The Last Theory

Stephen Wolfram talks about how he knows what he knows, the interplay between theory and experiment, and the importance of building towers of knowledge on solid ground.

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

I am tired of hearing quantum mechanics invoked in support of nonsense.

You know the kind of thing.

Quantum mechanics therefore crystal healing.

Quantum mechanics therefore psychic powers.

Quantum mechanics therefore homeopathic medicine.

Quantum mechanics therefore universal consciousness.

Quantum mechanics therefore manifestation.

Quantum mechanics therefore reincarnation.

Quantum mechanics therefore free will.

It’s not just the crazies who do this. I hear otherwise highly intelligent, highly rational thinkers do it all the time.

Please stop with the “quantum mechanics therefore nonsense“.

Here are 7 reasons to stop using quantum mechanics to science-wash your delusions.

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References:

• The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose
• The Human Computer by Mark Jeffery
• Richard Feynman quote

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

The full article is here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

I’m forever hearing that there are rules in science.

If a theory breaks the rules, I’m told, it must be rejected.

Trouble is, if, in the past, we’d rejected any theory that breaks the rules, we’d have rejected Copernicus’s idea that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo’s observation that there are mountains on the Moon, Newton’s laws of motion, Einstein’s theories of relativity, quantum mechanics – we’d definitely have rejected quantum mechanics – we’d have rejected everyimportant theory in the history of science.

Truth is, every rule for science you’ve ever been taught is wrong.

There are no rules in science.

So... you may be wondering... if there are no rules, how do you know the difference between a good scientific theory and... nonsense?

Well, that’s simple.

There’s a formula for a good scientific theory.

This 7-word formula has worked for every significant discovery in the history of science.

And I’m willing to bet that you’ve never heard of it.

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References:

• Thales of Miletus
• Thales’ eclipse
• Galileo Galilei
• Galileo’s mathematics quotation
• Johannes Kepler
• Isaac Newton
• Werner Heisenberg
• Max Born
• Wolfgang Pauli
• Erwin Schrödinger
• Paul Dirac
• String Theory
• Overfitting
• Stephen Wolfram
• Jonathan Gorard
• The Wolfram Physics Project

Credits:

• Jupiter and Moons through a 10” lx200 telescope by Jan Sandberg, enhanced by Google Gemini, reproduced with permission: “The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted.”

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

The full article is here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Stephen Wolfram is an extraordinary thinker.

He doesn’t seem to think like other scientists. He doesn’t seem to think like other technologists. And he certainly doesn’t think like an academic.

So I asked him how he thinks. How does he have all the ideas I’ve been exploring at The Last Theory?

Here are 10 ways to have big ideas, derived from Stephen’s answer:

1. Drill down to the foundations
2. Experiment with your ideas
3. Try to understand your findings
4. Have the humility to doubt your expectations
5. Have the confidence to push ahead regardless
6. Explain your ideas to others
7. Discuss your ideas with others
8. Get to know when an idea will take flight
9. Don’t miss a step: imagine, experiment, explain
10. Visualize your ideas

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

Concept mentioned by Stephen

• Computational irreducibility

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

If physics is computational, then what gets computed when?

This is a surprisingly deep question.

The seemingly even computation of the universe gives us a clue, not just to the nature of time, but to the nature of the universe.

And it leads us to a wider question:

Why are we in the universe we’re in?

Let me introduce you to three different answers to that question... sodifferent that they don’t even agree on whether one universe exists, or every possible universe exists.

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References

• Anthropic Principle

Credits

• Image of Messier 101 galaxy by ESA/Hubble licensed under CC BY 4.0
• Image of galaxies by NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team licensed under CC BY 4.0
• Retina image by د.مصطفى الجزار licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

The full article is here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Stephen Wolfram has many philosophical ideas, but I’ve not heard him talk about pure philosophy.

When I asked him about the relationship between physics and philosophy, I understood why.

Stephen revealed that he’s much more at home in the concrete world of computer experiments than in the arguments of the philosophers.

“When I look at the arguments,” he says, “I can’t tell if they make sense or not. There’s too much wiggling...”

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

People and concepts mentioned by Stephen

• Immanuel Kant
• Kant’s antinomies
• Computational equivalence
• The Ruliad
• The Concept of the Ruliad

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Do different observers think differently? Or does the principle of computational equivalence mean that all observers think the same way?

Stephen Wolfram takes this question and runs with it.

If we had brains the size of planets, he suggests, the finite speed of light would force us to think of space and time differently, and abandon the fiction of an instantaneous state of space.

If we had brains the size of molecules, he says, we’d no longer think of the motion of molecules as random, and we’d find the heat death of the universe a far more interesting prospect.

And if we were able to hold multiple paths through the multiway graph in our minds at the same time, we’d have multiple threads of experience... and some complicated conversations!

We think the way we think because we are the way we are... if we were much larger-scale, much smaller-scale or if we had multiway minds, then we’d think very differently.

And this has some serious consequences, Stephen suggests, in fields as diverse as molecular biology and parallel computing.

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

Credits

• Fullerene by YassineMrabet licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Physics, the way we’ve thought about it for the last few hundred years, requires us to make assumptions about time.

In our old way of thinking, just as we must assume three axes of space – scales along which we can measure what’s where – so we must assume an axis of time – a scale along which we can measure what happens when.

It doesn’t matter whether, like Newton, we assume an absolute scale along which we can measure what happens when according to a giant clock in the sky, or whether, like Einstein, we assume a relative scale along which we can measure what happens when according to a tiny clock in each and every reference frame.

Either way, we must assume an axis of time.

Wolfram Physics, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to make anyassumptions about time.

We need only posit the application of rules to the nodes and edges of the hypergraph, and time emerges.

The evolution of the hypergraph is time...

...which gives us a profound clue, not just to the nature of time, but to the nature of the universe.

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References

• The canonical mass of a neutron star is 1.4 solar masses
• The mass of the Sun is 1.988416 × 10^30 kg
• The mass of a neutron is 1.67492750056(85) × 10^-27 kg
• So the number of neutrons in a neutron star, assuming neutron stars are made entirely of neutrons (which they’re not), is 1.4 × 1.988416 × 10^30 kg / 1.67492750056(85) × 10^-27 kg ~ 10^57

Credits

• Pulsar animation by Michael Kramer licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
• Retina image by د.مصطفى الجزار licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

The full article is here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Different observers, from different regions of the ruliad, experience the universe in different ways.

To what extent can these different observers communicate their different experiences?

Can dogs, with their olefactory ways of mapping their worlds through scent, truly understand humans, with our one-dimensional ways of mapping our world through language?

Can humans, with our one-dimensional streams of language, truly understand AI image generators, with their parallel diffusion models?

If we ever met aliens, would we be able to communicate with them?

How might it be to think like an alien?

Stephen Wolfram explores some of the mind-bending implications of different regions of the ruliad giving rise to different experiences of the universe. 

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

References

• Ruliad definition
• Ruliad article

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

The ruliad is every possible computation. What could you possibly say about such an enormous, all-encompassing object?

Well, that’s where we come in.

Particular observers sample the ruliad in particular ways.

Observers like us sample the ruliad in ways that give rise to physics as weknow it.

Ruliad + observer = physics.

In this excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, he explores how physics, mathematics and biology all arise from this same enormous, all-encompassing object, the ruliad.

He gets to aliens, too, asking such provocative questions as how far from us in rulial space are the nearest aliens?

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

References

• Ruliad definition
• Ruliad article
• Second Law of Thermodynamics article
• Second Law of Thermodynamics history
• Metamathematics article
• Metamathematics book
• Biological evolution article
• Biological evolution follow-up
• Computational irreducibility

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.