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Daniel Geisler (Apr 04 2020 at 19:50):Any category treatments of Gregory Chaitin, Stephen Wolfram or Stephen Simpson work? Each strives to handle the whole of mathematics.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 20:54):I don't know if there's some categorical work about cellular automata, but last time I talked with Wolfram he seemed quite interested in the latest developments in category theory, especially wrt categorical quantum mechanics and graphical formalisms
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 20:55):So I don't know if there's work about what he did, but it's reasonable to expect Mathematica will start implementing stuff from CT at some point. He also told me they were thinking about developing a typesystem for the Wolfram language, but it seems quite a heavy task to me.
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 20:58):Wolfram was interested in Petri nets when I last talked to him.... I told him a bunch of stuff.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 20:59):When did this happen? I met him in 2018. I was presenting some stuff about Petri nets and he just opened the conversation with a "We never implemented Petri nets in Mathematica because we thought they were useless. Change my mind!"
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 21:00):Then we spoke a bit more in the next weeks and I pointed him out to what @Bob Coecke was doing in Ox and what you were doing at UCR. I don't know if the events are causally related!
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 21:01):Umm, he stopped by Riverside on March 17th 2019. It doesn't seem that long ago!
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 21:07):Then they could be related things. For me the events went like this: I met him at SXSW in Austin in 2018. We spoke a bit about Petri net stuff. It was fun because I just thought he was someone working in the Wolfram corporation, only after like 20 minutes I asked him "so you work for Mathematica?" and he told me "Yes I made it" and I was like WTF. Anyway we basically talked about Statebox and what I did in Oxford for my PhD. Then a few weeks later he contacted me because he wanted to know more about doing quantum stuff with pictures. So we spoke on the phone about that, and more about Statebox. I sent him the Statebox monograph and some other papers about various things, which he later told me he was reading. We kept messaging sporadically on and off, and this went on tilla few months ago I believe. He even sent me some documents Adam Petri sent to him ages ago about ideas for implementing his nets in Mathematica, which I imagine didn't go forward
Daniel Geisler (Apr 04 2020 at 21:07):Wolfram is back working on major issues in physics.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 21:08):It's nice that he keeps doing research and being interested in latest developments in Maths and CS anyway. He striked me as a very open minded and curious person, it may even be that he could join this group if we ask him :slight_smile:
Daniel Geisler (Apr 04 2020 at 21:09):I'm sending him a message now.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 21:09):Cool!
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 21:11):Only major issues in physics? No minor ones? :cry:
Yes, Fab - Wolfram referred to you, not by name, saying some guy had gotten him interested in developing a Mathematica implementation of Petri nets.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 21:13):Whoohoo! It's nice to know I contributed infinitesimally into the making of something nice if this happens