[HN Gopher] A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second...
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A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of
Thermodynamics
 
Author : yarapavan
Score  : 45 points
Date   : 2023-02-03 07:58 UTC (1 days ago)
 
web link (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
w3m dump (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
 
| fsckboy wrote:
| this link is
| 
| > _part 2 in a 3-part series about the Second Law:_
| 
| > _1. Computational Foundations for the Second Law of
| Thermodynamics_
| 
| > _2. A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of
| Thermodynamics_
| 
| > _3. How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law
| of Thermodynamics_
| 
| conundrum:
| 
| 1. can i win by starting with part 2?
| 
| 2. will I have a better chance of breaking even if I start with
| part 1?
| 
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/computational-fo...
| 
| 3. do I have to read part 3?
| 
| time to find out...
 
  | ur-whale wrote:
  | You could help everyone else win by letting us know of your
  | findings.
 
  | Stratoscope wrote:
  | It sounds like you already know the answer!
  | 
  | You can't win. You can't break even. And you can't get out of
  | the game.
 
| onos wrote:
| I don't follow everything he figured out / discussed here. But
| the man is definitely a genius, and through Mathematica alone has
| had an immense impact on science. Appreciate the link, it was
| refreshing to read a bit of his life.
 
| boole1854 wrote:
| I would recommend starting with Part 1, rather than Part 2 (which
| was linked). Here is Part 1:
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/computational-fo...
| 
| Wolfram's ability to create interesting visualizations is
| fantastic. But I seem to feel underwhelmed at the significance of
| his discovery.
| 
| In short, he says that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a
| consequence of the fact that we as observers are computationally
| bounded and cannot perceive all the details in the the lower-
| level, computationally irreducible physical systems around us.
| 
| Yet this does not seem enormously different, or perhaps not
| different at all, than the standard account in statistical
| mechanics in which the observer is considered to be coarse-
| graining over the fine details of the system which are too
| complex to track.
| 
| What is new in Wolfram's approach other than using computation-
| related labels to describe the situation? For example, his
| 'computationally bounded' observer is just the standard 'coarse-
| graining', right?
 
  | dkural wrote:
  | You are right. There is nothing new here.
 
| smohare wrote:
| [dead]
 
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(page generated 2023-02-04 23:00 UTC)