The Last Theory

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.

So many of the most complex and most promising graphs and hypergraphs of Wolfram Physics involve loops and self-loops.They can play a crucial role in the evolution of graphs and hypergraphs... which means that they might play a crucial role in the evolution of the universe itself.Loops and self-loops matter, because including them in our models reduces the number of arbitrary assumptions we need to make in Wolfram Physics, making it more complete.–I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Dugan Hammock lives in the fourth dimension.As Jonathan Gorard mentioned in our recent conversation on How to draw the hypergraph in Wolfram Physics, Dugan has worked on plotting the evolution of the hypergraph over time.We get into that in the second part of our conversation, but in this first part, I get to know Dugan as a mathematician and artist.Enjoy his amazing animations of three-dimensional cross-sections through four-dimensional hypershapes!—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 mentioned by DuganMax CooperGeorge K. FrancisWilliam Thurston—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

Computational irreducibility means that there are no shortcuts when we apply rules to the hypergraph.I used to think that our existing theories of physics, such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, were examples of computational reducibility: shortcuts that allow us to make higher-level generalizations about how the application of rules to the hypergraph gives rise to our universe.Jonathan Gorard used to think this, too.But it turns out that over the last couple of years, he has changed his mind on this quite radically.General relativity and quantum mechanics, he now thinks, aren’t examples of computational reducibility, they’re consequences of computational irreducibility.I truly appreciated this part of our conversation, because it radically changed my mind, too, about this crucial concept in Wolfram Physics.—Jonathan GorardJonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics ProjectJonathan Gorard at Cardiff UniversityJonathan Gorard on TwitterThe Centre for Applied CompositionalityThe Wolfram Physics ProjectConcepts mentioned by JonathanComputational reducibilityComputational irreducibilityGeneral relativityQuantum mechanicsFluid mechanicsContinuum mechanicsSolid mechanicsPartition functionBoltzmann equationMolecular chaos assumptionErgodicityDistribution functionChapman-Enskog expansionStress tensorNavier-Stokes equationsEuler equations—I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.