idea to a quite different realm than FP in my opinion. (maybe just a point of view thing?), but I imagine it more like some incredibly-infinitely parallel process like GOL/reaction-diffusion (without the virtual aspect we usually have with our normal computers) or even something more turing-machine-like (anything with turing-universal compute-capability can follow rules, right?)
I'm not trying to sound authoritative about this at all! I am certainly not a physicist (Visual Effects Artist/Pipeline/Teacher!), this is just something I took an interest in and I don't think it got anything approaching the reception that it perhaps could've had if there were a little more open-minded-ness and willingness to take conceptual leaps, in the surrounding academic community.
I tried reading your text a few times, but I didn't yet completely understood your point. Will give it a few days and come back with a tentative at describing my own opinion.
(writing this with the intention of informing you that this piece of content you wrote is appreciated by at least one person on earth at this point in time)
danwills|3 years ago
Specifically the way that it explicitly avoids using syntactic information (ie anything symbolic (like how space is symbolic in the standard model)) and instead models the universe with only semantic (indeed ultimately self-referential) information instead. This is curiously similar to Neural-networks where the details of how it arrives at a result may be very well hidden in the details of the entire behavior of the network. A framework to think about bootstrapping the universe when there was no universe before is kinda a major component of the whole PP thing in my opinion.
This does seem to move the idea to a quite different realm than FP in my opinion. (maybe just a point of view thing?), but I imagine it more like some incredibly-infinitely parallel process like GOL/reaction-diffusion (without the virtual aspect we usually have with our normal computers) or even something more turing-machine-like (anything with turing-universal compute-capability can follow rules, right?)
I'm not trying to sound authoritative about this at all! I am certainly not a physicist (Visual Effects Artist/Pipeline/Teacher!), this is just something I took an interest in and I don't think it got anything approaching the reception that it perhaps could've had if there were a little more open-minded-ness and willingness to take conceptual leaps, in the surrounding academic community.
toombowoombo|3 years ago
(writing this with the intention of informing you that this piece of content you wrote is appreciated by at least one person on earth at this point in time)