5 ms·

How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

124 points by jam 3y ago

Towaway69 3y ago
[flagged]
- jfengel 3y ago
  That is a better answer than the article.
joshuanapoli 3y ago
I think that the "ruliad" concept here is pretty interesting. I'm not too sure how to apply it to real life, though. "Ruliad" represents the abstract and unique object that arises from the application of all possible computational processes or rules; the totality of all potential computational processes, an infinite, complex network of all possibilities that can ever exist. Wolfram explains that our perceptions of the universe, and our understanding of the laws of physics themselves, are influenced by our specific sampling or experience of the ruliad.
- kuchenbecker 3y ago
  Not a physicist and my time would be better spent learning phyics than speculation, but: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_i... I like to think it's literally an observation that creates the universe, otherwise the entire universe is just one giant superposition. An interesting thing is also the Quantum Zeno paradox, in that a consistently observed thing is less likely to do the unlikely (by collapsing the wave function according to the Copenhagen interpretation, many worlds by another). So: - observers contain the possible states of the universe but only with those which they are consistently interacting with - observers interact and enter superposition with the thing they observe to an outside observer (shrodingers cat) - an observer can only be defined by another observer through observation (when we open the box) Which leads to: The universe was not created until it was observed to have been created, which is the observer-created universe.
haskellandchill 3y ago
Why are none of these things wikipedia articles? Or getting any traction in google scholar? I actually am not against what Wolfram is saying and it's interesting to see the link between general relativity and quantum mechanics in this line of thinking, but come on, something is fishy.
- MichaelRazum 3y ago
  Guess two reasons - the theory is not mainstream, guess it is not attractive enough to study it right now - the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet). This has to change I think to get traction.
  - haskellandchill 3y ago
    things to predict would be "the maximum entanglement speed ζ" and "dimensionality of space won’t always be precisely 3" but he seems to be making no real effort there, I've seen other non-wolfram research on a lower bound for the speed (4x the speed of light woosh) which doesn't cite him, the dimensionality thing I don't even know what to look for. Anyway you'd think he'd do something or not whatever not my life, I met him once and he was just an eccentric yet boring dude.
    - MichaelRazum 3y ago
      Exactly, if something come out - guess it would be a funny nightmare to the physic society. As you said, it doesn't seem to be the case a right now. On the personal level, maybe you are right - but it doesn't matter, if he is right...
  - crispyambulance 3y ago
    > the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet) AFAIK, the theory is not able to make _any_ predictions yet. It purports to be one of those "theories of everything" in the form of a kind of "universe building kit". But all it produces are a bunch of pretty "hypergraphs" that have some loose analogies with some physical theories. If, at the end of the day, one's "theory of everything" can't replicate classical mechanics, the spectra of Hydrogen atoms, and the laws of thermodynamics, then it probably doesn't warrant bloviating on the big bang, black holes and information theory as Mr Wolfram is apt to do.
mathgradthrow 3y ago
This is hard to read. I don't think the core narrative is implausible, but it's pretty hard to imagine someone this self-aggrandizing being a sufficiently critical adversary of his own theory, and he doesn't seem to have convinced anyone else of his claims.
- kromem 3y ago
  You don't think it's implausible? Reading this line didn't set off any red flags? "And that the structure of space and everything in it is just defined by the network of relations between these elements—that we might call atoms of space. It’s very elegant—but deeply abstract." How about this one, shortly after describing "in the history of science there's four models": "But now there’s something even more: in our Physics Project things become multicomputational, with many threads of time, that can only be knitted together by an observer." Wow, one of the four models in the history of science is the thing you just came up with? Or this one: "But how is that rule picked? Well, actually, it isn’t. Because all possible rules are used. And we’re building up what I call the ruliad: the deeply abstract but unique object that is the entangled limit of all possible computational processes." Dude overfitted basic physics with a model and thinks he discovered a theory of everything. "OK, so the ruliad is everything." Pythagoras move over, there's a new mathematician's Monad in town. "And there are two crucial facts about us. First, we’re computationally bounded—our minds are limited. And second, we believe we’re persistent in time—even though we’re made of different atoms of space at every moment. So then here’s the big result. What observers with those characteristics perceive in the ruliad necessarily follows certain laws. And those laws turn out to be precisely the three key theories of 20th-century physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics and the Second Law." How convenient. "We can think of this as a place in the ruliad described using the concept of a cat in a party hat:" Wait, what now? "Maybe we need a promptocracy where people write prompts instead of just voting." This is still on the rails for you? "Before our Physics Project we didn’t know if our universe really was computational. But now it’s pretty clear that it is. And from that we’re inexorably led to the ruliad—with all its vastness, so hugely greater than all the physical space in our universe." Oh great, it's pretty clear. I can't imagine that he hasn't convinced respected physicists of his claims. Did he show them the video of the cat in the party hat becoming a "cat island" and then turning into abstract concept spaces mirroring the development of actual spacetime from the big bang? He should definitely lead with that next time.
timeagain 3y ago
Related: Why philosophers should care about computational complexity by Scott Aaronson [1]. If you have even a faint interest in philisophy and have taken algorithms 101 you will find something mind-blowing in this paper. My favorite part is about how the “Chinese room” problem takes on totally different character depending on your assumptions about the type of machinery behind the black box. [1] https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
- fallingknife 3y ago
  The Chinese room problem always seemed pointless to me precisely because we have to make assumptions about how it works. The whole thing basically boils down to "there's this room that can speak perfect Chinese, and we don't know how it works, or how your brain works, but somehow we can say with absolute certainly that they couldn't possibly be the same."
kromem 3y ago
It's pretty wild to have gone from watching a lecture from Neil Turok (who is currently my favorite theoretical physicist with a "here's my idea for what physics currently has wrong with its model") and looking at Wolfram's rambling. Between this and the recent "techno-optimist" rant, I get the sense that maybe we shouldn't give popular voices platforms for things outside the scope that made them famous in the first place, and if they really have something interesting to say, it should be determined as such by the content of its argument and not the pseudo-authority of its author. Michael Jordon didn't have a stellar baseball record and likely wouldn't have made the cut for a team if he wasn't Michael Jordon. And what I see a lot of these days are people that made a name for themselves metaphorically playing basketball suddenly blogging about baseball and getting way too much attention for what are fundamentally 0.202 batting average ideas.
- andromaton 3y ago
  Wolfram has a PhD in physics. *Jordan
  - WhitneyLand 3y ago
    That doesn’t provide any guarantees that he’s not evolved into, a crank with money. Looking at Physics historically there are multiple examples of scientists who did productive and fully credible work in their prime and later ended up stuck on crank theories.
    - famouswaffles 3y ago
      It doesn't prove anything. It does make his Jordan comparison disingenuous at best. It's weird enough to gatekeep posting theories (nobody has to believe or even seriously consider them!), even odder to do so for a PhD holder in the field.
      - WhitneyLand 3y ago
        Disagree. It’s not weird at all, and I would say quite productive, being that a billionaire crank is a potentially dangerous, with nearly unlimited ability to attempt to spread his influence countering it requires people to speak up.
nologic01 3y ago
Its harsh to say it, but Wolfram tried his best at a computational theory of everything and failed. We didn't know this is in the eighties, when the first cellular automata ideas were conceived. So it was a worthy thing to explore in earnest. But it did not work. There is nothing to show for it. It did not strike a vein. These things happen. All the time. You have a great startup idea but no market fit. In this case the market is the Universe. And you cant fake it till you make it with the Universe. The universe most certainly has a mysterious affinity with mathematics. And computation is a mathematical concept. So its a decent hypothesis. But there are a lot of mathematical concepts that dont manifest in any shape or form in physical reality. From the simple geometric thinking of ancient cultures to Newton's and Leibnitz's calculus and then all the subsequent glories of 19th and 20th century physical theory, when new mathematical concepts "fit" the way the universe works there is just an avalanche of prediction, verification, learning, refinement, further prediction etc. Its wrong to think we have reached the end of "mathematical physics". So new ideas are needed, and computation is as good an inspiration as a falling apple. But prunning dead-end ideas is a faster way to get closer to the truth.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  You might really enjoy All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. He wasn’t the first to try this, and many failed before him. Most people don’t know that the entire concept of the “ecosystem” comes from a computational view of ecology. It’s bigger problem than just to this. It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society and it’s all failed. But we haven’t figured out another way. So climate change, politics, democracy and marketing all continue to try to figure out the computational stable state of society.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society What is this supposed to be a reference to?
    - gshubert17 3y ago
pr337h4m 3y ago
Computational irreducibility is a very useful concept; among other things, it is an elegant way to have free will in a deterministic universe.
- nathanfig 3y ago
  Can you explain how this creates free will?
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    One might use computational irreducibility to says that the only way to predict your behavior is to observe your behavior. Any system that could predict you must first recreate you. For those that see determinism as undermining free will, this gives one way to conceptualize the idea that you have ownership of your choices despite determinism.
    - nathanfig 3y ago
      Not sure this allows a meaningful definition of free will, since if nothing can predict me neither can I.
      - hackinthebochs 3y ago
        Nothing turns on whether you can predict your actions/choices. You do not need the power to predict yourself to act.
        nathanfig 3y ago
        So with no power to predict the outcomes of my actions, or even predict how I will pick an action, I bear witness to myself acting anyway- and this we call free will? What troubles me is that the more we take away any determining factors for free will the more it sounds like randomness.
        3y ago
zug_zug 3y ago
I'm trying to evaluate this and like everyone else I'm unconvinced defaulting to doubtful (great claims need great evidence). Perhaps it would help if he had clarified what he meant by: `So then here’s the big result. What observers with those characteristics perceive in the ruliad necessarily follows certain laws. And those laws turn out to be precisely the three key theories of 20th-century physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics and the Second Law. ` So it sounds like he's saying that if you take an arbitrary system of generating infinite rules and apply it to itself, you'll make a system that shares traits of our universe, which if true is actually fascinating in itself. Curious if any advocates can speak to evidence of this claim.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
There’s something I’ve always enjoyed about Wolfram’s willingness to put the rules aside and formulate theories based on intuition and out-of-the-box thinking. I don’t think he’s right here, but it’s that kind of thinking that sometimes leads to important scientific discoveries.
adamnemecek 3y ago
It's convolution. All of it.
ergonaught 3y ago
Without diminishing Mathematica/WA, have any of his ideas produced tangible, actionable results post-1990? It's a serious question rather than snark as I am only moderately familiar with his work. I appreciate some of his thoughts (ex: computational irreducibility), but I feel like I've got at least 20 years of asking "So what?" when he publishes. And yet here we are, discussing him, again.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mediumsmart 3y ago
Always nice to take pictures in the woods helping nature to achieve purpose and then re-entering the ruliad matrix posting the pictures with overlay save the forest memes thus taking part in the awesome work defining what humans want and completing one of the great circles that great minds run in.
crifor 3y ago
A classic philosophical question is "why is there something rather nothing?" The follow up question "why is there something but not everything?" is the domain of physics. If the universe is computable, then there is a program in any model of computation that reproduces our observed physics. Why is one model of computation (Wolfram's) considered deeper or more fundamental than another (Turing machine)? Is it more useful because it is easier or more natural to encode the known laws of symmetry in the "program"? There seems to be a lot of theories of everything that have the issue of predicting a lot more than we can possibly observe, where everything we consider real physics is a small point in a massive parameter space. Be its string theory with its landscape of vacua, or flavors of inflation, or many worlds. Our universe in the theory is underdetermined. Somewhere in the parameter space is our observed universe but also a lot of dream worlds sitting side-by-side inaccessible to us. Some take it as deep and profound insight but I am skeptical that it is in the spirit of physics. I think deeper principles await to rule out this embarrassment of ontology

124 points by jam 3y ago

Towaway69 3y ago

[flagged]

jfengel 3y ago
That is a better answer than the article.

joshuanapoli 3y ago

I think that the "ruliad" concept here is pretty interesting. I'm not too sure how to apply it to real life, though. "Ruliad" represents the abstract and unique object that arises from the application of all possible computational processes or rules; the totality of all potential computational processes, an infinite, complex network of all possibilities that can ever exist. Wolfram explains that our perceptions of the universe, and our understanding of the laws of physics themselves, are influenced by our specific sampling or experience of the ruliad.

kuchenbecker 3y ago
Not a physicist and my time would be better spent learning phyics than speculation, but: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_i... I like to think it's literally an observation that creates the universe, otherwise the entire universe is just one giant superposition. An interesting thing is also the Quantum Zeno paradox, in that a consistently observed thing is less likely to do the unlikely (by collapsing the wave function according to the Copenhagen interpretation, many worlds by another). So: - observers contain the possible states of the universe but only with those which they are consistently interacting with - observers interact and enter superposition with the thing they observe to an outside observer (shrodingers cat) - an observer can only be defined by another observer through observation (when we open the box) Which leads to: The universe was not created until it was observed to have been created, which is the observer-created universe.

haskellandchill 3y ago

Why are none of these things wikipedia articles? Or getting any traction in google scholar? I actually am not against what Wolfram is saying and it's interesting to see the link between general relativity and quantum mechanics in this line of thinking, but come on, something is fishy.

MichaelRazum 3y ago
Guess two reasons - the theory is not mainstream, guess it is not attractive enough to study it right now - the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet). This has to change I think to get traction.
- haskellandchill 3y ago
  things to predict would be "the maximum entanglement speed ζ" and "dimensionality of space won’t always be precisely 3" but he seems to be making no real effort there, I've seen other non-wolfram research on a lower bound for the speed (4x the speed of light woosh) which doesn't cite him, the dimensionality thing I don't even know what to look for. Anyway you'd think he'd do something or not whatever not my life, I met him once and he was just an eccentric yet boring dude.
  - MichaelRazum 3y ago
    Exactly, if something come out - guess it would be a funny nightmare to the physic society. As you said, it doesn't seem to be the case a right now. On the personal level, maybe you are right - but it doesn't matter, if he is right...
- crispyambulance 3y ago
  > the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet) AFAIK, the theory is not able to make _any_ predictions yet. It purports to be one of those "theories of everything" in the form of a kind of "universe building kit". But all it produces are a bunch of pretty "hypergraphs" that have some loose analogies with some physical theories. If, at the end of the day, one's "theory of everything" can't replicate classical mechanics, the spectra of Hydrogen atoms, and the laws of thermodynamics, then it probably doesn't warrant bloviating on the big bang, black holes and information theory as Mr Wolfram is apt to do.

mathgradthrow 3y ago

This is hard to read. I don't think the core narrative is implausible, but it's pretty hard to imagine someone this self-aggrandizing being a sufficiently critical adversary of his own theory, and he doesn't seem to have convinced anyone else of his claims.

kromem 3y ago
You don't think it's implausible? Reading this line didn't set off any red flags? "And that the structure of space and everything in it is just defined by the network of relations between these elements—that we might call atoms of space. It’s very elegant—but deeply abstract." How about this one, shortly after describing "in the history of science there's four models": "But now there’s something even more: in our Physics Project things become multicomputational, with many threads of time, that can only be knitted together by an observer." Wow, one of the four models in the history of science is the thing you just came up with? Or this one: "But how is that rule picked? Well, actually, it isn’t. Because all possible rules are used. And we’re building up what I call the ruliad: the deeply abstract but unique object that is the entangled limit of all possible computational processes." Dude overfitted basic physics with a model and thinks he discovered a theory of everything. "OK, so the ruliad is everything." Pythagoras move over, there's a new mathematician's Monad in town. "And there are two crucial facts about us. First, we’re computationally bounded—our minds are limited. And second, we believe we’re persistent in time—even though we’re made of different atoms of space at every moment. So then here’s the big result. What observers with those characteristics perceive in the ruliad necessarily follows certain laws. And those laws turn out to be precisely the three key theories of 20th-century physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics and the Second Law." How convenient. "We can think of this as a place in the ruliad described using the concept of a cat in a party hat:" Wait, what now? "Maybe we need a promptocracy where people write prompts instead of just voting." This is still on the rails for you? "Before our Physics Project we didn’t know if our universe really was computational. But now it’s pretty clear that it is. And from that we’re inexorably led to the ruliad—with all its vastness, so hugely greater than all the physical space in our universe." Oh great, it's pretty clear. I can't imagine that he hasn't convinced respected physicists of his claims. Did he show them the video of the cat in the party hat becoming a "cat island" and then turning into abstract concept spaces mirroring the development of actual spacetime from the big bang? He should definitely lead with that next time.

timeagain 3y ago

Related: Why philosophers should care about computational complexity by Scott Aaronson [1]. If you have even a faint interest in philisophy and have taken algorithms 101 you will find something mind-blowing in this paper. My favorite part is about how the “Chinese room” problem takes on totally different character depending on your assumptions about the type of machinery behind the black box. [1] https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf

fallingknife 3y ago
The Chinese room problem always seemed pointless to me precisely because we have to make assumptions about how it works. The whole thing basically boils down to "there's this room that can speak perfect Chinese, and we don't know how it works, or how your brain works, but somehow we can say with absolute certainly that they couldn't possibly be the same."

kromem 3y ago

It's pretty wild to have gone from watching a lecture from Neil Turok (who is currently my favorite theoretical physicist with a "here's my idea for what physics currently has wrong with its model") and looking at Wolfram's rambling. Between this and the recent "techno-optimist" rant, I get the sense that maybe we shouldn't give popular voices platforms for things outside the scope that made them famous in the first place, and if they really have something interesting to say, it should be determined as such by the content of its argument and not the pseudo-authority of its author. Michael Jordon didn't have a stellar baseball record and likely wouldn't have made the cut for a team if he wasn't Michael Jordon. And what I see a lot of these days are people that made a name for themselves metaphorically playing basketball suddenly blogging about baseball and getting way too much attention for what are fundamentally 0.202 batting average ideas.

andromaton 3y ago
Wolfram has a PhD in physics. *Jordan
- WhitneyLand 3y ago
  That doesn’t provide any guarantees that he’s not evolved into, a crank with money. Looking at Physics historically there are multiple examples of scientists who did productive and fully credible work in their prime and later ended up stuck on crank theories.
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    It doesn't prove anything. It does make his Jordan comparison disingenuous at best. It's weird enough to gatekeep posting theories (nobody has to believe or even seriously consider them!), even odder to do so for a PhD holder in the field.
    - WhitneyLand 3y ago
      Disagree. It’s not weird at all, and I would say quite productive, being that a billionaire crank is a potentially dangerous, with nearly unlimited ability to attempt to spread his influence countering it requires people to speak up.

nologic01 3y ago

Its harsh to say it, but Wolfram tried his best at a computational theory of everything and failed. We didn't know this is in the eighties, when the first cellular automata ideas were conceived. So it was a worthy thing to explore in earnest. But it did not work. There is nothing to show for it. It did not strike a vein. These things happen. All the time. You have a great startup idea but no market fit. In this case the market is the Universe. And you cant fake it till you make it with the Universe. The universe most certainly has a mysterious affinity with mathematics. And computation is a mathematical concept. So its a decent hypothesis. But there are a lot of mathematical concepts that dont manifest in any shape or form in physical reality. From the simple geometric thinking of ancient cultures to Newton's and Leibnitz's calculus and then all the subsequent glories of 19th and 20th century physical theory, when new mathematical concepts "fit" the way the universe works there is just an avalanche of prediction, verification, learning, refinement, further prediction etc. Its wrong to think we have reached the end of "mathematical physics". So new ideas are needed, and computation is as good an inspiration as a falling apple. But prunning dead-end ideas is a faster way to get closer to the truth.

tsunamifury 3y ago
You might really enjoy All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. He wasn’t the first to try this, and many failed before him. Most people don’t know that the entire concept of the “ecosystem” comes from a computational view of ecology. It’s bigger problem than just to this. It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society and it’s all failed. But we haven’t figured out another way. So climate change, politics, democracy and marketing all continue to try to figure out the computational stable state of society.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society What is this supposed to be a reference to?
  - gshubert17 3y ago

pr337h4m 3y ago

Computational irreducibility is a very useful concept; among other things, it is an elegant way to have free will in a deterministic universe.

nathanfig 3y ago
Can you explain how this creates free will?
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  One might use computational irreducibility to says that the only way to predict your behavior is to observe your behavior. Any system that could predict you must first recreate you. For those that see determinism as undermining free will, this gives one way to conceptualize the idea that you have ownership of your choices despite determinism.
  - nathanfig 3y ago
    Not sure this allows a meaningful definition of free will, since if nothing can predict me neither can I.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      Nothing turns on whether you can predict your actions/choices. You do not need the power to predict yourself to act.
      - nathanfig 3y ago
        So with no power to predict the outcomes of my actions, or even predict how I will pick an action, I bear witness to myself acting anyway- and this we call free will? What troubles me is that the more we take away any determining factors for free will the more it sounds like randomness.
        3y ago

zug_zug 3y ago

I'm trying to evaluate this and like everyone else I'm unconvinced defaulting to doubtful (great claims need great evidence). Perhaps it would help if he had clarified what he meant by: `So then here’s the big result. What observers with those characteristics perceive in the ruliad necessarily follows certain laws. And those laws turn out to be precisely the three key theories of 20th-century physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics and the Second Law. ` So it sounds like he's saying that if you take an arbitrary system of generating infinite rules and apply it to itself, you'll make a system that shares traits of our universe, which if true is actually fascinating in itself. Curious if any advocates can speak to evidence of this claim.

IAmGraydon 3y ago

There’s something I’ve always enjoyed about Wolfram’s willingness to put the rules aside and formulate theories based on intuition and out-of-the-box thinking. I don’t think he’s right here, but it’s that kind of thinking that sometimes leads to important scientific discoveries.

adamnemecek 3y ago

It's convolution. All of it.

ergonaught 3y ago

Without diminishing Mathematica/WA, have any of his ideas produced tangible, actionable results post-1990? It's a serious question rather than snark as I am only moderately familiar with his work. I appreciate some of his thoughts (ex: computational irreducibility), but I feel like I've got at least 20 years of asking "So what?" when he publishes. And yet here we are, discussing him, again.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mediumsmart 3y ago

Always nice to take pictures in the woods helping nature to achieve purpose and then re-entering the ruliad matrix posting the pictures with overlay save the forest memes thus taking part in the awesome work defining what humans want and completing one of the great circles that great minds run in.

crifor 3y ago

A classic philosophical question is "why is there something rather nothing?" The follow up question "why is there something but not everything?" is the domain of physics. If the universe is computable, then there is a program in any model of computation that reproduces our observed physics. Why is one model of computation (Wolfram's) considered deeper or more fundamental than another (Turing machine)? Is it more useful because it is easier or more natural to encode the known laws of symmetry in the "program"? There seems to be a lot of theories of everything that have the issue of predicting a lot more than we can possibly observe, where everything we consider real physics is a small point in a massive parameter space. Be its string theory with its landscape of vacua, or flavors of inflation, or many worlds. Our universe in the theory is underdetermined. Somewhere in the parameter space is our observed universe but also a lot of dream worlds sitting side-by-side inaccessible to us. Some take it as deep and profound insight but I am skeptical that it is in the spirit of physics. I think deeper principles await to rule out this embarrassment of ontology