Stephen I’m very grateful that you not only built mathematica, wolfram alpha, the physics project which are all incredible valuable to society. But I’m especially grateful you care so much about these things that are important but not urgent and sharing them with the world. I hope your health span extends well into the future and you have the motivation to continue these amazing blog posts, videos, and research. Thank you.
Stephen , amazing! You have no idea how good this sounds with blade runner-ish Ambience music playing in the other tab!!! Almost like a techno prayer! Love what you doing! Best of luck in 2024!
I really like the emerging, metaphysical part of the path that Stephan's world of thought may be moving towards. Many of his thoughts are based on the formation of his thinking in the western traditional way of semantic consideration. They lead to the explicit way of his description of ontology, I think they are moving increasingly towards the ancient, the thousand-fold thought out conceptual approach of Vedic knowledge. They approach the questions of our existence and the wonders of being as such that we as biologically bound entities can only just imagine.
We create a "reality" that fits within our brain and fits within a whole series of "obvious to us" assumptions, that is to say, our limited (and probably incorrect) perceptions of our world. Some of these flawed observations become our "physical laws" as a bit of a crutch to allow us to try to understand the universe badly. Incredible insight.
Unfortunately newton told everyone and classical American founders use the fact of knowing he math mapped human dashboard equations of the knowledge of good and evil so to speak. It really wasn't a secret that he plagiarizes a clock, correlated it on a pretending absolute space time for a benefit of a ruler. But sadly the movement & dualistic traditions wanted to lean into the biases, they all followed chaldean model anyways, the idealism is subjective objects = physicalism . Same ole dualistic model. Its just mascarading as something else.
@@TheGingerjames123 randomness is a real force in the universe , but it's ultimately also a form of determinism we're just the record on a record player that keeps skipping and the record has holes in it
My knowledge of mathematics pretty much ended with knowing the differential of X-squared is 2X and the integral of 2X is X-squared. I read every chapter New Kind of Science, and watched the all those videos where Sapolsky is telling his students about cellular automata. I kind of understand the "ruliad" and "branchial space" and "atoms of space". And now, at 53 minutes of this video, I am introduced to "atoms of existence". I simply love this! It seems to me the highest form of abstract thinking. :)
Is the bit around 59:55 - 1:00:40 related to the free energy principle? edit: and is it just me, or does it seem Wolfram's work is going to impact our understanding in the same way Newton's did? It seems to be mind-blowingly on point, from quite a few vantages.
What comes to mind here is closest packing speres and the tetrahedron as the simplest structure related to that that has an inside and outside. This implies that no matter what ruliad there is there is the underlying closest packing sphere reality which seems to be intrinsically fundamental to any space time unit.
Excellent talk! Would love to hear how Stephan evaluates or will recommend to us to think about the Mary's black and white room experiment with the Observer theory.
great essay! seems to me that a deep implicit message is floating around: the remark on the position of us as boundedness, collectiviness, beliefs of existential continuity, with assumptions necesity, reduction and connection trend,
Stephen Thanks a lot for this gift to human knowledge, I think I started to understand the basics of it as this is most clear explanation of the observer theory. Our old physics is wrong
Excellent presentation! I really enjoyed, and couldn't agree more. I loved that last couple sentences of the essay, and I would add to it, that, it's not just that science has been unable to live true to ideal of objectivity, but there actually is no such thing as pure objective truth in the living world. I made a talk a couple weeks ago which I titled "gestalt ecology", dealing with the same question of the role of the observer, albeit at a much lower intellectual level than this material. Very good
I have to listen to this talk again. My guess as I listened to this excellent presentation is that a neural network is a good model for an observer. It also seems to be that he has finally found a way to democratise programming in natural languages.
Every perception is to some extent memory. Every memory is to some extent imagination. Narratives are the outcome. Every choice we make generates a corresponding timeline of experience. Is the resulting narrative a limit or a creative guideline? No wrong answer - only another choice.
Is the 'observer' separate from the 'observed' or is that sense of apparent separation, in fact thought in the mind of the observer? If thought comes to a complete stop, does that apparent space come to an end? For me the answer is definitely yes - what do 'others' say?
Are split brain patients one or two observers? The brain is not completely split in those patients, I know, but still there appears to be a separation of processing sensory information as well as disagreement about some actions between each side. In other words, can observers be divided? If so, could they be merged?
Hello Stephen, the key here is entropy and synchronization. Observers exist in a state of lowered entropy - must exist in a state of entropy lower than their environments in order to observe. This state of lowered entropy is initially achieved through network synchronization - as oscillators assemble into networks, they synchronize, and in doing so, lower the entropy of the newly-formed network. The network is now a body with an observational capacity determined by the synchronization process that occurred to create it. As the observer oberves, they discharge this capacity into the environment through the observational interfaces they possess, which each possess some impedance value which dictate the amount of information they are capable of extracting from the environment as well as the amount of energy required to attain it. This ratio of energy expenditure to information gathered is the observerrs observational energetic cost. As observers observe, their observational capacity is expended, and therefore in order to continue observing all observers must eventually replenish their observational capacity from the environment, an act which requires a low-entropy source of energy. Observation can be nicely modeled using equations from thermodynamics - which is the premise of Observational Dynamics, a framework which enables the measurement and study of observation by quantifying it in thermodynamic terms. I sent you some emails about it since much of my early inspiration was 'A new kind of science' - what an amazing book.
"slices of reducibility" is the perfect explanation of the existential notion of the human condition. Now, we understand that this is a universal condition of being, no matter how advanced. If you can know it all, you can't exist as an entity.
I think to put it simply, it's not about observers, it's about information exchange. Observers aren't really anything special, we're just systems of particles exchanging information with other systems and individual particles - just like any other system of particles. So your theory probably needs to deal more with what it means for two particles to exchange information such that they can react to each other in some way.
Naa. This is not what Wolframs work implies. Yes all things are observers, but what we define as physics are characteristics of us humans imposing onto the universe based on our perception of it. For instance, you and I are both looking at a cube. You are looking at the cube however from a head on perspective…meaning you don’t see the cube you see a 2 dimensional square. In another angle, you see a rectangle…and another a hexagon. Try that yourself it’s a fun experiment. The reason you see a completely different object then the cube is because information is hidden from you, in an axis you can’t resolve. You convolve the object into some reduced representation. In extension the cube is actually an infinitely complex object (the ruliad) and we can only perceive it in this finite bounded way…ie this cube. The theory strictly imposes that observers create perception, because they have to when they are computationally bounded. Because it’s finite and bounded means different perspectives can be had even though it is describing the same infinite object (again like looking at an object from different points of view) Observation is therefor crucial…and each possible perception is unique…therefor special. Physics is thus special because it is our interpretation of physics and this is why Wolframs belief is that other kinds of creatures and systems would develop different kinds of physics…because they perceive the universe differently. It is about information but it’s not reductionist in the way your describing, it is or must be inclusive to all scales, all systems all logical systems those systems can create
The way I kind of interpret this lecture is that all concepts have their own boundaries in rulial space. A mind, or an observer, is basically an entity that can go from one boundary of rulial space, let's call it an island, and communicate the information acquired from that island to another mind sampling the same slice of rulial space as the observer and the physical world acs as a medium for information to be transferred. So I guess the next question is: How can we transmit bits of information from our slice of rulial space to another mind in another slice 🤔?
SUPERB 👌 I really enjoyed this explanation. Observer Theory is fascinating. Stephen Im curious if E8 could be the ruliad and the 4D render of E8 being the observerse? How far am I off? 😅
From this presentation, I actually think that a good model for the observer's mind is either a neural network or a cellular automaton[the mind takes an external phenomenon represented by several pixels and computes or applies automata like rules and arrives at a final stage with an output. This output is an attractor or label or classifier.... Philosophically, this suggests that even pistons in the example of gas molecules are observers like us. The principle of computational equivalence then says that we are basically the same, we are not special at all.
What if _everything_ is then an observer? I.e. the panpsychism-like concepts. And then, from that, that the "reality" is created by everything participatorily, and "physics" itself emerges (or emerged, "long ago") as spontaneously-formed agreement on the mutual dynamics between such an infinite field of observers, just like any other process of spontaneous order-formation?
I’m not educated enough for this discussion, and I might looking at this from the wrong angle, but the existence of mathematical axioms seem to imply some static structure in the ruliad. Or are those axioms a sampling/high level view of a particular application/pattern of a sequence of rules? If someone replies please keep the language to a college dropout level 😅
Or perhaps more abstractly, are the rulial structures of concepts replicated/modelled inside each observer (and how isomorphic are those representations in terms of their hypergraph configuration, or at a higher level, how similar are concepts implemented between different minds)
Hello. Late response here. The Ruliad is an eternal abstract computational object that “just exists” independent of time. So it’s structure is static and you can imagine what it is like by thinking about it as if it were a statespace. You define sampling in the ruliad as transformations from one state to another. And this statespace is infinite. So to answer the question what actually has structure is the observer…the finite mathematics being that must choose a state and move to another state in the statespace. This deconstruction of the finite object to the infinite object is the ultimate point, the meat behind where time comes from (we have to perceive it) and where space comes from (again we have to perceive it) since there is no way for us to choose as finite beings the statespace in its entirety. It’s like relativity but for all systems. We can’t choose an observer that is independent of time and space, as this is equivalent to choosing an observer that is spatially infinite and temporarily happening at all times (selecting all states in the state-space) Mathematically the idea is that yes the statespace is isomorphic, as you can always create a function and inverse function between states. The entire ruliad is therefor maximally symmetric. The isomorphism breaks down only when we pick the viewpoint of the finite observers that can not make an inverse mapping since their view point is only surjective (as they have to collapse states in the statespace) That’s hard to envision but basically think about it like this: you have a cube in front of you. If you turn it in such a way that you only see one of its faces then what you see is a 2d square. What’s happening is that the points that you once interpreted as making the shape look like a 3d cube is now hidden from you due to your perspective. The Ruliad is this idea but it’s an infinitely complex object, where an infinite number of possible “sides” are hidden from your view. The same is true in terms of meta mathematics and the buisness with axioms. We have to make a choice about what information we can view. The ruliad contains all of these choices, all of the perspectives and we can’t describe it without picking a reference frame…using higher level descriptions or lower ones is like whether we want to talk about the 2d square, or the 3d cube. We lose information in either direction. It’s an elegant relativistic framework and it really is the next step Einstein probably envisioned the universe was supposed to be. I hope this answer somewhat helps to answer some of your question.
WHAT IS AN OSSERVER? In very simple terms, an observer is something or some body that thinks input, processes it, and gives output. It equivalences the input and the output by doing a computational process. A transducer can convert sound energy to electrical energy, but it is not an observer in the full sense because it has no memory, decision-making, and explicit rules that it follows. A piston that measures the pressure of gas molecules is also a pseudo observer. Here is my opinion: A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation that consists of a tape divided into cells, a head that can read and write symbols on the tape, and a finite set of rules that determine how the head moves and changes the tape. A cellular automaton is a discrete model of computation that consists of a grid of cells, each of which can have one of a finite number of states, and a set of rules that determine how the states of the cells change based on their neighbors. Both Turing machines and cellular automata can be considered as observers in some sense since they can perform computations and store information on their tapes or grids. However, they are not very sophisticated observers since they have limited memory, communication, and feedback capabilities. They also do not have any explicit goals or purposes that guide their observation, and they do not have any awareness or understanding of what they are observing.[in comparison with human observers like us]. There are some special cases of Turing machines and cellular automata that exhibit more complex behaviour and can be seen as more advanced observers. For example, a universal Turing machine is a Turing machine that can simulate any other Turing machine, given its description and input. The said Turing machine may encode any physical phenomena, e.g, sound waves, water, or gas molecules. The gas or water molecules individually follow Newton's laws of motion but the universal turing machine converte these movements to the movement of fluides that follow the laws of fluid mechanics. A universal cellular automaton is a cellular automaton that can simulate any other cellular automaton or even a Turing machine, given its configuration and rules. These rules code encode Newton's laws of motion. These models can be seen as observers that can explore the space of possible computations and algorithms[as encoded by their cells and rewrite rules on the cells] and that can potentially learn from their own experience. For this purpose, we need to provide a feedback loop. Such models can be seen as observers that can adapt to changing situations and optimize their performance, and that can potentially communicate and cooperate with other observers. So, in summary, a Turing machine or cellular automaton can be considered as an observer only in a very basic sense since they can only perform simple computations and store limited information. To be a more complete observer, they would need to have additional features that allow them to simulate, learn, communicate, and optimize. These are some of the features that make us human observers, and that may also apply to other kinds of observers, such as animals, artificial intelligence, or even the universe itself.
For us philosophers this theory has such great explanatory power. But I can understand why the scientists are slow to even consider it. I have come to believe that it will be the next paradigm.
So, we have repetitive and simple nested patterns for immediate computational reproducibility where a computational bounded system or observer can fairly easily do the analysis and get the compression.. But computational irreducibly limits the extent to which this can be successful.
We are computationally bounded and the Kolmogorove complexity level of the universal compuation is far higher than ours hence, so it means what we do make do of are the set results of perceptions and actions measurements from the simple aggregated states we can only think about, see, measure and analyze; that generally result to states toward which our systems are evolving to, from a wide variety of starting conditions of the system.
I I've been saying this for a long time. We are bound by our false perception that time is real. I think we just experience time as thing when really we are a 4 dimensional object with the capability of processing only three of them. Thus we invent time. There are significant implications to this, like what happens to the last computation? Does it disappear? Is it observable by an unbound observer. How would we observe that? Dark matter?
We don't just think there is only one "me". We also think we have only one eye. This is what Aristotle called a "common sense", the ability of the mind to integrate a single "world view" from multiple sensory inputs in the "fusion center" of our mind.
"Who observes what?" This 'does' the split-mind from a whole that cannot be otherwise signified or represented; being infinite/unbounded? Though willingly limited as means to focus through and with. Assumptions are logically extended. Any definition runs input to our result. The word of definition given sets the measure and kind of the fruits. Logical consistency within a frame of reference can be wrong or inverted if the premise exceeds its bounds. I cannot observe reality that creates all that I am by knowing me - not "about me" but directly - without a second or compare. This quality of knowing is a perfect resonance - not a computational selectivity. But I perceive as I conceive & believe/accept my own reality to be (in terms of the world such a self gives and takes from). Guided & aligned perception is qualitatively selective rather than quantitatively biased.
I don't necessarily believe that the ruliad and the psychosphere are a one to one function. Or that the ruliad necessarily accounts for what is possible to happen in reality.
I've never thought of observation as an analogue to a pressure gauge. Does this mean we can make conscious steam engines? LOL No, but we can make ones that are "Observant". Now pass this paper to a surveillance ethics PHD to finish. 😃
The idea that an observer can effect reality, quantum or not, is very close to a belief in Simulation Theory (which I is think is a quasi-religious position). It implies that reality is spontaneously spun out as we become aware of it.
The AI and LLM are they observers too? Just like how individual radio telescopes can work together through interferometry to create a more detailed image than any single telescope could alone, combining observations from different "observers" like AI and humans can provide a richer, more nuanced understanding of complex concepts or phenomena. The idea that the distinct observational capabilities of AI and humans can enrich our collective understanding and problem-solving abilities contrasts with the notion of merging AI and human intelligence to keep pace with technological advancements. This perspective celebrates the unique contributions each observer brings to the table, suggesting that the interplay between different forms of intelligence can foster innovation and resilience, rather than homogenization being the sole path forward.
The word "ruliad" sounds to my very limited brain like word "saliad", but with a guy as smart as Wolfram it is a good idea to listen at least once and think about it.
Wishy washy. It comes down to anything can be anything thus there's zero conclusion to anything. I am the external computation you didn.t account for on this post. Yet I am one within the mathematical equation/energetic field, so infact Iam not incorrect, I am simply out phase of your domain within this paradime of Stephen Wolfram. Or is it you out of phase? Is there a phase to be out of phase of? Or is you're understanding of phase is out of phase with the phase Iam out of, but infact Iam correct? Wishy washy tosh my friend. I literally can take it to infinity B.S. AND IT ALL FITS NICEY WITHIN THIS CONSTRUCT.
I love this... A very fancy way of taking about generalisations, but the metaphor of a mind being like a computer is butting up against its limits. Communication in reality seems to function reconstructively not via discrete packages. Agreement is learned, mediated and moderated, but it is rooted in shared experience. The arbitrariness of asserting observer's as a transcendental, Individualised objects actually creates the categorical problems. and is implicitly based on an ideological acceptance of individualism and egocentrism. We also have some reification of statistical accounting of reality but the ground reality is still there despite not being referred to and masked by an abstraction. Discreteness is not necessarily suggested by the ground reality that we experience. The assertions of assumption of stability and unity of self is bogus- We learn via processes. but you talk as if we are a collection of states. "We assume" is followed by a rehashed list of Protestant transcendental individualistic tropes. Have you thought that equivalencing is actually a function of time? and that the historicising effect of observing an illusion and what is really going on is merely a transition from statistical reification to connecting/aligning our 'process' with phenomena? I would love to listen to you fitting observer theory to fields. Please please please!
The persistence of the observer amounts to a persistence of the internalized world of the observer, and thus we assume a persistence of the world itself. This is an additional assumption.
Narrative is not necessary to optimize scopes of data and/or focus on emergent properties such as fluidity or color. All that is necessary is selection (preference/pressure/momentum) and process (time).
What a catching considerations (!). There are so many sentences to dwell upon! Unbelievably rich and vibrating with intellectual triggers . Just to promote the simplest of ideas: Where are you as an observer in, say, physical space?... On what level, bodies, molecules, atoms, particles, universe, multiverse, what ? On what frequency? (A) 'Sender' or/and (a) 'reciever'? What kind of observations is 'now' to perceive, mathematical, physical, biological, computational, cultural etc ? In love's eye? Yet, imagine, a diversity of observers, (also) differently tuned... And now , a comedy of situations and characters, a funny controversy and Einstein as an Oracle of Commonsense in typical manner :). And immediately all kinds of Nobel Prize Probability Fellows, causing what is called a cognitive dissonance by the Patriarch and 'it all' goes on somehow...
This seems very much related to Shackell`s Finite Semiotics - same ontological base in the finiteness of cognition, just a lot of cosmological and quantum implications on top
Stephen, Rule 30. To the left of the golden angle is our observable apparently organised reality, and to the right is what humans currently interpret as "quantum". There is no quantum, just our inability to observe through simple calculations within the Ruliad. Lets talk.
i just think he has completely misunderstood the nature of consciousness, how the brain is a physical symmetry that creates a wave form equivalent to a particle, not much, but enough to allow us to reflect back on ourselves, and say 'we exist'
Actually nothing of us even on arbitrarily short time scales is made out of the same stuff, it is continually changing, the pattern being the only thing sort of conserved, it isn't so mysterious, all you have to imagine is something like a whirlpool at some drain or something like that where the water is continually running through the persistent pattern of the whirlpool, even electrons and other fundamental particles have the same character in some sense, there is no permanence of the constitution of any of it, only its form in most cases.
Stepen: your theory works for music… like the theory Stephen Wolfram tells about the universe. If I am understanding him well, this comes through that the beginning was simple,then mainly what he calls computations (acually systematic changes, the guy is a mathematician you know) are taking place again and again. This many computations makes us human observes think that a chaoz emerges from the original order, quod non. So my music starts from a simple base, and the changes make it different but we still here music because my structure is less complicated than the universe. Thx to Stephen! ://ruclips.net/video/xKAXKCCxplI/видео.htmlsi=Xzq5uGz7LDeLgOqP
Resonance AT macroscopic scale vs resonance în quantum mechanics, this corespondance i don t no if there is made. Like corespondence between quantum mechanics and clasical mechanics throw little planck constant. Quantum resonance îs important în act of observation.
This is the most amazing and comprehensive explanation of human knowledge and communication I have heard in one paper.
agreed, it was rather EPIC and brilliant to the point of surreal
Outstanding
Stephen I’m very grateful that you not only built mathematica, wolfram alpha, the physics project which are all incredible valuable to society. But I’m especially grateful you care so much about these things that are important but not urgent and sharing them with the world. I hope your health span extends well into the future and you have the motivation to continue these amazing blog posts, videos, and research. Thank you.
Stephen , amazing! You have no idea how good this sounds with blade runner-ish Ambience music playing in the other tab!!! Almost like a techno prayer! Love what you doing! Best of luck in 2024!
Thank you Stephen Wolfram, you are helping me to keep my mind open!🌈
And Hello All of you amazing people, watching this stream!💚💚💚
Amazing lecture. Stephan is truly a brilliant man, pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the world. 🌎 ✨ 💫
This was a mind blowing lecture from a beautiful mind.
Awesomeness! Thank you for all the hard work.
Thank you Stephen. I'm curious, I appreciate it. Excellent presentation.
Much appreciated!!
I really like the emerging, metaphysical part of the path
that Stephan's world of thought may be moving towards.
Many of his thoughts are based on the formation of
his thinking in the western traditional way of semantic
consideration.
They lead to the explicit way of his description of
ontology, I think they are moving increasingly towards
the ancient, the thousand-fold thought out conceptual
approach of Vedic knowledge.
They approach the questions of our existence and
the wonders of being as such that we as biologically
bound entities can only just imagine.
I know you never read the comments but stil... thank you, Stephen.
That’s true. He makes sense to some of us observing the observer
Thank you for your being and ability to strapulate information!
Another powerful, yet easy to understand representation.
We create a "reality" that fits within our brain and fits within a whole series of "obvious to us" assumptions, that is to say, our limited (and probably incorrect) perceptions of our world. Some of these flawed observations become our "physical laws" as a bit of a crutch to allow us to try to understand the universe badly. Incredible insight.
Unfortunately newton told everyone and classical American founders use the fact of knowing he math mapped human dashboard equations of the knowledge of good and evil so to speak.
It really wasn't a secret that he plagiarizes a clock, correlated it on a pretending absolute space time for a benefit of a ruler.
But sadly the movement & dualistic traditions wanted to lean into the biases, they all followed chaldean model anyways, the idealism is subjective objects = physicalism .
Same ole dualistic model.
Its just mascarading as something else.
Wt an incredible mind! Your "big book" changed my view on, well, everything. Thank you!
I'm an observer and I've been running a computation for 20yrs. I have a pattern that when rotated can be seen as either structure or wave.
1:36:27 The parallels to Vedanta philosophy are astounding
Meta-mathematixs is the best word I've heard all year. Thank you.
Starts at 20:03
Does a state of superposition require existence of superobserver?
i equate what he is doing to finding the mathematical explanation to "unification". excellent work Mr Wolfram
I prefer the term "ordering". it's not necessarily bringing things together in the way we think of together. Things could be ordered yet distant
@@TheGingerjames123 randomness is a real force in the universe , but it's ultimately also a form of determinism
we're just the record on a record player that keeps skipping and the record has holes in it
Glad to be of help, btw. You are one of the favorites
My knowledge of mathematics pretty much ended with knowing the differential of X-squared is 2X and the integral of 2X is X-squared. I read every chapter New Kind of Science, and watched the all those videos where Sapolsky is telling his students about cellular automata. I kind of understand the "ruliad" and "branchial space" and "atoms of space". And now, at 53 minutes of this video, I am introduced to "atoms of existence". I simply love this! It seems to me the highest form of abstract thinking. :)
Is the bit around 59:55 - 1:00:40 related to the free energy principle?
edit: and is it just me, or does it seem Wolfram's work is going to impact our understanding in the same way Newton's did? It seems to be mind-blowingly on point, from quite a few vantages.
If you haven't seen it already, Wolfram did an interview with Friston where they tried to connect their ideas and reconcile them a bit
@@codegeek98 I hadn't, thanks! will check it out
What comes to mind here is closest packing speres and the tetrahedron as the simplest structure related to that that has an inside and outside.
This implies that no matter what ruliad there is there is the underlying closest packing sphere reality which seems to be intrinsically fundamental to any space time unit.
Thanks for sharing this informative video!!! 🙆🐶😻
Excellent talk!
Would love to hear how Stephan evaluates or will recommend to us to think about the Mary's black and white room experiment with the Observer theory.
Very interesting.
Also quite intuitive
Thank you mr. Wolfram
Just amazing, all the best.
great essay! seems to me that a deep implicit message is floating around: the remark on the position of us as boundedness, collectiviness, beliefs of existential continuity, with assumptions necesity, reduction and connection trend,
Stephen Thanks a lot for this gift to human knowledge, I think I started to understand the basics of it as this is most clear explanation of the observer theory. Our old physics is wrong
This was dense, but spot on. Thank you
He's amazing.
Excellent presentation! I really enjoyed, and couldn't agree more. I loved that last couple sentences of the essay, and I would add to it, that, it's not just that science has been unable to live true to ideal of objectivity, but there actually is no such thing as pure objective truth in the living world.
I made a talk a couple weeks ago which I titled "gestalt ecology", dealing with the same question of the role of the observer, albeit at a much lower intellectual level than this material. Very good
Are you saying it is objective truth that there is no objective truth?
@@jyjjy7 I would say you are describing well, how philosophy is often mental masturbation.
@tinfoilhatscholar Be careful when your mental masturbation suggests everything is actually mental masturbation all the way down
great interview
Formal communication of any meaning is great, we will have it as soon as we solve mechanistic interpretability.
I have to listen to this talk again. My guess as I listened to this excellent presentation is that a neural network is a good model for an observer. It also seems to be that he has finally found a way to democratise programming in natural languages.
Every perception is to some extent memory. Every memory is to some extent imagination. Narratives are the outcome.
Every choice we make generates a corresponding timeline of experience. Is the resulting narrative a limit or a creative guideline? No wrong answer - only another choice.
Bravo, ty SW
Bravo!
I love this guy!
😊 cool stuff.
amazing talk
Is the 'observer' separate from the 'observed' or is that sense of apparent separation, in fact thought in the mind of the observer? If thought comes to a complete stop, does that apparent space come to an end? For me the answer is definitely yes - what do 'others' say?
Are split brain patients one or two observers?
The brain is not completely split in those patients, I know, but still there appears to be a separation of processing sensory information as well as disagreement about some actions between each side.
In other words, can observers be divided? If so, could they be merged?
No, just one of course.
Have to ask them... Na
Hello Stephen, the key here is entropy and synchronization. Observers exist in a state of lowered entropy - must exist in a state of entropy lower than their environments in order to observe. This state of lowered entropy is initially achieved through network synchronization - as oscillators assemble into networks, they synchronize, and in doing so, lower the entropy of the newly-formed network. The network is now a body with an observational capacity determined by the synchronization process that occurred to create it. As the observer oberves, they discharge this capacity into the environment through the observational interfaces they possess, which each possess some impedance value which dictate the amount of information they are capable of extracting from the environment as well as the amount of energy required to attain it. This ratio of energy expenditure to information gathered is the observerrs observational energetic cost. As observers observe, their observational capacity is expended, and therefore in order to continue observing all observers must eventually replenish their observational capacity from the environment, an act which requires a low-entropy source of energy. Observation can be nicely modeled using equations from thermodynamics - which is the premise of Observational Dynamics, a framework which enables the measurement and study of observation by quantifying it in thermodynamic terms. I sent you some emails about it since much of my early inspiration was 'A new kind of science' - what an amazing book.
Yes, that was 100% bullshit. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 A new kind of science was bullshit?
@@SebastianSchepis This was not a new kind of science. It was just plain old style bullshit. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Is that why they gave me a grant ;-)
@@SebastianSchepis You mean you got a new car loan for your used vehicle for your food delivery job? ;-)
"slices of reducibility" is the perfect explanation of the existential notion of the human condition. Now, we understand that this is a universal condition of being, no matter how advanced. If you can know it all, you can't exist as an entity.
I think to put it simply, it's not about observers, it's about information exchange.
Observers aren't really anything special, we're just systems of particles exchanging information with other systems and individual particles - just like any other system of particles. So your theory probably needs to deal more with what it means for two particles to exchange information such that they can react to each other in some way.
Naa. This is not what Wolframs work implies. Yes all things are observers, but what we define as physics are characteristics of us humans imposing onto the universe based on our perception of it.
For instance, you and I are both looking at a cube. You are looking at the cube however from a head on perspective…meaning you don’t see the cube you see a 2 dimensional square. In another angle, you see a rectangle…and another a hexagon. Try that yourself it’s a fun experiment.
The reason you see a completely different object then the cube is because information is hidden from you, in an axis you can’t resolve. You convolve the object into some reduced representation. In extension the cube is actually an infinitely complex object (the ruliad) and we can only perceive it in this finite bounded way…ie this cube.
The theory strictly imposes that observers create perception, because they have to when they are computationally bounded. Because it’s finite and bounded means different perspectives can be had even though it is describing the same infinite object (again like looking at an object from different points of view)
Observation is therefor crucial…and each possible perception is unique…therefor special. Physics is thus special because it is our interpretation of physics and this is why Wolframs belief is that other kinds of creatures and systems would develop different kinds of physics…because they perceive the universe differently.
It is about information but it’s not reductionist in the way your describing, it is or must be inclusive to all scales, all systems all logical systems those systems can create
This is ridiculously interesting.
The way I kind of interpret this lecture is that all concepts have their own boundaries in rulial space. A mind, or an observer, is basically an entity that can go from one boundary of rulial space, let's call it an island, and communicate the information acquired from that island to another mind sampling the same slice of rulial space as the observer and the physical world acs as a medium for information to be transferred. So I guess the next question is: How can we transmit bits of information from our slice of rulial space to another mind in another slice 🤔?
SUPERB 👌 I really enjoyed this explanation. Observer Theory is fascinating.
Stephen Im curious if E8 could be the ruliad and the 4D render of E8 being the observerse? How far am I off? 😅
Thankyou
Thanks
2x speed wolfram generalizing observers
i bet this will play into defining complexity
From this presentation, I actually think that a good model for the observer's mind is either a neural network or a cellular automaton[the mind takes an external phenomenon represented by several pixels and computes or applies automata like rules and arrives at a final stage with an output. This output is an attractor or label or classifier....
Philosophically, this suggests that even pistons in the example of gas molecules are observers like us. The principle of computational equivalence then says that we are basically the same, we are not special at all.
What are the predictions of Observer Theory and how could they be tested experimentally?
What if _everything_ is then an observer? I.e. the panpsychism-like concepts. And then, from that, that the "reality" is created by everything participatorily, and "physics" itself emerges (or emerged, "long ago") as spontaneously-formed agreement on the mutual dynamics between such an infinite field of observers, just like any other process of spontaneous order-formation?
I’m not educated enough for this discussion, and I might looking at this from the wrong angle, but the existence of mathematical axioms seem to imply some static structure in the ruliad. Or are those axioms a sampling/high level view of a particular application/pattern of a sequence of rules? If someone replies please keep the language to a college dropout level 😅
Or perhaps more abstractly, are the rulial structures of concepts replicated/modelled inside each observer (and how isomorphic are those representations in terms of their hypergraph configuration, or at a higher level, how similar are concepts implemented between different minds)
Hello. Late response here. The Ruliad is an eternal abstract computational object that “just exists” independent of time. So it’s structure is static and you can imagine what it is like by thinking about it as if it were a statespace. You define sampling in the ruliad as transformations from one state to another. And this statespace is infinite.
So to answer the question what actually has structure is the observer…the finite mathematics being that must choose a state and move to another state in the statespace. This deconstruction of the finite object to the infinite object is the ultimate point, the meat behind where time comes from (we have to perceive it) and where space comes from (again we have to perceive it) since there is no way for us to choose as finite beings the statespace in its entirety.
It’s like relativity but for all systems. We can’t choose an observer that is independent of time and space, as this is equivalent to choosing an observer that is spatially infinite and temporarily happening at all times (selecting all states in the state-space)
Mathematically the idea is that yes the statespace is isomorphic, as you can always create a function and inverse function between states. The entire ruliad is therefor maximally symmetric. The isomorphism breaks down only when we pick the viewpoint of the finite observers that can not make an inverse mapping since their view point is only surjective (as they have to collapse states in the statespace)
That’s hard to envision but basically think about it like this: you have a cube in front of you. If you turn it in such a way that you only see one of its faces then what you see is a 2d square. What’s happening is that the points that you once interpreted as making the shape look like a 3d cube is now hidden from you due to your perspective. The Ruliad is this idea but it’s an infinitely complex object, where an infinite number of possible “sides” are hidden from your view.
The same is true in terms of meta mathematics and the buisness with axioms. We have to make a choice about what information we can view. The ruliad contains all of these choices, all of the perspectives and we can’t describe it without picking a reference frame…using higher level descriptions or lower ones is like whether we want to talk about the 2d square, or the 3d cube. We lose information in either direction.
It’s an elegant relativistic framework and it really is the next step Einstein probably envisioned the universe was supposed to be.
I hope this answer somewhat helps to answer some of your question.
WHAT IS AN OSSERVER?
In very simple terms, an observer is something or some body that thinks input, processes it, and gives output. It equivalences the input and the output by doing a computational process.
A transducer can convert sound energy to electrical energy, but it is not an observer in the full sense because it has no memory, decision-making, and explicit rules that it follows. A piston that measures the pressure of gas molecules is also a pseudo observer.
Here is my opinion:
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation that consists of a tape divided into cells, a head that can read and write symbols on the tape, and a finite set of rules that determine how the head moves and changes the tape. A cellular automaton is a discrete model of computation that consists of a grid of cells, each of which can have one of a finite number of states, and a set of rules that determine how the states of the cells change based on their neighbors.
Both Turing machines and cellular automata can be considered as observers in some sense since they can perform computations and store information on their tapes or grids. However, they are not very sophisticated observers since they have limited memory, communication, and feedback capabilities. They also do not have any explicit goals or purposes that guide their observation, and they do not have any awareness or understanding of what they are observing.[in comparison with human observers like us].
There are some special cases of Turing machines and cellular automata that exhibit more complex behaviour and can be seen as more advanced observers. For example, a universal Turing machine is a Turing machine that can simulate any other Turing machine, given its description and input. The said Turing machine may encode any physical phenomena, e.g, sound waves, water, or gas molecules. The gas or water molecules individually follow Newton's laws of motion but the universal turing machine converte these movements to the movement of fluides that follow the laws of fluid mechanics.
A universal cellular automaton is a cellular automaton that can simulate any other cellular automaton or even a Turing machine, given its configuration and rules. These rules code encode Newton's laws of motion.
These models can be seen as observers that can explore the space of possible computations and algorithms[as encoded by their cells and rewrite rules on the cells] and that can potentially learn from their own experience. For this purpose, we need to provide a feedback loop. Such models can be seen as observers that can adapt to changing situations and optimize their performance, and that can potentially communicate and cooperate with other observers.
So, in summary, a Turing machine or cellular automaton can be considered as an observer only in a very basic sense since they can only perform simple computations and store limited information.
To be a more complete observer, they would need to have additional features that allow them to simulate, learn, communicate, and optimize. These are some of the features that make us human observers, and that may also apply to other kinds of observers, such as animals, artificial intelligence, or even the universe itself.
For us philosophers this theory has such great explanatory power. But I can understand why the scientists are slow to even consider it. I have come to believe that it will be the next paradigm.
Obviously some persons enjoy being both. Independence anyways, it’s a comfortable thought
So, we have repetitive and simple nested patterns for immediate computational reproducibility where a computational bounded system or observer can fairly easily do the analysis and get the compression.. But computational irreducibly limits the extent to which this can be successful.
We are computationally bounded and the Kolmogorove complexity level of the universal compuation is far higher than ours hence, so it means what we do make do of are the set results of perceptions and actions measurements from the simple aggregated states we can only think about, see, measure and analyze; that generally result to states toward which our systems are evolving to, from a wide variety of starting conditions of the system.
I I've been saying this for a long time. We are bound by our false perception that time is real. I think we just experience time as thing when really we are a 4 dimensional object with the capability of processing only three of them. Thus we invent time. There are significant implications to this, like what happens to the last computation? Does it disappear? Is it observable by an unbound observer. How would we observe that? Dark matter?
We are trying to teach children in kindergarten that time is that which the clocks show. Very few children are paying attention. ;-)
We don't just think there is only one "me". We also think we have only one eye. This is what Aristotle called a "common sense", the ability of the mind to integrate a single "world view" from multiple sensory inputs in the "fusion center" of our mind.
"Who observes what?" This 'does' the split-mind from a whole that cannot be otherwise signified or represented; being infinite/unbounded?
Though willingly limited as means to focus through and with.
Assumptions are logically extended.
Any definition runs input to our result.
The word of definition given sets the measure and kind of the fruits.
Logical consistency within a frame of reference can be wrong or inverted if the premise exceeds its bounds.
I cannot observe reality that creates all that I am by knowing me - not "about me" but directly - without a second or compare.
This quality of knowing is a perfect resonance - not a computational selectivity.
But I perceive as I conceive & believe/accept my own reality to be (in terms of the world such a self gives and takes from).
Guided & aligned perception is qualitatively selective rather than quantitatively biased.
I don't necessarily believe that the ruliad and the psychosphere are a one to one function.
Or that the ruliad necessarily accounts for what is possible to happen in reality.
Our experiences is ultimately determined by our size as observers
I've never thought of observation as an analogue to a pressure gauge. Does this mean we can make conscious steam engines? LOL No, but we can make ones that are "Observant". Now pass this paper to a surveillance ethics PHD to finish. 😃
❤
The idea that an observer can effect reality, quantum or not, is very close to a belief in Simulation Theory (which I is think is a quasi-religious position).
It implies that reality is spontaneously spun out as we become aware of it.
Trace -> Map -> Pattern Match -> React
The AI and LLM are they observers too? Just like how individual radio telescopes can work together through interferometry to create a more detailed image than any single telescope could alone, combining observations from different "observers" like AI and humans can provide a richer, more nuanced understanding of complex concepts or phenomena.
The idea that the distinct observational capabilities of AI and humans can enrich our collective understanding and problem-solving abilities contrasts with the notion of merging AI and human intelligence to keep pace with technological advancements. This perspective celebrates the unique contributions each observer brings to the table, suggesting that the interplay between different forms of intelligence can foster innovation and resilience, rather than homogenization being the sole path forward.
The word "ruliad" sounds to my very limited brain like word "saliad", but with a guy as smart as Wolfram it is a good idea to listen at least once and think about it.
Wishy washy. It comes down to anything can be anything thus there's zero conclusion to anything. I am the external computation you didn.t account for on this post.
Yet I am one within the mathematical equation/energetic field, so infact Iam not incorrect, I am simply out phase of your domain within this paradime of Stephen Wolfram.
Or is it you out of phase?
Is there a phase to be out of phase of?
Or is you're understanding of phase is out of phase with the phase Iam out of, but infact Iam correct?
Wishy washy tosh my friend. I literally can take it to infinity B.S. AND IT ALL FITS NICEY WITHIN THIS CONSTRUCT.
We’re all made from the unique object that emerges at the entangled limit of all possible computations.
Infinite possibility is our master and yet its master of nothing at all. It's vapid
The application to Free Will around 1:13:00 is especially penetrating.
I have an association with the Law of Requisite Variety by Ashby.
I love this... A very fancy way of taking about generalisations, but the metaphor of a mind being like a computer is butting up against its limits. Communication in reality seems to function reconstructively not via discrete packages. Agreement is learned, mediated and moderated, but it is rooted in shared experience.
The arbitrariness of asserting observer's as a transcendental, Individualised objects actually creates the categorical problems. and is implicitly based on an ideological acceptance of individualism and egocentrism. We also have some reification of statistical accounting of reality but the ground reality is still there despite not being referred to and masked by an abstraction.
Discreteness is not necessarily suggested by the ground reality that we experience. The assertions of assumption of stability and unity of self is bogus- We learn via processes. but you talk as if we are a collection of states. "We assume" is followed by a rehashed list of Protestant transcendental individualistic tropes.
Have you thought that equivalencing is actually a function of time? and that the historicising effect of observing an illusion and what is really going on is merely a transition from statistical reification to connecting/aligning our 'process' with phenomena?
I would love to listen to you fitting observer theory to fields. Please please please!
thank you. this is new einstein level stuff
The persistence of the observer amounts to a persistence of the internalized world of the observer, and thus we assume a persistence of the world itself. This is an additional assumption.
Narrative is not necessary to optimize scopes of data and/or focus on emergent properties such as fluidity or color. All that is necessary is selection (preference/pressure/momentum) and process (time).
The medium is the message - Marshall McLuhan
What a catching considerations (!).
There are so many sentences to dwell upon!
Unbelievably rich and vibrating with intellectual triggers .
Just to promote the simplest of ideas:
Where are you as an observer in, say, physical space?... On what level, bodies,
molecules, atoms, particles, universe, multiverse, what ?
On what frequency?
(A) 'Sender' or/and (a) 'reciever'?
What kind of observations is 'now' to perceive, mathematical, physical,
biological, computational, cultural etc ?
In love's eye?
Yet, imagine, a diversity of observers, (also) differently tuned...
And now , a comedy of situations and characters, a funny controversy and Einstein as an
Oracle of Commonsense in typical
manner :).
And immediately all kinds of Nobel Prize Probability Fellows, causing
what is called a cognitive dissonance by the Patriarch
and 'it all' goes on somehow...
This seems very much related to Shackell`s Finite Semiotics - same ontological base in the finiteness of cognition, just a lot of cosmological and quantum implications on top
20:00 start
Atman is Brahman.
Stephen, Rule 30. To the left of the golden angle is our observable apparently organised reality, and to the right is what humans currently interpret as "quantum". There is no quantum, just our inability to observe through simple calculations within the Ruliad. Lets talk.
Video starts at 20:00
36:36 mission of science
This entire thing is an example of cross-paradigmatic thinking, if you are familiar with that from Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics, or Hanzi Freinacht.
Why do I have to know all flavors of bullshit that are out there? :-)
Very interesting.... but 20(!) minutes of nothing at the start?
i just think he has completely misunderstood the nature of consciousness, how the brain is a physical symmetry that creates a wave form equivalent to a particle, not much, but enough to allow us to reflect back on ourselves, and say 'we exist'
Time separate from the rotating patter, time the source of energy.
Actually nothing of us even on arbitrarily short time scales is made out of the same stuff, it is continually changing, the pattern being the only thing sort of conserved, it isn't so mysterious, all you have to imagine is something like a whirlpool at some drain or something like that where the water is continually running through the persistent pattern of the whirlpool, even electrons and other fundamental particles have the same character in some sense, there is no permanence of the constitution of any of it, only its form in most cases.
The hard problem is yet to be even tackled.
drive.google.com/file/d/1Xd2cOMbafhVy-_kGlSVFn-eJxiDgQ1Mq/view?usp=share_link
Stepen: your theory works for music…
like the theory Stephen Wolfram tells about the universe.
If I am understanding him well, this comes through that the beginning was simple,then mainly what he calls computations (acually systematic changes, the guy is a mathematician you know) are taking place again and again.
This many computations makes us human observes think that a chaoz emerges from the original order, quod non.
So my music starts from a simple base, and the changes make it different but we still here music because my structure is less complicated than the universe.
Thx to Stephen!
://ruclips.net/video/xKAXKCCxplI/видео.htmlsi=Xzq5uGz7LDeLgOqP
Resonance AT macroscopic scale vs resonance în quantum mechanics, this corespondance i don t no if there is made. Like corespondence between quantum mechanics and clasical mechanics throw little planck constant. Quantum resonance îs important în act of observation.
It's always nice seeing blokes walking on the edge of science without falling into the pits of pseudoscience.
Hate to tell you... he is squarely inside that pit and has been for a long time. ;-)
Wow !how can you sleep?what a amazing mind .super smart.