The Last Theory

“Sorry, this is now getting very metaphysical,” says Jonathan Gorard part way through this excerpt from our conversation.We start by talking about applying more than one rule to the hypergraph to create rulial multiway systems.This takes us part way towards applying every possible rule, in other words, towards the ruliad.We move on to the idea of measuring the complexity of a structure in terms of the minimum amount of information needed to express it.Jonathan applies this idea to the ruliad, pointing out that it takes almost no information to express, since it encompasses all possible rules.Since he believes, however, that there is some content to the universe – that it is not a tautalogy – this leads Jonathan to reject the idea of the ruliad.We dig into why he has this intuition is that the universe is not a tautalogy.Jonathan invokes theologians like John Duns Scotus, who promulgated the idea the the world is neither completely reducible nor completely irreducible.He follows the scholastics in steering a middle path, suggesting that there’s enough content in the universe that it’s interesting, but not so much content that we can’t write down well-defined laws of nature.This brings us, for the first time, to the role of the observer in the Wolfram model.Again, Jonathan steers a middle path between placing the computational burden entirely on the universe and placing the computational burden entirely on the observer.I find this 9-minute exposition fascinating. It gets to the heart of some of the philosophical differences between Jonathan Gorard and Stephen Wolfram, and to the nature of the universe and our role as observers.—Jonathan GorardJonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics ProjectJonathan Gorard at Cardiff UniversityJonathan Gorard on TwitterThe Centre for Applied CompositionalityThe Wolfram Physics ProjectPeople mentioned by JonathanJohn Duns ScotusXerxes D. ArsiwallaHatem ElshatlawyResearch mentioned by JonathanHomotopies in Multiway (Non-Deterministic) Rewriting Systems as n-Fold Categories by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan Gorard, Hatem ElshatlawyPregeometric Spaces from Wolfram Model Rewriting Systems as Homotopy Types by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan GorardConcepts mentioned by JonathanRulial Multiway System∞-category∞-groupoid(∞,1)-toposGrothendieck’s homotopy hypothesisAlgorithmic complexity theoryAlgorithmic information theoryKolmogorov complexityEinstein field equationsCurvature invariantQualia—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

It’s pretty easy to see how three-dimensional space might arise from Wolfram Physics.The hypergraph kinda looks like space, and, for some rules, it kinda looks like it’s three-dimensional.But our universe isn’t just empty three-dimensional space.It’s mostly empty space, but there are also particles moving through that space: photons, neutrinos, electrons, quarks.Sometimes, these particles interact, annihilating each other and producing new particles.If Wolfram Physics is to be a successful model of our universe, it must, of course, model these elementary particles and their interactions.So where are the particles in the hypergraph?What is a particle in Wolfram’s universe?—Animations:Thanks to Alan Dewar for permission to use his excellent implementation of Conway’s Game of Life for many of the animations in the videoThanks also to Chris Rowett for permission to use his Life Viewer, a beautiful implementation of Conway’s Game of Life, which I used for the greyship animation in the video and image in the thumbnailAnother implementation of Conway’s Game of Life, which reproduces the Life Lexicon from ConwayLife.com, is at playgameoflife.comSources:Talking of ConwayLife.com, that’s another incredible resource for information on Conway’s Game of LifeTools:I created an RLE to text converter to convert Run Length Encoded patterns to plain text formatImages: John H Conway 2005 by Thane Plambeck licensed under CC BY 2.0Sounds:Crickets choir by Serg Childed licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

In the early days of the Wolfram Physics Project, Stephen Wolfram seemed to be seeking a single rule that, when applied to the hypergraph, could generate our universe.More recently, however, Wolfram has promoted the idea of the ruliad, the application of every possible rule to the hypergraph.So I asked Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of the Wolfram Physics Project, whether all rules might be applied to generate our universe, or whether he was searching for one rule to rule them all.—Stephen Wolfram’s 2010 TED talk in which he said he was committed “to see if within this decade we can finally hold in our hands the rule for our universe”.Jonathan GorardJonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics ProjectJonathan Gorard at Cardiff UniversityJonathan Gorard on TwitterThe Centre for Applied CompositionalityThe Wolfram Physics ProjectConcepts mentioned by JonathanEquivalence classCongruence classLagrangian mechanicsHamiltonian mechanicsTeleologyOntologyAxiomatic view of mathematics – top-downConstructivist view of mathematics – bottom-upDomain of discourseIntuitionismAlgorithmic information theory—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

John von Neumann might be the most important figure in Wolfram Physics prehistory.Whenever any of the most important prerequisites to Wolfram Physics were happening – quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, Turing machines, electronic computers, cellular automata – John von Neumann always seemed to be there.How did John von Neumann always come to be in the right place at the right time to contribute to some of the most significant developments in physics, mathematics and computation history?For this, another high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Budapest, where John von Neumann was born, to point to a plaque and get some answers.—I took inspiration and information for this episode from Ananyo Bhattacharya’s biography of John von Neumann: The Man from the FutureBuy it in the USBuy it in the UKBuy it in CanadaBuy it in AustraliaPeopleJohn von NeumannAlbert EinsteinErwin SchrödingerWerner HeisenbergKurt GödelAlan TuringSeth NeddermeyerJ. Presper EckertJohn MauchlyStephen WolframJonathan GorardMax PiskunovStanisław UlamFather StricklandConceptsHilbert spaceGödel’s incompleteness theoremsUniversal Turing machineTuring’s proofVon Neumann architectureThe Manhattan ProjectCellular automataComputersIAS machineENIACEDVACIBM 701ImagesImage of John von Neumann from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which rather pointlessly requires that this rather ponderous statement be reproduced here: “Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.”Turing Machine Model Davey 2012 by Rocky Acosta licensed under CC BY 3.0Animation. 1200 iterations of the ‘Rule 110’ Automata by Mr. Heretic licenced under  CC BY-SA 3.0Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262, Werner Heisenberg by an unknown author (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R57262) licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 DETuring in 1935 by Tomipelegrin licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0Gospers glider gun by Lucas Vieira licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

The Wolfram model allows an infinite number of rules.Some of these rules generate interesting universes that are complex and connected, some of these rules generate plausible universes that look a little like our own, and others... go nowhere.In this excerpt from my conversation with Jonathan Gorard, I ask him how to find rules of Wolfram Physics that are both interesting and plausible.—Jonathan GorardJonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics ProjectJonathan Gorard at Cardiff UniversityJonathan Gorard on TwitterThe Centre for Applied CompositionalityThe Wolfram Physics ProjectThe paper referred to by JonathanAlgorithmic Causal Sets and the Wolfram Model by Jonathan GorardConcepts mentioned by JonathanCausal invarianceManifoldCausal graphSpace-like separationCausal coneDimensionalityCurvatureDiscrete differential operatorsDiscrete Laplacian—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

The twentieth century was a truly exciting time in physics.From 1905 to 1973, we made extraordinary progress probing the mysteries of the universe: special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, the structure of the atom, the structure of the nucleus, enumerating the elementary particles.Then, in 1973, this extraordinary progress... stopped.I mean, where are the fundamental discoveries in the last 50 years equal to general relativity or quantum mechanics?Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?For this high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Oxford to tell you why progress stopped, and why it’s set to start again: why progress in physics might be about to accelerate in the early twenty-first century in a way we haven’t seen since those heady days of the early twentieth century.—Eric Weinstein’s claims that there has been no progress in physics since 1973:BigThinkThe Joe Rogan ExperienceLord Kelvin— I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Causal invariance is a crucial characteristic for any rule of Wolfram Physics.According to Wolfram MathWorld, if a rule is causally invariant, then “no matter which evolution is chosen for a system, the history is the same, in the sense that the same events occur and they have the same causal relationships.”Causal invariance is one of the assumptions Jonathan Gorard needs to make to derive the equations of General Relativity from the hypergraph. That’s how crucial it is! Given that not every rule of Wolfram Physics is causally invariant, I asked Jonathan how we find the ones that are.Here, in another excerpt from our recent conversation, is his answer: how to find causally invariant rules.—Jonathan GorardJonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics ProjectJonathan Gorard at Cardiff UniversityJonathan Gorard on TwitterThe Centre for Applied CompositionalityThe Wolfram Physics ProjectPeople and concepts mentioned by JonathanStephen WolframMax PiskunovCausal invarianceWolfram Function RepositoryWolfram EngineWolfram MathematicaWolfram Programming LabCausalInvariantQTotalCausalInvariantQAssociativeCommutativeAutomated theorem provingUndecidable problem—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Now that I’ve introduced you to the different kinds of edges that might make up a hypergraph – unary, binary and ternary edges, as well as loops and self-loops – we can have some fun.Some of rules in the Wolfram model give rise to fascinating universes.Today, I’m going to show you a few rules that seem to fabricate space itself in much the same way as knitting needles might fabricate a blanket.And if you think that knitting is a far-fetched analogy, just wait until you see my animations!–I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Dugan Hammock creates beautiful animations of three-dimensional cross-sections through four-dimensional spaces.But his animations aren’t mere mathematical abstractions. He has also applied his geometrical skills to animating the hypergraph of Wolfram Physics, in such a way that it doesn’t jump from frame to frame.In this second part of my recent conversation with Dugan, we talk about his extending spring-electrical embedding into an additional time dimension......and we show some of the beautifully smooth animations that come out of it.—Dugan HammockDugan Hammock’s videos on YouTubeDugan Hammock on TwitterDugan Hammock at The Wolfram Physics ProjectPlotting the evolution of a Wolfram Model in 3-dimensionsTemporally coherent animations of the evolution of Wolfram Models People and concepts mentioned by DuganCoulomb’s lawHooke’s lawSpring-electrical embeddingCharles Pooh—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Causal invariance is one of the most important concepts in the Wolfram model... and one of the most difficult to capture.So I really wanted to hear Jonathan Gorard’s take on it.In this excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan addresses the differences between causal invariance and confluence.Causal invariance means that regardless of the order in which a rule is applied to the hypergraph, the same events occur, with the same causal relationships between them.Confluence, on the other hand, is the coming-together of different branches of the multiway graph.Jonathan explores different ways we might determine whether two nodes, two edges or two hypergraphs are the same, and explains that if we identify nodes and edges according to their causal histories, then causal invariance and confluence become the same idea.I’ve found myself listening to Jonathan’s explanation of causal invariance over and over to make sense of it, but it’s one of the areas where I’m convinced Jonathan has a unique contribution to make.—Jonathan Gorard  • Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project  • Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University  • Jonathan Gorard on Twitter  • The Centre for Applied Compositionality  • The Wolfram Physics ProjectConcepts mentioned by Jonathan  • Causal invariance  • Multiway system  • Causal structure  • Causal Set Theory  • Directed acyclic graph  • Isomorphic  • Space-like separation  • Simultaneity and simultaneity surfaces in relativity  • Lorentz invariance  • Poincaré invariance  • Conformal invariance  • Diffeomorphism invariance  • General covariance  • Confluence  • Church-Rosser Property—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.