[HN Gopher] How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe ...
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How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything
Author : jam
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-10-28 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Without reading the article, I bet the answer is 42.
| jfengel wrote:
| That is a better answer than the article.
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| 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.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| things to predict would be "the maximum entanglement speed z"
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| thatguysaguy wrote:
| You can see him talk to an actual physicist here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bMYtEKjHs0
|
| Sean Carroll is more of a "just let the guest say what they
| want to" interviewer, so he doesn't grill him very hard.
| Despite that, I think it comes across pretty clearly in the
| interview that Wolfram doesn't actually have any compelling
| reason to think that this is the way the universe actually is.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the thing that is fishy is that Wolfram doesn't understand the
| difference between an analogy and a model.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > Why are none of these things wikipedia articles? Or getting
| any traction in google scholar?
|
| Wolfram is a very smart fellow and deserves much credit for
| Mathematica. But these little side projects are very much
| outsider physics. No one is actually interested in pursuing his
| ideas because they're not particularly compelling. He has a
| couple of folks on his payroll doing work on it, and he'll show
| up on Lex Fridman or other internet talking head shows but
| that's pretty much the extent of it.
|
| There's no harm in it, I guess. He's not a crank... though
| maybe somewhat crank-adjacent.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's really distressing that I can't tell this from the usual
| physics crank gibberish. He's smarter than that. Or at least
| he used to be.
|
| It's scary because I was never as smart as he used to be. I
| could be even more off base with even less to back it up, and
| equally unable to see that.
| timeagain wrote:
| 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
| kromem wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Wolfram has a PhD in physics. *Jordan
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| 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.
| nologic01 wrote:
| 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.
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