Is the Cosmos a Vast Computation?

For those that are wondering, i'm leaving a comment that formally describes Wolframs work, so that people can get a better understanding of what he's done and why its important. for context, I've studied his work for the past 4 years, and i understand the topic on an intuitive level. It starts with new Kind of Science. In that book what he did was exhaustively run (which is a form of mathematical proof) classes of rules, then observed what they did. After doing these experiments he identified three key observations: 1) that rules, can produce arbitrarily complicated behavior, specifically behavior that can not be described by mathematical equations 2) That all rules pretty much fall into the 4 classes of behavior (homogenous, patterned, random and complex) 3) That these rules tend to completely emulate one another's behavior either under coarse graining, or different initial conditions. for instance rule 22 emulating rule 90. The third observation is the most important...because later on in the book, he would use this property to derive the principle of Computational Equivalence - a formal statement that all systems are equivalent to each other, in particular, equivalent to the computation space of a Turing Machine. He would do this by showing one of the CA rules to be Turing Universal (Rule 110) and under a transitivity argument, string together rule emulations to get to rule 110, which you can then get to emulate a Turing machine, thus proving that the entire rule class is equivalent to each other, and to the rule space of a Turing machine. As a result, Computational Irreducibility then gains a precise definition - It is the phenomenon that trying to find out what a system will do, is equivalent to trying to solve the halting problem. That to know what something is gonna do is as the word implies, is irreducibly complex...formally undecidable, and as Alan Turing shows, impossible to construct the universal truth machine. Wolfram would go on to explain that this is the reason that justifies observation number 1. Computationally Irreducibility is a strictly stronger statement than super determinism : We can not know what a system will do period. To do so we need the information of this rulespace... The definition of Computational Reducibility is the statement that when you are looking at a Turing universal system, you observe an infinite variety of different regularities in it (patterns), and that this is the definition and character of science, and of mathematical equations. Following NKS, the concept of the Ruliad becomes apparent. If the universe is running on a fundamental rule, does it actually matter what rule it is if all of them are capable of Turing universal computation? If they are all equivalent? What follows is that the universe is running all possible rules...That all of them are quote "running" and so this object (the rule space of a Turing machine) gets a special name : The Ruliad. It is a mathematical object that describes the set of of all possible Turing machine evolutions. This object is not the same as a multiverse at all. It is a singular and unique object, and this object IS the universe. We as humans are embedded in this eternal abstract object, and this is where the Wolfram Model enters the picture. We as finite beings, can only sample a piece or slice of this object. This slicing is what gives us the three bodies of modern science (QM, Relativity, Statistical Mechanics). I recommend that people watch his lectures that he leaves online in the following order: What We've Learned from NKS Series How Universal is the Concept of Numbers Stephen Wolfram Readings: What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models Can AI Solve Science? Stephen Wolfram on Observer Theory Then at that point, you are ready for all the lectures related to the Wolfram Physics Model, and Gorard's formal lectures too (know your math!)

36:24 Having such narrow time limits is a disgrace for some of your most brilliant conversations, Brian! 😩

Very glad to hear a Wolfram interview not focused on his physics project. His perspectives are always interesting and well thought out.

Wolfram is the GOAT, I could listen to him for hours… in fact I do 😅

This would have been better as a 2-3 hour segment

Not many have the ability to shepherd Mr Wolfram through a conversation that is both legible and entertaining. You did a great job Brian. Many times I thought the conversation was about to derail (as it usually does when speaking to Stephen), but you expertly interjected yourself and put it back on track. Quite possibly the best (if that is the right term) conversation I have seen someone have with Mr Wolfram.

I’m not gonna lie rediscovering Brian Greene is super awesome. 🎉

Holly Matrix! That was awesome! Greetings from Brazil. Thanks a lot

Another great interview Brian thanks so much 👍

How did I miss this episode? Wolfram is a living legend.