Wolfram Physics Project: Update with Q&A Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021
16,432
Published 2021-10-19
2:17 Stephen presents the project update
1:57:01 Are any of the rules reversible after having ran for a significant amount of time? Could current observations in the Universe help "run back" time further than Physics already has toward the Big Bang?
1:59:02 Are observers bound fundamentally by their ability to compute or more simply by their practical ability to make measurements?
2:01:26 Would love to hear your thoughts on how biological evolution are explained in your models!
2:03:58 How do you think "Ruliology" relates to "Category Theory"?
2:06:43 Could the white (missing) areas in the cellular automata represent computational reducibility?
2:07:23 At first glance, it seems as if relativity requires causal invariance, whereas quantum mechanics requires the fact that different threads of Computation exist. What's the key idea linking these two?
2:09:18 Are there any symmetries / conservation laws observed or assumed in your conceptual framework?
2:11:20 What pushes the updating/time? Why does it evolve at all?
2:12:46 What is retrocausality and what does the project hint at in those terms?
2:13:00 If nature is finite and digital, then is the Friedmann cosmological model necessarily wrong?
2:13:54 If we could derive a dimensionless metric such as the Fine Structure constant; could that be useful with our model?
2:19:09 Could gravity be a result of your fundamental areas of space being updated asynchronously, where more matter per area of space (or more 'active' elements of space), require more computational time?
2:19:52 Is there hope that AI can somehow be intelligent enough to either simulate or via simulation understand these concepts as something else beyond a computationally bound observer?
2:24:53 What would be (even hypothetically) the mechanism by which the causal structure of a chemical reaction could be extracted, e.g. within a ribosome?
2:26:46 Can you say something about dark matter or dark energy based on your model?
2:28:26 Why isn't sequentialisation of time a consequence of computational reducibility of the observer? Enforcing confluence via K-B completion dramatically reduces the computational complexity of an ARS...
2:30:55 Is the information idea of entropy (number of similar states, etc) related to the number of threads of time giving a similar state in a multicomputational model?
2:33:58 NKS seems to have stopped very close to where the Physics Project started\[Ellipsis]what was the big challenge in starting the Physics Project? Getting the right perspective? Some specific results? The team?
2:41:53 You need to arrange for Susskind and Lee Smolin to have a discussion pertaining to String Theory, Multiverse, Quantume Gravity, etc. Smolin says physics is stuck, Susskind celebrates it
2:42:50 Could areas of philosophy be considered repositories of physical intuition when considering the definition of the observer?
2:43:54 Time dilation arising from some of the computation being towards updating in a new place sounds a lot like the 4-velocity being directed more towards space rather than time. Is there a relation there?
2:44:32 What do you think is the physical significance and manifestation of arrows in the hypergraph notation?
2:46:26 Can you compare and contrast the ruliad and the infinity groupoid? Would the universe be more efficient if it really were a hypercomputer and just provided the answers without actually doing all the computation?
2:48:36 How are waveforms/oscillation emergent from hypergraph rewriting? How does the universe implement hypergraph isomorphism also so central to the hypergraph rewriting formalism? How are spectral effects like colour and its qualia to be understood?
2:50:32 What does the project imply about the Big Bang? Does "cooling of dimensionality" allow universal expansion?
2:52:10 Is curvature in the hypergraph inherit around matter because of the addition of edges above the limit of space without any graviton or is it higher in the limit because of something like gravitons or even oligons?
2:57:55 Ever thought about taking psychedelics to help you with your project(s)?
2:58:32 Does the Ruliad structure imply an intelligent designer?
3:00:12 Could objective collapse theories, Diósi-Penrose, be generalized by the WP model by considering rulial space trajectories which locally vary the ratio of Rule[...] to TwoWayRule[...] w.r.t observers?
3:01:15 Indeed experiments; I am an experimental physicist. Is there way to translate your concepts to the level of condensed matter physics yet? What can be a superconductor phase transition in your model?
3:03:47 Layman here, what energy is being used when a sequence of time changes from one to the next?
3:04:55 Would the speed of entanglement be something you could observe in black hole mergers?
3:06:47 It seems like the physics project has so much momentum, will it be the focus indefinitely from now on or is more technology needed?
All Comments (21)
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I know “never meet your heroes” and all that but I admire the heck out of how much of the inner workings of the Wolfram Physics Project are available for direct inspection by the public. It seems like just the livestreams constitute a significant body of work.
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I believe this model is one of the great, true breakthrough since the golden age of physics. The model has so many rich areas to explore like what is spin? What is quantum tunneling?
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Admitting that one has been wrong about some things for their entire life is a hard pill to swallow and most people just throw up instead (cognitive dissonance). Ego and pride are our ultimate nemesis, the biggest obstacle to personal development.
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Dr. Wolfram is onto something! The more i hear him speak the more i am learning about this way of looking at the universe
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<3 your wonderful work to begin with. The bonus, for me at least, is the convergence of ideas that results from this milestone. Delighted to be here. Thank you.
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When you do the work and struggle with the maths it opens you up to a whole new way of understanding the universe.
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Thanks for answering my question about boundedness of observers so I expertly! I understand that point much better now.
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Love Wolfram, he never met a discussion he didn’t like.
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The explanation for time dilation is what I've always intuitively imagined. Great to hear it from Stephen.
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Please get Jonathan back.
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30:45 I'm imagining it as a lovely green LED VU meter on an 80s Hi-Fi and we can only see the red peak marks that drop off slowly.
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Absoluly great stuff. What happened to Jonathan Gorard?
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The Wolfram Model is as important, in my college level understandings opinion, as Newton. In a way it is a more intuitive way of seeing the universe! For example the ideas around density of space has so many interesting implications. I think the Wolfram Model opens us up to understanding gravity waves....
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What causes the computations ? Can they halt ?
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Course grain observations are consistant, in jest a compound int a mouse will produce constant behaviour time and time again. So what ever is going on at a fine grain level, must average itself out, to produce constant results.
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Does anyone have further reading on the “ruliad” or “rulio” not sure how it’s being pronounced (the geometric structure-having object containing all possible rules Stephen was referring to)?
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Starts at 1:58
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Time is what happens when we interact with stuff ( that we do not yet understand ) as we travel through Space.
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GENIUS
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Dark Matter and Dark Energy Revisited. It strikes me that one way of looking at the project is simply modeling what is already known. The cellular automaton is by definition a series of relationships with pattern showing in various areas. These patterns are special because of their relationship to other patterns due to the common method of creation. But isn't modeling what mathematics is all about? A series of (mathematical) relationships that can be used to represent some empirical knowledge (dropping an apple from a tower). Math is modeling the real world. So it's not surprising that a sufficiently complicated pattern of related items (relationships however created, ie, running rule 30 long enough, or calculus for determining the volume of a sphere) will reveal relationships that can be mapped to theories that identify related phenomena - such as quantum theory, General relativity, etc. No surprise in that really, but still a different approach (the Project) than coming from the side of empiricism, creating a model and then using the model to expand our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation (traditional use of math to model the world). So, isn't the key to gaining more knowledge (obviously) through development of the Project primarily to go beyond finding patterns representing our current knowledge of physics to find surprises or strings to pull that lead to surprises that might be shown in the models that are adjacent to these models of current knowledge. It might be cool to find all current knowledge modeled by relationship modeling of the Project, but the mother lode is new information, directly or indirectly found through the novel approach (I'm repeating myself - sorry). Whether the Project can reveal new knowledge will require first mapping all or most of the current knowledge, so it makes sense this is the first step, but it seems that the real goal is finding those unknown strings to pull, and that would include things like explaining the accelerating expansion of the universe, or the problems with the rotations of solar systems in galaxies. Finding any sort of insights into some of these big physics problems would show the huge value of the project bringing an avalanche of interest and support in pursing it.
