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A really interesting topic, especially from a philosophical point of view. A good discussion that touches on these ideas in a fairly accessible way: https://w

A really interesting topic, especially from a philosophical point of view. A good discussion that touches on these ideas in a fairly accessible way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-SGpEInX_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-SGpEInX_c (Lex Friedman interviews Wolfram for the 3rd time) I enjoyed Sabine Hossenfelder's thoughts on this and other 'Theory of everything' projects (Do we need a Theory of Everything? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdu9KvLxHFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdu9KvLxHFg). A little bit of a reality-check for those who get really invested in these ideas, but I, like her, think it's really cool that there are people like Wolfram et al thinking these interesting thoughts and trying to push Physics in new directions.

indymike 5y ago
Thank you for sharing this. I wish more people, particularly journalists and funders or research would listen to Hossenfelder's advice.
lhorie 5y ago
Specifically in relation to this theory of ruliads and Hossenfelder's take, one "pop" mathematical concept that comes to mind is Godel's incompleteness theorem. It may indeed be mathematically feasible that some holy grail equation exists within the ruliad given that Godel et al have shown that it is possible to just keep recursively describing internally consistent algebraic systems and meta algebraic systems ad infinitum, and that in an infinitely arbitrary meta mathematical system you could describe anything that is "true". It does not, however, follow that such an all-encompassing system physically exists, or that it is finite in some observably interesting way. I.e. the universe could just be infinite in every one of infinite aspects, in a monkeys-and-typewriters sort of way, and that would mean our existence would just necessarily be real, which is just not a very interesting conclusion. Or it could be that the universe is finite/limited in some way that the meta mathematical framework does not predict. And that's where Hossenfelder's take comes in: we don't know that physics is as infinitely big as mathematics, and for the purposes of advancing the field of physics, one needs to work on increasing the confidence of what we do know, rather than saying that what we might eventually know happens to exist within some theoretically infinite set.

indymike 5y ago

Thank you for sharing this. I wish more people, particularly journalists and funders or research would listen to Hossenfelder's advice.

lhorie 5y ago

Specifically in relation to this theory of ruliads and Hossenfelder's take, one "pop" mathematical concept that comes to mind is Godel's incompleteness theorem. It may indeed be mathematically feasible that some holy grail equation exists within the ruliad given that Godel et al have shown that it is possible to just keep recursively describing internally consistent algebraic systems and meta algebraic systems ad infinitum, and that in an infinitely arbitrary meta mathematical system you could describe anything that is "true". It does not, however, follow that such an all-encompassing system physically exists, or that it is finite in some observably interesting way. I.e. the universe could just be infinite in every one of infinite aspects, in a monkeys-and-typewriters sort of way, and that would mean our existence would just necessarily be real, which is just not a very interesting conclusion. Or it could be that the universe is finite/limited in some way that the meta mathematical framework does not predict. And that's where Hossenfelder's take comes in: we don't know that physics is as infinitely big as mathematics, and for the purposes of advancing the field of physics, one needs to work on increasing the confidence of what we do know, rather than saying that what we might eventually know happens to exist within some theoretically infinite set.