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I think it’s really interesting to see the similarities between what Wolfram is saying and the work of Julian Barbour on time being an emergent property. Both s
by foundry27 2y ago
I think it’s really interesting to see the similarities between what Wolfram is saying and the work of Julian Barbour on time being an emergent property. Both suggest a similar underlying ontology for the universe: a timeless, all-encompassing realm containing all possible states / configurations of everything. But what’s really fascinating is that they reach this conclusion through different implementations of that same interface. Barbour talks about a static geometric landscape where time emerges objectively from the relational (I won’t say causal) structures between configurations, independent of any observer. On the other hand, Wolfram’s idea of the Ruliad is that there’s a timeless computational structure, but time emerges due to our computational limitations as observers navigating this space.
They’ve both converged on a timeless “foundation” for reality, but they’re completely opposite in how they explain the emergence of time: objective geometry, vs. subjective computational experience
- m3kw9 2y agoSo you are saying there is a version of me that is king of the universe in some timeline?
- pixl97 2y agoIf the universe is infinite then there is a possibility that you are a king of an observable universe somewhere.
- xandrius 2y agoInfinite does not mean that all the permutations are possible. You being you and you becoming a king might simply not be a combination which is compatible.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoYou vastly misunderestimate infinity if you don’t recognize that anything feasible will happen.
- jbotz 2y agoDepends on how you define feasible. Take Wolfram's 1-dimensional cellular automata... some of them have infinite complexity, and of course you can "run" them for infinite time, and the "current" state is constantly expanding (like the Universe). So let's define "something feasible" as some specific finite bit pattern on the 1-dimensional line of an arbitrary current state. Is that "feasible" bit pattern guaranteed to appear anywhere in the automaton's present or future? I believe, and if I understand correctly, so does Wolfram, that for any reasonably complex "feasible pattern" the answer is no; even though the automaton produces infinitely many states, it is not guaranteed to explore all conceivable states. In other words, in a given Universe (which has a specific set of rules that govern its evolution in time) even though there are infinitely many possible states, not all conceivable states are a possible result of that evolution.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIf you exist, you are one of the feasible states.
- pantulis 2y agoThere are infinite numbers between 3 and 4, yet none of them is number 7.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago7 isn’t feasible…
- kridsdale3 2y agoGreat way to let someone down who asks you out. There are no branches in the Ruliad in which you and I end up together. I have foreseen it.
- xandrius 2y agoThe best is to "zone out" and do micro eye movements for a 10 seconds and then say that.
- grugagag 2y agoIn a skin enclosed universe you are already King Meatbag, ruler over your mind and body.
- biofox 2y agoMy body disagrees.
- pizza 2y agoI was literally thinking of the same similarities. Barbour's exposition of the principle of least action as being time is interesting. There's a section in The Janus Point where he goes into detail about the fact that there are parts of the cosmos that (due to cosmic inflation) are farther apart in terms of light-years than the universe is old, and growing in separation faster than c, meaning that they are forever causally separated. There will never be future changes in state from one that result in effects in the other. In a way, this also relates to computation, maybe akin to some kind of undecidability. Another thing that came to mind when reading the part about how "black holes have too high a density of events inside of them to do any more computation" is Chaitin's incompleteness theorem: if I understand it correctly, that basically says that for any formal axiomatic system there is a constant c beyond which it's impossible to prove in the formal system that the Kolmogorov complexity of a string is greater than c. I get the same kind of vibe with that and the thought of the ruliad not being able to progressively simulate further states in a black hole.
- ziofill 2y agoActually, the parts of the universe receding from us faster than the speed of light can still be causally connected to us. It’s a known “paradox” that has the following analogy: an ant walks on an elastic band toward us at speed c, and we stretch the band away from us by pulling on the far end at a speed s > c. Initially the ant despite walking in our direction gets farther, but eventually it does reach us (in exponential time). The same is true for light coming from objects that were receding from us at a speed greater than c when they emitted it. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_on_a_rubber_rope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_on_a_rubber_rope
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoWithout time you’d be everything all at once, which isn’t capable of having an experience, that is to also say: a location. To have experience, requires position relative to the all, the traversal of the all is time. More like a play head on a tape, you’re the play head traversing and animating your own projection.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> have experience, requires position relative to the all, the traversal of the all is time You’re describing timelike experience. Photons “experience” events as in they are part of causality. But they do so in a non-timelike manner.
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoSaid a human. If it’s not time-like, then it’s everything, thus it can’t have experiences thus god. God splits (monad becomes many) to experience being (shards in multiplicity of the one through division: oooh spooky golden mystery).
- CooCooCaCha 2y ago[flagged]
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoTake your meds
- phantompeace 2y agoI think he’s actually got a point. I have the same “feelings” but can’t articulate it in a scientific way compatible with physicists in general.
- dang 2y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yarg 2y agoI think that time isn't what we think it is - but I don't think it's all already set; rather I think that the past can be constrained by the future just as the future is constrained by the past. I don't think that there's spooky action at a distance (it's fundamentally equivalent to retrocausality, and the consequences of the distant foreign event cannot outpace its light cone anyway). I think its a superposition of states of a closed time-like curve thing being fleshed out as its contradictions are resolved and interactions are permitted between its colocated non-contradictory aspects. But I'm not a physicist, so that's probably all just bullshit anyway.
- adastra22 2y agoIt is simpler than that. Wolfram has a long history of plagiarizing ideas and passing them off as his own.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThat’s the history of 99.9999% of ideas based on the average token generation rate of humanity.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoThe mother of someone who was a friend in the 90s used to always pepper her speech with attributions for almost everything she was saying (in any "serious" conversation). "I think it was Popper who said ..." "Schenk developed this idea that ...") It was * so * annoying to listen to.
- adastra22 2y agoWe should hold dinner-table conversations and scientific letters to different standards.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adastra22 2y agoReal scientists tend to try to be careful about attribution and especially don't just blatantly regurgitate the last thing they read and pass it off as their own. That is highly frowned upon in polite academic society.
- bmitc 2y agoI generally like the idea of most everything being emergent, but where does it stop? Is it emergence all the way down?
- andoando 2y agoI suspect there are many different mental conceptions that amount to the same facts of nature.
- bbor 2y agoIdk, just looking at it now Barbour seems much, much more rigorous. The linked article is more “using scientific terms to muse about philosophy” than physics, IMHO. For example; In essence, therefore, we experience time because of the interplay between our computational boundedness as observers, and the computational irreducibility of underlying processes in the universe. His big insight is literally the starting point of Hegel’s The Science of Logic, namely that we are finite. That in no ways justifies all the other stuff (especially multiverse theory), and it’s not enough to build a meaningfully useful conception of time, at all. All it gets you is that “if you were infinite you wouldn’t experience time”, which is a blockbuster-sci-fi-movie level insight, IMO. I can’t help but think of Kant as I write this; he wrote convincingly of the difference between mathematical intuition and philosophical conception, a binary Wolfram would presumably—and mistakenly-identify with solid logic vs meaningless buffoonery. But refusing to acknowledge our limits makes you more vulnerable to mistakes stemming from them, not less. …the metaphysic of nature is completely different from mathematics, nor is it so rich in results, although it is of great importance as a critical test of the application of pure understanding—cognition to nature. For want of its guidance, even mathematicians, adopting certain common notions—which are, in fact, metaphysical—have unconsciously crowded their theories of nature with hypotheses, the fallacy of which becomes evident upon the application of the principles of this metaphysic, without detriment, however, to the employment of mathematics in this sphere of cognition. Worth remembering at this point that Aristotle coined “physics” for the mathematical study of physis (nature), which was then followed up by a qualitatively different set of arguments interpreting and building upon that basis in a work simply titled metaphysics (after physics). We’ve learned infinitely more mathematical facts, but IMO “what is time, really?” will forever remain beyond their reach, a fact determined not by the universe but by the question itself. TL;DR: if you’re gonna try to talk cognition you should at least admit that you’re writing philosophy, and ideally cite some philosophers. We’ve been working on this for a hot minute! Barbour seems to be doing something much less ambitious: inventing the most useful/fundamental mathematical framework he can.
- CooCooCaCha 2y agoI swear as I get older philosophy feels more and more like religion for intellectuals. If you want to talk about cognition or time you should study science, not philosophy. You’re not going to learn about the universe in any significant way by studying hegel or aristotle or kant harder.
- tempaway456456 2y agoI don't think they are saying anything similar at all. Julian Barbour finds a way to get rid of Time completely (by saying every possible state exists and there must be some law that favours states that _seem_ to be related to _apparently_ previous states). Wolfram is more focused on making sense of 'time is change' through the lens of computation.
- pishpash 2y agoAs usual with Wolfram, too hand-wavy. It could be true but this is not serious physics.