Full podcast episode: ruclips.net/video/PdE-waSx-d8/видео.html Lex Fridman podcast channel: ruclips.net/user/lexfridman Guest bio: Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company behind Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram Physics and Metamathematics projects.
If discrete, wat is in between the discrete steps and can our mind comprehend that? If continuous, what is the smallest change and can our mind comprehend that?
Always interesting how my understanding of these videos fades in and out as I'm listening. I'll be following along with the explanation pretty well . . . and then suddenly there'll be a gap of 5-10 seconds where I've got no idea what's being said.
hahaha same I got a lot of what he is saying, but some things I don't quite get, sadly cuz there is still many holes in my knowledge, wish I had more time to study passion subjects like physics and math, but I also gotta focus on my actual field of bioinformatics and I'm already procrastinating by watching this video, but it's ok since the inherent fascination of nature is what is behind my pursuit of science anyway, so we shall keep seeking to understand all things.
Fascinating! One of Lex Fridman's best podcast clips. I would have liked more discussion about the relationship between computation and entropy; and between the discreteness of the physical world and the continuousness of pure mathematics. If pure mathematics is continuous (can mathematics really do without Analysis?) and the physical world is discrete, what does that say about the relationship between the two? (Could the physical world somehow "emerge" from pure mathematics?) Also, if the physical world is a bit-flipping computation, and entropy increases from a maximally ordered initial state to a maximally disordered one, what does that say about the nature of that computation, and in particular the relationship between entropy and computation in general? Does the sum of all irreducible computations in the physical world amount to an algorithm that decompresses the compressed information of the initial state? If so, does it mean the end of the physical world when the computation is done and the information is completely decompressed?
Every possible configuration of existence (including chaotic ones) can be described mathematically. So I always find the question of whether reality emerges from math farcical. Mathematics should be treated as our way of describing patterns extracted from all possible existences, including existences that can't practically exist.
You touches on the question wether math is invented or discovered. My own believe is that math more is an language and tool than some underlying reality. So mathematicians invent math system and can then discover stuff within that system. And it's the role of physicists to use math to describe reality and create analogies between mathematical system and physical reality. Natural languages as English has to much ambivalence and can't fully describe complex systems so something like math have to be used. That is contrary to the Platonic believes that the reality is math and beautiful and we are observing an distorted version of it. Stephen firmly believes that the reality is computational, don't know more details on he's philosophy.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 Most working mathematicians, like myself, subscribe to some form of mathematical realism. It seems to me that one can argue about the size of the sandbox, but not about the existence of the sandbox. Moreover, I don't think that mathematics is a "language" that serves as a salad bar for the sciences, any more than a symphony can be reduced to a sheet of music. I believe that Stephen Wolfram, as a friend of the (Turing) Computable Universe Hypothesis (or some ontological form of computationalism), i.e. the claim that nature performs digital computation, would agree with me. The symbolic representation of a given computation and the actual execution of a computation instance are not the same.
I do not understand why people do not see reality is both discrete and analog continuous at the same time. Matter is made up of knots of vibrating energy which forms discrete spaces but elements of, parts of, those vibrating knots of energy reach outwards in an analog manner going infinitely outwards and while we can say after some distance the effect becomes so small it can be considered zero, all indications are it is not zero but simply keeps getting closer and closer to zero without ever exactly reaching zero. Thus, reality is both analog and discrete at the same time and it depends upon how we are looking at it and for what purpose when deciding which aspect is more important to us at that time, the analog or discrete part.
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
It's fascinating to hear Stephen and Lex delve into the question of whether reality, including matter and space, is discrete or continuous. They did a stellar job of elucidating complex concepts such as entropy and its historical understandings, the evolution of quantum theory, and the possible discreetness of space. The part that intrigued me the most was Wolfram's suggestion that dark matter might be the "caloric of our time," implying that it could be a feature of space rather than a type of particle. This discussion rekindles my appreciation for how scientific understanding evolves over time, often overturning previous assumptions. Let's continue contemplating the profound question of the nature of reality and its impact on our understanding of the universe. Thanks to both for this enlightening conversation.
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
Dark matter came to mind as you were discussing space and discrete particles, before you named it. Maybe assign a unit, similar to the photon, to the CMB. Then do the math and see if the equations work. Tha math of celluar automata?
I'd like an example of a computationally irreducible dynamic for clarity please. Humans are computationally bounded but a common solution is to look at phenomena in small time slices (as opposed to real time) which allows us to observe and analyze incredibly complex phenomena then, over time, extrapolate to larger time scales and create human comprehensible models of complex, real-time dynamics (i.e. chemical reactions being just one example). Is Wolfram saying that there are irreducible dynamics for which that process (or any other simplification) cannot be made to work?
@@QED_ Sure but... with any model (simplification of a complex system) this is the case and we (humans) essentially create simplified models to understand.. well, everything (which if I understand what Wolfram is saying, is solely because we are computationally bounded). Dunno, maybe I need to watch this a few more times and think about it some more.
computational equivalence is the definition that a system is operating at a complexity equivalent to a Turing machine (turing universality) and computational irreducibility is that because of this feature, what the system does is therefor undecidable. Wolframs main contribution to us, is that principle of computational equivalence...where we think about systems in nature have essentially have this property...where It's like trying to answer the halting problem. we can't know exactly what is going to happen because what the system might do is infinitely complex. He showed in his book New Kind of Science, that the ability to reach turing universality...is trivial and ubiquitous (that it happens in practically all systems, with practically any rules) Everything else, like the Wolfram Model and all that, stems from these building blocks. Like the idea that perfect prediction doesn't exist because if you could perfectly predict a system it means you could solve the halting problem. Mathematics has effectively avoided this conclusion because most of the problems dealt with in mathematics are reducible problems...that have decidable answers. Systems in nature DONT OPERATE under just these MATHEMATICAL constraints...they follow ALL POSSIBLE RULES...the capital letters being the major difference between Things like the "Mathematical universe" and the "Wolfram Model" Hope this information helps you out. Just some background I have been studying the the wolfram model for 2.5 years now. I recommend watching his book series on YT, New Kind of Science.
Of all the "Theory of Everything"s I've heard, I find Stephen's the most interesting but also the one I feel most fitting. What I "feel is fitting" of course has no real value on its veracity. I guess what I mean is I like it as a model. But I am a software engineer so of course I would say that. Btw, I am also very glad to hear that he is thinking about ways one would find evidence for his theory - that is what actually makes it something serious. From fun model to actual thing.
@@DarkSkay Do you have evidence supporting that anything more than a single theory is required to explain reality? I'm joking with you, but the thing is when it comes to hypothesis creation there are no clear rules. There are some pointers and strategies but nothing strict. Of course nothing should be believed before it has experiments supporting the hypothesis, but how we go about deciding what to test with experiments is up to each person. You can have arguments about if Stephen's way of kinda working backwards from math to reality is productive (I can definitely see arguments against his methods from this pov) but I would say let him keep it up. To me it is an interesting approach to go the generative route when it comes to physical laws and if nothing else we get some interesting math from it (we already have gotten that).
@@Olodus There's a saying that eternity is long, especially towards the end - the set of "everything" can hold quite a lot of elements, especially when the remaining space appears to get smaller. Spinoza and countless others have theory: "Everything is (the) God(s)". With the distinction between singular and plural perhaps insignificant, blurred or transcended in this context of contexts that can hardly be imagined larger.
I thought that the belief right now is that quantum fields is the base line of the universe. My understanding Is that proton unobserved can be thought as a field, make that proton interact, the field collapse into something discrete. If quantum mechanic is correct, wich it is in some ways, how can the universe be discrete ? Fields are continuous correct ?
No, it's not agreed that quantum fields are the base line of the universe. Quantum theory and Relativity contradict each other. That's the whole problem at present . . .
@@QED_ Like black holes for exemple, both theories dont contradict each other, they just break down and fail to work for different reasons. Can you give me a specific prediction that both theories made that contradicted each other ?
@@TheCrimier Sorry, I'm not a physicist. But as I recall . . . isn't there some issue when tracing each theory back to the big bang (?) About how small Space can get (?)
@@QED_ Nope, both theories dont contradict each other, they just cant contradict each, they are about 2 class of widely different thing, matter and gravity. The issue is merging them together to make predictions about black holes(Big Bang). All attempt to merge them as of today as failed. I will say it again, as we understand Quantum mechanic, baseline reality is quantum fields. I'm not a phisicist either just for the records, I just love physics a lot. *edited some grammar
I wonder if he knows about penroses erabonds (not sure of the spelling). Penrose thinks dark matter is a consequence of his CCC model.. Would love to see an integration of wolfram physics project and CCC
At least both of them are attributing dark matter/energy to our lack of understanding of space or time, rather than the conventional and extremely unparsimonious idea that there's a whole other table of 'dark' standard model particles or whatever. I for one think it's kind of silly to believe we have any authority at all to declare what's twisting distant galaxies millions of light years away, based off of ancient light and not even a century of observations. It's like a grains of sand in Antarctica in 1 billion B.C. declaring the laws of physics for a grain of sand in Pasadena in 2023 lol.
@epencil I'm not aware of any suggestions they contributed for dark energy, do educate me. When I studied I decided to derive an analogue to schrodinger's eq but with 2 time dimensions and one space ... got an interesting result but I was no theorist. When you say ancient light I assume you mean from our perception because light itself carries no information about time. They experience no time between events and are not conserved being bosons with integer spin. I consider them to be solely the energetic carrier of electronic transition levels - but I haven't studied widely or deeply enough to strongly validate if that is right/wrong or even obvious/not obvious. But just remember it's not really about declaring or validation, but about falsification (Popper's construction of the scientific method ... and I had to stay quiet when the teachers training me to be a teacher thought they were being clever to weaken 'the' scientific method to 'a' scientific method, but really they were missing the bigger [philosophical] picture).
@epencil However if you are skeptical about the assumption physical laws haven't changed over time you would be interested to know that has also been an interest of mine, inspired by the rabbit hole in Web of Stories with Freeman Dyson. I think I did enough digging to write off that it wasn't the case for electron magnetic forces (at least not testable / measurable) but can't remember if I even wrote it off for the gravitational case , it was a suggestion from Dirac based solely on mathematical aesthetics and makes the case that the rate that the gravitational force has got weaker (if it did) compared to the other forces , would roughly correspond to the age of the Universe. And i don't know why I'm blanking on the conclusion that I came to about that , so I mustn't have closed the question sufficiently enough. I did have another 'not a theorist' idea about the origin of dark energy and Universe expansion (or rather contraction of 'stuff' between space) inspired by a method of energy extraction from blackholes.... and I later learnt Herman Weyl had a similar suggestion but it was apparently falsified by the observed size of Hydrogen (bigger or smaller can't remember). But my argument and open question is , IF everything is getting smaller so that space in between is getting larger / expanding, then how would we be confidently measuring that, assuming the 'rulers' are also getting smaller by the same rate. (In Wolfram's project the atoms of space are x^-100 Meters, where does that come from, are they assumed to have always been that ratio to e.g. the electron r ~ 10^-18 m). Just thinking aloud here.
@@Nick_Tag I think two time dimensions is where the answer may be at. You probably know about Itzhak Bars' ideas. Yes the lack of information carried in ancient light is a good way of putting it; it's so presumptuous from mainstream physics to infer the state of the universe, including constants of nature, over time back billions of years and billions of light years away, with only fifty years of astronomy behind it. The fine structure constant, which no one even knows what it really is, could change slightly with space or time and all the laws of physics would go out the window. There's an apparent paradox at the foundation of reality and it's something like backwards-going time. That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all, there is some conformal structure in how information behaves with change, but hard-nosed objectivism or reductionism isn't going to cut it anymore.
Wolfram has a point about the classical theory of heat once thought of as a fluid but that notion got corrected with heat being the motions of discreet molecules. Now he wants spacetime to be discreet too like the spacetime analog of Brownian motion. Dark matter has something to do with it but he couldn't give a clear pathway to that line of thinking. I think he is reaching and not making a lot of sense when it comes to quantum mechanics. He talks around quantum uncertainty of position and momentum and goes on about being forced to a course graining version of the underlying computational irriducibility with its many configurations being consistent with the computationally bound observer. Then he says there are small violations of the 2nd Law of Thermos when you have more precise measurements of where precisely the molecules are. He mentions dark matter being some analog of discreteness of the caloric mistake of heat but then says he doesn't know when Lex presses him. To me this sounds like a full on computer science guy that did not mention one term out of quantum field theory.
Mr. Wolfram, if every layer of reality is discrete, when will we change our definition of numbers to not include infinities? The 4th peano axiom assumes infinities are real when it says the output of the successor function is never zero. But if every layer is discrete, this assumption is pretty dubious. Drop this axiom, allow numbers that loop in a circle, and see what shakes out!
i dont think these are mutually exclusive. i think a pretty important detail is that time with which computation can continue for a undecidable problem, is infinite and might never halt. That's pretty important detail for Wolframs Model. If everything was finite, then the halting problem has a solution, and then everything would not be computationally equivalent...it is that property that turing machines approximate to a ruliad object that makes them equivelent constructs. I also believe with very good reason that discrete and continuous are not mutually exclusive either...that we can't be separated from a continuous reality even when it is discrete because of how we are embedded in that reality...so even when it is an illusion, it can be considered as real as the discrete structure that underlies the continuous features of it (and this is what effective theories are) Cheers,
@@NightmareCourtPictures Good stuff thanks for sharing! 👍 I found the ideas about the inextricability of consciousness from some form of continuousness especially intriguing.
@@elindauer no problem. If you took an interest to that, I can explain a couple things in a bit more in depth. There's a thought experiment I use to help conceptualize the union between discrete and continuous with respect to the Wolfram model in the following manner: Alice and Bob exist in a room where its only them, each with a button that can "freeze time" or more precisely stop the reception of input about the other. So Alice when she presses her button, can freeze bob in time, so that he receives no input from Alice. She hits the button Bob freezes. Alice hits the button again and bob unfreezes. So Alice mashes this button intermittently. You could ask what Bobs experience of the world would be like in this room. Would Bob ever notice that Alice had pushed the button or for how long? And the answer is that no he wouldn't. He would actually perceive the continuity of time, as continuous, as if she hadn't pressed the button at all. Because it is the act of receiving input that informs his perception of the universe. You can then pull the thought experiment out into N elements, each with K buttons that "stop time" like a game of hot potato. (and more importantly how a Turing machine would compute some computation one bit at a time) How would each element in N perceive the universe every time any button in K is pressed... So if you are some observer inside a Turing machine, and time worked discretely as it does in the wolfram model, you as an observer inside that universe would not experience time in reality as discrete...you would experience it continuously, since input is what casually informs every observer in n about the state of n. Further more, one can make a deeper statement about time. That if the universe behaved like a turing machine computing one bit at a time, and the observers that exist inside this construct perceive time as happening continuously like in this thought experiment with Alice and Bob... then does it matter how long it takes the turing machine to compute the universe? Like in the thought experiment, the answer is that it doesn't matter. It could be 10 second intervals or 10 million year intervals where the button is pressed...we as observers inside the construct perceive time exactly the same, that this experience would be continuous. This conclusion puts into question about whether time even abstractly exists in the Ruliad object at all...and it's likely (and wolfram reasonably concludes) that it has no objective meaning there, to us. The Ruliad simply exists...both instantaneously and at infinite time as if the two were the same thing. So ya. I find this inseparable union of the two concepts quiet beautiful, when thee universe is viewed from the perspective of a computation. It's this kind of elegance (the ability to make unified two deeply opposing concepts) that continues to sell me on the wolfram model as being a true theory of physics.
At the end are we saying that we force reality to be discreet in order to be able to study and understand it? So if reality was actually continuous there would be no way to break it down and study scientifically the different levels of detail. Is this a form of confirmation bias?
Reality is a projection of data onto a 3D "screen" - probably from inside a black hole. There are no discrete "particles" at all, anywhere. What we think are particles are simply values that give the illusion of a particle at the time of decoherence from, say, a photon collision.
I believe impedence, like transistors! So atheist like, defined god view and technical proximities but in another word. So is 1 electron theory discreet? This week an article explaine excitions affecting polaritons cause mass effect in light simillar to acoustic effects like a raft on water through cavities in space time.
In this context it means that there is some sort of fundamental building block. Essentially, he's arguing that space is not perfectly continuously smooth. You can't infinitely reduce it up into smaller and smaller pieces, because at some point you'll get to the fundamental object from which space is constructed. Pretty trippy, and currently theoretical.
It’s to do with division. Continuous means you can keep dividing/cutting something into smaller pieces, forever with no smallest piece. Discrete means there would be eventually a fundamental building block. It would hell to have done discrete and continuous math functions to have a grasp on this.
I think continuity is a fractal pattern. Like if you have 10 parts, each part can be divided into 10, giving you hundred parts in total. And then each of those 100 parts can be divided into 10 parts each to give thousand parts and so on... And isn't that how a real line is constructed? Just like the whole segment can be divided into 10 parts, each of its parts do the same. The part follows the whole and is repeated infinitely- typical characteristic of fractal...
Just imagine if the Earth is unique, that there's no other life anywhere else. If that is the case then the whole history of the Universe, in all its infinite complexity. Hundreds of trillions of Stars, planets, Black Holes .... and so on, across billions, and eventually trillions ... to an infinite point in time, will be, briefly for our benefit, to marvel at, then it will be entirely pointless. If nobody is around to look up and marvel at it, then is it even there. Are we, the human Observers, the only reason why it's there? Where does it go when nobody is alive to see it?
Instead of a pull, Einstein saw gravity as the result of curved space. He said that all objects in the universe sit in a smooth, four-dimensional fabric called space-time.
Let's say Charlie has the experience of looking at a sand dune. He believes the experience of seeing the sand dune is just as real as the sand dune itself - he's a realist. Now he asks, if the reality of the sand dune is best described by continuous or discrete or perhaps other concepts that are accessible within his mind and experience. He picks up a handful of sand and sees that it is composed of tiny grains of sand. Therefore he's now already convinced that part of the reality that's making the sand dune must be discrete. The grains are proof that it has to be. How would you evaluate Charlie's chain of observations and reasoning?
I would say that reality makes it to seem or appear discrete because a conscious observer reality is about making and dealing with discreteness (to survive, gather knowledge or whatever)
Its quite paradoxical that Wolfram says "we as computationally bounded observers conclude definite things happen". Yeah, but that would also include the conclusion of space being discrete haha.
I think Wolfram wont be able to prove that space is made of discrete elements, he may find things that suggest the conclusion, but that doesnt mean proving. I think that if observer is computationally bounded then hes also bounded by premises he makes about the world he perceives, and this may suggest that nature of reality is ultimately up to interpretation.
@@maziusclavo8021 Interestingly, three replies for three different aspects. Reminds me of this quote: "And on the magical path of discovery - like an inexhaustible love to always come with friends - each single answer attempted or found, brings three new questions."
He's assuming all of these continuous equations we like are approximations to some as yet undiscovered discrete thing. His evidence is very thin though.
@@dinobotpwnz Well, "assuming" can just be "hypothesizing" . . . which seems fair enough. But leaving aside the whole of the evidence (to which I can't speak), I'm interested in what kind of personality factors would otherwise go into someone gravitating to one or the other of the two hypotheses: discrete or continuous. I'd gladly read a book that tried to explain Schrodinger's (continuous ?) and Einstein's (discrete ?) choices . . . based on their personality traits.
As physics has recursive-like features, Stephen Wolframs point of view is very sound. Presuming brownian motion in space is a creative idea. Novel. (I don’t quite know the particle equivalent in space. If he meant Brownian motion with Higgs particles.)
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
Interesting how he completely ignores the mathematical definition of entropy and one of the defining laws of thermodynamics, as it is a proven theory in quantum mechanics. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering he isn’t a mathematician. I wonder what Leonard Susskind would have to say about it.
I think if most people knew how beautifully complex and miraculous our universe really is at the quantum level, they would stop their warring in astonishment! 😂❤❤
So that is confirmation that the universe is structured to make empty space. We live in the empty space factory. Everything else has just been sloshing around for 13.8BY.
Everything but time is discrete, only time is continuous. We exist in discrete packages, kinda like a movie film. It happens so fast and so often we cant detect it. And how could we? You cant detect where you dont exist. My question though, is what exists in the time between our discrete "packages" could all of that be dark matter? My theory anyway
Every time I listen to debates about fundamental physics, I think, "WTF you know you don't have a working model of the universe - but you're discussing the implications of that model." What did I NOT understand?
You are using multiple technologies to write that comment that rely on the same principles you are questioning. Stupidly hilarious and sad at the same time. Science is all wrong but somehow all these technologies work despite that. Lmao.
Boltzman was a god damn super genious. Boltzman machines are the inspiration and the foundational backbone of neural networks. Geoffrey Hinton even used Boltman machines as part of his curriculum.
This guy is completely out of touch with what happens in contemporary physics. Always complaining that he's not taken seriously, while he's the one that doesn't bother to connect his ideas with those of others. Typical narcissist.
Jonathan Gorard is doing work with connecting it with known physics. I think it's actually mostly Jonathan that is behind most of Wolfram physics projects theory.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 My point is that Stephen shows zero interest in the work of other physicists (e.g. on quantum gravity) but, at the same time, does expect them to be interested in his work. Regarding connections with known physics: He's making huge claims (saying that he has derived QM and GR) but he has delivered nothing substantial. That's the main reason why I watch this guy; as a case study of a delusional narcissist.
Stephen wolfram is a very smart guy. But he is terrible at explaining concepts or finding a fluent way of delivering an explanation, makes him sound all over the place and confuses the listener.
Wouldn't it be crazy if we find out we are in a quantum computer? I feel everything we perceive is a virtual reality created by our senses. When we learn to buld quantum computing power stable enough to withstand our environment, we will break free from 'The Matrix' and shatter reality 😮, just a thought 🤔 that keeps me up at night, in an existential crisis. I wonder if others think like this? 🤪
Sabine Hosenfelder's video is interesting, she talks about discrete space and quantum computers, that nature is not algorithmic. Tell me what you think after watching it
Isn't that what The Kingdom of Heaven is about - being fully immersed within an infinite Universe, infinitely complex and undescribable, constantly flowing, with total trust and no control of our limited consciousness, just plain fully-immersed experience?
Full podcast episode: ruclips.net/video/PdE-waSx-d8/видео.html
Lex Fridman podcast channel: ruclips.net/user/lexfridman
Guest bio: Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company behind Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram Physics and Metamathematics projects.
Continuous and Discrete
Brilliant man. I won't pretend I understood all of it. But what i grasped was fascinating.
If discrete, wat is in between the discrete steps and can our mind comprehend that? If continuous, what is the smallest change and can our mind comprehend that?
Always interesting how my understanding of these videos fades in and out as I'm listening. I'll be following along with the explanation pretty well . . . and then suddenly there'll be a gap of 5-10 seconds where I've got no idea what's being said.
hahaha same I got a lot of what he is saying, but some things I don't quite get, sadly cuz there is still many holes in my knowledge, wish I had more time to study passion subjects like physics and math, but I also gotta focus on my actual field of bioinformatics and I'm already procrastinating by watching this video, but it's ok since the inherent fascination of nature is what is behind my pursuit of science anyway, so we shall keep seeking to understand all things.
Fascinating! One of Lex Fridman's best podcast clips. I would have liked more discussion about the relationship between computation and entropy; and between the discreteness of the physical world and the continuousness of pure mathematics. If pure mathematics is continuous (can mathematics really do without Analysis?) and the physical world is discrete, what does that say about the relationship between the two? (Could the physical world somehow "emerge" from pure mathematics?) Also, if the physical world is a bit-flipping computation, and entropy increases from a maximally ordered initial state to a maximally disordered one, what does that say about the nature of that computation, and in particular the relationship between entropy and computation in general? Does the sum of all irreducible computations in the physical world amount to an algorithm that decompresses the compressed information of the initial state? If so, does it mean the end of the physical world when the computation is done and the information is completely decompressed?
Every possible configuration of existence (including chaotic ones) can be described mathematically. So I always find the question of whether reality emerges from math farcical. Mathematics should be treated as our way of describing patterns extracted from all possible existences, including existences that can't practically exist.
You touches on the question wether math is invented or discovered. My own believe is that math more is an language and tool than some underlying reality. So mathematicians invent math system and can then discover stuff within that system.
And it's the role of physicists to use math to describe reality and create analogies between mathematical system and physical reality. Natural languages as English has to much ambivalence and can't fully describe complex systems so something like math have to be used.
That is contrary to the Platonic believes that the reality is math and beautiful and we are observing an distorted version of it.
Stephen firmly believes that the reality is computational, don't know more details on he's philosophy.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 Most working mathematicians, like myself, subscribe to some form of mathematical realism. It seems to me that one can argue about the size of the sandbox, but not about the existence of the sandbox. Moreover, I don't think that mathematics is a "language" that serves as a salad bar for the sciences, any more than a symphony can be reduced to a sheet of music. I believe that Stephen Wolfram, as a friend of the (Turing) Computable Universe Hypothesis (or some ontological form of computationalism), i.e. the claim that nature performs digital
computation, would agree with me. The symbolic representation of a given computation and the actual execution of a computation instance are not the same.
I do not understand why people do not see reality is both discrete and analog continuous at the same time. Matter is made up of knots of vibrating energy which forms discrete spaces but elements of, parts of, those vibrating knots of energy reach outwards in an analog manner going infinitely outwards and while we can say after some distance the effect becomes so small it can be considered zero, all indications are it is not zero but simply keeps getting closer and closer to zero without ever exactly reaching zero.
Thus, reality is both analog and discrete at the same time and it depends upon how we are looking at it and for what purpose when deciding which aspect is more important to us at that time, the analog or discrete part.
This is the infinite series of going on a tangent!
So much to unpack. What a beautiful and brilliant train of thought…
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
This is actually a pretty important high-level topic . . .
It's fascinating to hear Stephen and Lex delve into the question of whether reality, including matter and space, is discrete or continuous. They did a stellar job of elucidating complex concepts such as entropy and its historical understandings, the evolution of quantum theory, and the possible discreetness of space. The part that intrigued me the most was Wolfram's suggestion that dark matter might be the "caloric of our time," implying that it could be a feature of space rather than a type of particle. This discussion rekindles my appreciation for how scientific understanding evolves over time, often overturning previous assumptions. Let's continue contemplating the profound question of the nature of reality and its impact on our understanding of the universe. Thanks to both for this enlightening conversation.
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
Dark matter came to mind as you were discussing space and discrete particles, before you named it. Maybe assign a unit, similar to the photon, to the CMB. Then do the math and see if the equations work. Tha math of celluar automata?
Thanks Professor Fridman for always bringing thought-provoking videos!
Not a professor!!! Just a remarkable student :)
I'd like an example of a computationally irreducible dynamic for clarity please. Humans are computationally bounded but a common solution is to look at phenomena in small time slices (as opposed to real time) which allows us to observe and analyze incredibly complex phenomena then, over time, extrapolate to larger time scales and create human comprehensible models of complex, real-time dynamics (i.e. chemical reactions being just one example).
Is Wolfram saying that there are irreducible dynamics for which that process (or any other simplification) cannot be made to work?
I think 12:56 (which really got my attention) is the key point here . . .
@@QED_ Sure but... with any model (simplification of a complex system) this is the case and we (humans) essentially create simplified models to understand.. well, everything (which if I understand what Wolfram is saying, is solely because we are computationally bounded). Dunno, maybe I need to watch this a few more times and think about it some more.
@@jackroman8821 Me too . . . for sure.
computational equivalence is the definition that a system is operating at a complexity equivalent to a Turing machine (turing universality) and computational irreducibility is that because of this feature, what the system does is therefor undecidable.
Wolframs main contribution to us, is that principle of computational equivalence...where we think about systems in nature have essentially have this property...where It's like trying to answer the halting problem. we can't know exactly what is going to happen because what the system might do is infinitely complex. He showed in his book New Kind of Science, that the ability to reach turing universality...is trivial and ubiquitous (that it happens in practically all systems, with practically any rules)
Everything else, like the Wolfram Model and all that, stems from these building blocks. Like the idea that perfect prediction doesn't exist because if you could perfectly predict a system it means you could solve the halting problem. Mathematics has effectively avoided this conclusion because most of the problems dealt with in mathematics are reducible problems...that have decidable answers. Systems in nature DONT OPERATE under just these MATHEMATICAL constraints...they follow ALL POSSIBLE RULES...the capital letters being the major difference between Things like the "Mathematical universe" and the "Wolfram Model"
Hope this information helps you out. Just some background I have been studying the the wolfram model for 2.5 years now. I recommend watching his book series on YT, New Kind of Science.
@@NightmareCourtPictures Props.
Of all the "Theory of Everything"s I've heard, I find Stephen's the most interesting but also the one I feel most fitting. What I "feel is fitting" of course has no real value on its veracity. I guess what I mean is I like it as a model. But I am a software engineer so of course I would say that.
Btw, I am also very glad to hear that he is thinking about ways one would find evidence for his theory - that is what actually makes it something serious. From fun model to actual thing.
"Theory of everything" is for theologians
@@DarkSkay Do you have evidence supporting that anything more than a single theory is required to explain reality?
I'm joking with you, but the thing is when it comes to hypothesis creation there are no clear rules. There are some pointers and strategies but nothing strict. Of course nothing should be believed before it has experiments supporting the hypothesis, but how we go about deciding what to test with experiments is up to each person. You can have arguments about if Stephen's way of kinda working backwards from math to reality is productive (I can definitely see arguments against his methods from this pov) but I would say let him keep it up. To me it is an interesting approach to go the generative route when it comes to physical laws and if nothing else we get some interesting math from it (we already have gotten that).
@@Olodus There's a saying that eternity is long, especially towards the end - the set of "everything" can hold quite a lot of elements, especially when the remaining space appears to get smaller.
Spinoza and countless others have theory: "Everything is (the) God(s)". With the distinction between singular and plural perhaps insignificant, blurred or transcended in this context of contexts that can hardly be imagined larger.
I thought that the belief right now is that quantum fields is the base line of the universe. My understanding Is that proton unobserved can be thought as a field, make that proton interact, the field collapse into something discrete. If quantum mechanic is correct, wich it is in some ways, how can the universe be discrete ? Fields are continuous correct ?
No, it's not agreed that quantum fields are the base line of the universe. Quantum theory and Relativity contradict each other. That's the whole problem at present . . .
@@QED_ Like black holes for exemple, both theories dont contradict each other, they just break down and fail to work for different reasons. Can you give me a specific prediction that both theories made that contradicted each other ?
@@TheCrimier Sorry, I'm not a physicist. But as I recall . . . isn't there some issue when tracing each theory back to the big bang (?) About how small Space can get (?)
@@QED_ Nope, both theories dont contradict each other, they just cant contradict each, they are about 2 class of widely different thing, matter and gravity. The issue is merging them together to make predictions about black holes(Big Bang). All attempt to merge them as of today as failed. I will say it again, as we understand Quantum mechanic, baseline reality is quantum fields. I'm not a phisicist either just for the records, I just love physics a lot. *edited some grammar
Great talk! This is critically important for understanding the world and us.
Brownian Motion for space = Zero-point energy? It is a measurable and finite fluctuation in the energy of real particles. It cannot be turned off.
I wonder if he knows about penroses erabonds (not sure of the spelling).
Penrose thinks dark matter is a consequence of his CCC model.. Would love to see an integration of wolfram physics project and CCC
At least both of them are attributing dark matter/energy to our lack of understanding of space or time, rather than the conventional and extremely unparsimonious idea that there's a whole other table of 'dark' standard model particles or whatever. I for one think it's kind of silly to believe we have any authority at all to declare what's twisting distant galaxies millions of light years away, based off of ancient light and not even a century of observations. It's like a grains of sand in Antarctica in 1 billion B.C. declaring the laws of physics for a grain of sand in Pasadena in 2023 lol.
@epencil I'm not aware of any suggestions they contributed for dark energy, do educate me. When I studied I decided to derive an analogue to schrodinger's eq but with 2 time dimensions and one space ... got an interesting result but I was no theorist. When you say ancient light I assume you mean from our perception because light itself carries no information about time. They experience no time between events and are not conserved being bosons with integer spin. I consider them to be solely the energetic carrier of electronic transition levels - but I haven't studied widely or deeply enough to strongly validate if that is right/wrong or even obvious/not obvious. But just remember it's not really about declaring or validation, but about falsification (Popper's construction of the scientific method ... and I had to stay quiet when the teachers training me to be a teacher thought they were being clever to weaken 'the' scientific method to 'a' scientific method, but really they were missing the bigger [philosophical] picture).
@epencil However if you are skeptical about the assumption physical laws haven't changed over time you would be interested to know that has also been an interest of mine, inspired by the rabbit hole in Web of Stories with Freeman Dyson. I think I did enough digging to write off that it wasn't the case for electron magnetic forces (at least not testable / measurable) but can't remember if I even wrote it off for the gravitational case , it was a suggestion from Dirac based solely on mathematical aesthetics and makes the case that the rate that the gravitational force has got weaker (if it did) compared to the other forces , would roughly correspond to the age of the Universe. And i don't know why I'm blanking on the conclusion that I came to about that , so I mustn't have closed the question sufficiently enough.
I did have another 'not a theorist' idea about the origin of dark energy and Universe expansion (or rather contraction of 'stuff' between space) inspired by a method of energy extraction from blackholes.... and I later learnt Herman Weyl had a similar suggestion but it was apparently falsified by the observed size of Hydrogen (bigger or smaller can't remember). But my argument and open question is , IF everything is getting smaller so that space in between is getting larger / expanding, then how would we be confidently measuring that, assuming the 'rulers' are also getting smaller by the same rate.
(In Wolfram's project the atoms of space are x^-100 Meters, where does that come from, are they assumed to have always been that ratio to e.g. the electron r ~ 10^-18 m).
Just thinking aloud here.
@@Nick_Tag I think two time dimensions is where the answer may be at. You probably know about Itzhak Bars' ideas. Yes the lack of information carried in ancient light is a good way of putting it; it's so presumptuous from mainstream physics to infer the state of the universe, including constants of nature, over time back billions of years and billions of light years away, with only fifty years of astronomy behind it. The fine structure constant, which no one even knows what it really is, could change slightly with space or time and all the laws of physics would go out the window. There's an apparent paradox at the foundation of reality and it's something like backwards-going time. That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all, there is some conformal structure in how information behaves with change, but hard-nosed objectivism or reductionism isn't going to cut it anymore.
Deep thoughts with Jack handy
Lex, you are one of the more amusing figments of my imagination. I really enjoy you
This is a question that has intrigued me since I first learned how powerful numerical analysis is
6:34 stay true to yourself.😎
Could the analogue for dark matter be the casimir effect but for the gravitational field or the scalar field rather than EM field?
Wolfram has a point about the classical theory of heat once thought of as a fluid but that notion got corrected with heat being the motions of discreet molecules. Now he wants spacetime to be discreet too like the spacetime analog of Brownian motion. Dark matter has something to do with it but he couldn't give a clear pathway to that line of thinking. I think he is reaching and not making a lot of sense when it comes to quantum mechanics. He talks around quantum uncertainty of position and momentum and goes on about being forced to a course graining version of the underlying computational irriducibility with its many configurations being consistent with the computationally bound observer. Then he says there are small violations of the 2nd Law of Thermos when you have more precise measurements of where precisely the molecules are. He mentions dark matter being some analog of discreteness of the caloric mistake of heat but then says he doesn't know when Lex presses him. To me this sounds like a full on computer science guy that did not mention one term out of quantum field theory.
Thank you both!
Computitionaly bounded observer? Sounds like how a hard drive works. Bits of information stored in a non linear configuration.
Can we at last say that space and matter are the same structure? Matter is just space configuration.
Actually, matter is not discrete but continuous with “ripples” giving the impression of discreteness.
What about space itself
Space is an inverted tree, a hierarchy. So it's continuous through abstraction and discrete in the details.
Mr. Wolfram, if every layer of reality is discrete, when will we change our definition of numbers to not include infinities? The 4th peano axiom assumes infinities are real when it says the output of the successor function is never zero. But if every layer is discrete, this assumption is pretty dubious. Drop this axiom, allow numbers that loop in a circle, and see what shakes out!
You meaning working over rings which mathematicians have also been doing for hundreds of years?
i dont think these are mutually exclusive. i think a pretty important detail is that time with which computation can continue for a undecidable problem, is infinite and might never halt. That's pretty important detail for Wolframs Model. If everything was finite, then the halting problem has a solution, and then everything would not be computationally equivalent...it is that property that turing machines approximate to a ruliad object that makes them equivelent constructs.
I also believe with very good reason that discrete and continuous are not mutually exclusive either...that we can't be separated from a continuous reality even when it is discrete because of how we are embedded in that reality...so even when it is an illusion, it can be considered as real as the discrete structure that underlies the continuous features of it (and this is what effective theories are)
Cheers,
@@NightmareCourtPictures Good stuff thanks for sharing! 👍 I found the ideas about the inextricability of consciousness from some form of continuousness especially intriguing.
@@dinobotpwnz Maybe, I've never heard that term before. I'll check it out thanks for the tip!
@@elindauer no problem.
If you took an interest to that, I can explain a couple things in a bit more in depth.
There's a thought experiment I use to help conceptualize the union between discrete and continuous with respect to the Wolfram model in the following manner:
Alice and Bob exist in a room where its only them, each with a button that can "freeze time" or more precisely stop the reception of input about the other. So Alice when she presses her button, can freeze bob in time, so that he receives no input from Alice. She hits the button Bob freezes. Alice hits the button again and bob unfreezes. So Alice mashes this button intermittently.
You could ask what Bobs experience of the world would be like in this room. Would Bob ever notice that Alice had pushed the button or for how long?
And the answer is that no he wouldn't. He would actually perceive the continuity of time, as continuous, as if she hadn't pressed the button at all. Because it is the act of receiving input that informs his perception of the universe.
You can then pull the thought experiment out into N elements, each with K buttons that "stop time" like a game of hot potato. (and more importantly how a Turing machine would compute some computation one bit at a time) How would each element in N perceive the universe every time any button in K is pressed...
So if you are some observer inside a Turing machine, and time worked discretely as it does in the wolfram model, you as an observer inside that universe would not experience time in reality as discrete...you would experience it continuously, since input is what casually informs every observer in n about the state of n.
Further more, one can make a deeper statement about time. That if the universe behaved like a turing machine computing one bit at a time, and the observers that exist inside this construct perceive time as happening continuously like in this thought experiment with Alice and Bob... then does it matter how long it takes the turing machine to compute the universe? Like in the thought experiment, the answer is that it doesn't matter. It could be 10 second intervals or 10 million year intervals where the button is pressed...we as observers inside the construct perceive time exactly the same, that this experience would be continuous.
This conclusion puts into question about whether time even abstractly exists in the Ruliad object at all...and it's likely (and wolfram reasonably concludes) that it has no objective meaning there, to us. The Ruliad simply exists...both instantaneously and at infinite time as if the two were the same thing.
So ya. I find this inseparable union of the two concepts quiet beautiful, when thee universe is viewed from the perspective of a computation. It's this kind of elegance (the ability to make unified two deeply opposing concepts) that continues to sell me on the wolfram model as being a true theory of physics.
At the end are we saying that we force reality to be discreet in order to be able to study and understand it? So if reality was actually continuous there would be no way to break it down and study scientifically the different levels of detail. Is this a form of confirmation bias?
"Computational boundedness" ≈ The Uncertainty Principle
Explain?
DISCRETE AND CONTINUOUS
If space would be discrete wouldn’t that mean everything just collide? Or would space pass through us like radiowaves? But even smaller…
Maxwells equations are rather good for explaining entropy
He doesn’t want to talk about that apparently. I’m happy to see one guy with his head on his shoulders here. Thanks!
Reality is a projection of data onto a 3D "screen" - probably from inside a black hole. There are no discrete "particles" at all, anywhere. What we think are particles are simply values that give the illusion of a particle at the time of decoherence from, say, a photon collision.
Mr. Wolfram threw me off when he said they were incorrect about caloric heat... F=MA. force measured in Newtons, BTUs and Calories..?
It was not about the unit calories. It was about the theory that heat is something like an fluid that was called caloric.
Is light a wave or a particle?
Neither.
When lights need to be rendered it is a particle
This is perhaps the most profound issue in our current scientific horizon...
I believe impedence, like transistors! So atheist like, defined god view and technical proximities but in another word. So is 1 electron theory discreet? This week an article explaine excitions affecting polaritons cause mass effect in light simillar to acoustic effects like a raft on water through cavities in space time.
AKA Is a self-contained Cosmological system open or closed? It is very likely the wrong question.
I'll show myself the way out...
Discretely continuous
I love how he introduces each luminary as “this guy,” as if they were a regular Joe Schmoe trying to sell loose cigarettes at the gas station.
I've never known the word "discrete" to mean anything other than inconspicuous. So I've been more confused watching this video than usual
In this context it means that there is some sort of fundamental building block. Essentially, he's arguing that space is not perfectly continuously smooth. You can't infinitely reduce it up into smaller and smaller pieces, because at some point you'll get to the fundamental object from which space is constructed.
Pretty trippy, and currently theoretical.
@@My_Personal_RUclips thank you. Better explained than what I found elsewhere!
It’s to do with division. Continuous means you can keep dividing/cutting something into smaller pieces, forever with no smallest piece. Discrete means there would be eventually a fundamental building block. It would hell to have done discrete and continuous math functions to have a grasp on this.
I think you were thinking of "discreet" - a different word altogether
@@EbrahimLPatel most definitely
I feel like I'm not computationally bound when tripping balls LOL
We humans keep trying.
Talks with Wolfram are my favorite
I think continuity is a fractal pattern. Like if you have 10 parts, each part can be divided into 10, giving you hundred parts in total. And then each of those 100 parts can be divided into 10 parts each to give thousand parts and so on... And isn't that how a real line is constructed? Just like the whole segment can be divided into 10 parts, each of its parts do the same. The part follows the whole and is repeated infinitely- typical characteristic of fractal...
discrete strictures can be infinite.
@@mishikookropiridze Yes, and that is what I believe leads to continuity.
@@imjustadev not necessarly bu definition you still have gaps between points.
Just imagine if the Earth is unique, that there's no other life anywhere else. If that is the case then the whole history of the Universe, in all its infinite complexity. Hundreds of trillions of Stars, planets, Black Holes .... and so on, across billions, and eventually trillions ... to an infinite point in time, will be, briefly for our benefit, to marvel at, then it will be entirely pointless.
If nobody is around to look up and marvel at it, then is it even there. Are we, the human Observers, the only reason why it's there? Where does it go when nobody is alive to see it?
If space is discrete, so is time.
Instead of a pull, Einstein saw gravity as the result of curved space. He said that all objects in the universe sit in a smooth, four-dimensional fabric called space-time.
Let's say Charlie has the experience of looking at a sand dune. He believes the experience of seeing the sand dune is just as real as the sand dune itself - he's a realist. Now he asks, if the reality of the sand dune is best described by continuous or discrete or perhaps other concepts that are accessible within his mind and experience.
He picks up a handful of sand and sees that it is composed of tiny grains of sand. Therefore he's now already convinced that part of the reality that's making the sand dune must be discrete. The grains are proof that it has to be.
How would you evaluate Charlie's chain of observations and reasoning?
I would say that reality makes it to seem or appear discrete because a conscious observer reality is about making and dealing with discreteness (to survive, gather knowledge or whatever)
Its quite paradoxical that Wolfram says "we as computationally bounded observers conclude definite things happen". Yeah, but that would also include the conclusion of space being discrete haha.
I think Wolfram wont be able to prove that space is made of discrete elements, he may find things that suggest the conclusion, but that doesnt mean proving. I think that if observer is computationally bounded then hes also bounded by premises he makes about the world he perceives, and this may suggest that nature of reality is ultimately up to interpretation.
@@maziusclavo8021 Interestingly, three replies for three different aspects. Reminds me of this quote: "And on the magical path of discovery - like an inexhaustible love to always come with friends - each single answer attempted or found, brings three new questions."
Sounds Con-crete.
Brilliant lol
Cement? Thats conk-creet baybee
Try to be a little more discreet
❤ this
I'm a computationally bound observer of this video
The computarionally unbounded observer is very interesting.
Reminds me of dr manhatten.
Isn't the Schrodinger equation continuous?
I don't think it tells you anything about whether Space is continuous . . .
He's assuming all of these continuous equations we like are approximations to some as yet undiscovered discrete thing. His evidence is very thin though.
@@dinobotpwnz Well, "assuming" can just be "hypothesizing" . . . which seems fair enough. But leaving aside the whole of the evidence (to which I can't speak), I'm interested in what kind of personality factors would otherwise go into someone gravitating to one or the other of the two hypotheses: discrete or continuous. I'd gladly read a book that tried to explain Schrodinger's (continuous ?) and Einstein's (discrete ?) choices . . . based on their personality traits.
As physics has recursive-like features, Stephen Wolframs point of view is very sound.
Presuming brownian motion in space is a creative idea. Novel.
(I don’t quite know the particle equivalent in space. If he meant Brownian motion with Higgs particles.)
If space is discrete, you can relate matter to it through gravity. If space is discrete you can easily explain dark energy as the space between galaxies expanding brick by brick, probably as a swap of matter to space, or energy to space.
Reality is just one giant cellular automaton.
Reality is a shared perspective that can be independently tested.
Reality is a shared perspective that can be independently tested.
Reality is a shared perspective that can be independently tested.
Another, better model of reality. Not it. Nevertheless epic.
มันน่าสนใจว่าเวลาไม่อนุญาตให้ของแข็งเดินทางทะลุผ่านได้ ละครจุดระยะทางเพิ่มความเร็วได้ยังไง พลังจิตไปก่อนตัว ตัวให้เคลื่อนที่ตามพลังจิตไปหาเป้าหมาย ? 101 ชุดทดลองนี้ ตัดที่อยู่ในการทดสอบยิงปืน ก็ทำให้กระสุนเดินทางได้ไกลกว่าปกติแล้วก็ตรงเป้าหมายด้วยพลังจิต
Interesting how he completely ignores the mathematical definition of entropy and one of the defining laws of thermodynamics, as it is a proven theory in quantum mechanics. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering he isn’t a mathematician. I wonder what Leonard Susskind would have to say about it.
I think if most people knew how beautifully complex and miraculous our universe really is at the quantum level, they would stop their warring in astonishment! 😂❤❤
So that is confirmation that the universe is structured to make empty space. We live in the empty space factory. Everything else has just been sloshing around for 13.8BY.
As Einstein said - if reality was continuous then black-holes couldn't exist.
Everything but time is discrete, only time is continuous. We exist in discrete packages, kinda like a movie film. It happens so fast and so often we cant detect it. And how could we? You cant detect where you dont exist. My question though, is what exists in the time between our discrete "packages" could all of that be dark matter?
My theory anyway
How do you know time is continuous?
Boltzmann hanged himself.
Every time I listen to debates about fundamental physics, I think, "WTF you know you don't have a working model of the universe - but you're discussing the implications of that model."
What did I NOT understand?
You are using multiple technologies to write that comment that rely on the same principles you are questioning. Stupidly hilarious and sad at the same time. Science is all wrong but somehow all these technologies work despite that. Lmao.
@@williambrandondavis6897 the rocket is the proof?
Wittgenstein does not agree.
Boltzman was a god damn super genious. Boltzman machines are the inspiration and the foundational backbone of neural networks. Geoffrey Hinton even used Boltman machines as part of his curriculum.
I'm always discrete with my lover. No matter how hot it gets
rather derived
This guy is completely out of touch with what happens in contemporary physics. Always complaining that he's not taken seriously, while he's the one that doesn't bother to connect his ideas with those of others. Typical narcissist.
Explain please? Lol
Agreed. Reality is neither discrete nor continuous as I have explained.
Jonathan Gorard is doing work with connecting it with known physics. I think it's actually mostly Jonathan that is behind most of Wolfram physics projects theory.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 My point is that Stephen shows zero interest in the work of other physicists (e.g. on quantum gravity) but, at the same time, does expect them to be interested in his work. Regarding connections with known physics: He's making huge claims (saying that he has derived QM and GR) but he has delivered nothing substantial. That's the main reason why I watch this guy; as a case study of a delusional narcissist.
Sounds like a psychedelic experience
Wolfram is wrong. Boltzmann did believe it worked that way. He was ridiculed for that belief and that’s why Boltzmann committed suicide.
Wal Thorhills electric universe seems to answer a lot of problems in science
Well, okay.
[nonexistence]Obviously[nonexistence]continous[nonexistence]idiot[nonexistence]
Stephen wolfram is a very smart guy. But he is terrible at explaining concepts or finding a fluent way of delivering an explanation, makes him sound all over the place and confuses the listener.
A talk that makes AI less relevant....
what kinda pseudo physicist "just recently" learns the history of quantum theory. this guy's super annoying
he knows quantum theory he just didnt know the backstory of the thinkers :)
@@hhandle who?
The guy that wrote the math program that all physicist use (Mathematica)! He is not big as an scientist but far from just some random crackpot.
Wouldn't it be crazy if we find out we are in a quantum computer? I feel everything we perceive is a virtual reality created by our senses. When we learn to buld quantum computing power stable enough to withstand our environment, we will break free from 'The Matrix' and shatter reality 😮, just a thought 🤔 that keeps me up at night, in an existential crisis. I wonder if others think like this? 🤪
Sabine Hosenfelder's video is interesting, she talks about discrete space and quantum computers, that nature is not algorithmic. Tell me what you think after watching it
Isn't that what The Kingdom of Heaven is about - being fully immersed within an infinite Universe, infinitely complex and undescribable, constantly flowing, with total trust and no control of our limited consciousness, just plain fully-immersed experience?
After covid evolution has been occurring daily
It's all about transmitting information at the right level of det-- Oh look, a squirrel!
Boltzmann hanged himself.