Roads to a Universal World Model, Part 2: The Physicist’s Road

The physics engine path: building the world from first principles

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” — George Box

In 1929, a twenty-five-year-old from Binghamton, New York, built the world’s first flight simulator out of organ parts.

Edwin Link had gotten his pilot’s license two years earlier, but he was frustrated by the cost and danger of learning to fly in the air. So he did something strange. He took the p…