Your channel is becoming more and more professional. Excellent work! If, as Wolfram says, our universe is "running" all possible rules with all possible updating events, what is the universe "running" on? Or what is doing the updating? Or what is choosing which rule to update at which node? If he means that all rules are using all updating possibilities at every node, then we not only have multiple possible universes, we have infinite number of. universes. But even so, they all started somewhere running on something.
Thanks, I appreciate that! These are fascinating and fundamental questions you’re asking. I’m planning to address them soon… so much to say about them!
Theoretically, isn't it impossible for an observer embedded in a system to truly examine the substrate in which they exist? It's quite possible that there's no way for us to answer the question of 'what does the universe run on' and 'what does the updating'. Would be so cool if we could though! If the ruliad is a 'necessary object', does that imply that there's no need for the concept of a 'creator' of the system ? Of course, that does nothing to answer the question as an organism experiencing time sequentially, and raises questions about the beginning of time, the original state of the graph and the arrow of time. Interesting stuff!
@@lowlightlabs I think you're on the right track. The Universe isn't a static thing, or at least we can't understand it as such. We only ever consider a part of it, or what Buckminster Fuller called 'scenario Universe'. So each and every scenario Universe runs according to rules that we can understand, since it's our scenario we're observing. Universe runs on us!
Thanks! Yes, it's worth it putting in the time to explore these simulations, it really helps understand how the different rules give different results.
I really appreciate being able to see these ideas come to life. Does this mean we can warp around like star trek? That is my secret reason for studying the WPP !!! Thank you so much for helping make this available to the world. Do you think Wolfram is currently paused with his project and what is this meta-maths he is working on? Thanks again sir for this ! Wish I had your help a year ago !!!
The moment I understand how to create a warp drive, you'll be the first to know! I don't think the Wolfram Physics Project is paused, I just think Stephen Wolfram has an enormously wide range of interests. I think he's done the right thing by setting up the Project to support others to dig deeper into the physics applications of his ideas. Thanks for following along!
The meta mathematics is the structure of the physics project applied to the rules of math. He is stil working on the project and has recently launched an institute that studies it.
I'm loving the low level explanations! It's really helpful for someone like me, with no formal learning in math or graphs. For example, I didn't consider that the direction of the relation was important. I could watch graph evolutions all day :)
Andrew, in general, graphs have edges that are either directed or undirected, depending on which is more useful to your application. Wolfram chose to use graphs with directed edges, for reasons that will presumably become apparent later in this video series.
My question: what evaluation rule do your illustrations go by? By that I mean, when the initial condition (the part on the left of the transformation) is met by any number of already existing edges, by what criteria do you decide to apply the rule to _this_ edge rather than _that_ edge? Or further still, what inhibity you from applying it to all available candidates simultaneously and only considering that 'step' as completed once it has been applied to all available candidates? Your animations only ever evaluate a single edge at a time, and so it appears that every 'generation' is a 'tick of the clock'... what if a 'tick of the clock' only completes when all candidate edges have been subjected to the rule in question? Sorry, it seems a bit confused and it's not easy to frame with words... I hope you understand and can take a stab at answering. So far it seems to me that animating it one edge at a 'time' is no so much 'methodical' as it is utterly arbitrary... but then again, I haven't tried it myself (my coding skills are far too inferior to create the tool necessary to experiment myself). Thank you for this series, by the way. I subbed and am definitely sticking around for more!
This is a really good question, thanks. For the animations in this video, where the rule can be applied in many different places, I simply choose one at random. As you rightly point out, this is kinda arbitrary! But it turns out that applying the rule in every possible place has its problems. Sometimes, you can apply the rule to one set of edges, or to another set of edges, but not to both, because the two sets of edges overlap, and applying it to one set destroys the match, so you can't then apply it to the other set. So you still have to choose. I go into this issue in detail in my video _Where to apply Wolfram’s rules?_ ruclips.net/video/kW-nr7ehVlM/видео.html and the follow-up video _What is the multiway graph in Wolfram Physics?_ ruclips.net/video/QncEB6i2nUY/видео.html The approach I suggest in these videos is to _avoid_ choosing between the possible matches. This approach leads to the multiway graph, which is crucial to understanding Wolfram Physics. Hope that helps, thanks again for the question!
Thanks for these videos, I’m slowly working through them. My gut feel is to start with a complete graph and see where that leads, by operating on the complete graph and seeing if a network of nodes and edges are able to be produced that meet the tests used elsewhere to characterise Wolfram Models. I’m positive that some people have already explored this idea, I hope that it is not just me, and I can learn off their experiences. I suspect this approach is a bit like course graining to derive equations of a successful fine gained Wolfram Model that may need massive computational power to be validated.
Yes, that's one of the worries with Wolfram Physics, that it'll take too much computational power to do any meaningful simulation of the universe. Still, it's fun to try!
Yes! I was disappointed that my university physics course didn't cover more up-to-the-minute stuff (too much 19th-century stuff!) We really need to allow students to explore new and unproven ideas.
If I understood right, only thing that matters are relationships. Numbering nodes only helps in tracking what happens (purely visualisation thing), all nodes are actually same. In this light, first boring rule is exact equivalent to second and third boring rule, especially if orphaned nodes are deleted.
Well, whether or not to label nodes, and how to label nodes, is an important and undecided question. Are nodes different by virtue of when they were created? Or by virtue of how they are connected? Or their history? It's difficult to accept that a node on one side of the universe is identical to a node on the other side of the universe, so it seems that _some_ kind of labelling is necessary.
Ah, that's a complex question! It's most easily answered at the level of General Relativity. An ellipse (of which the circle is a special case) is the shortest path through space-time for a small body orbiting a large body. Wolfram Physics doesn't really have anything to add here. Happily, however, it _is_ possible to derive General Relativity from the hypergraph, so the orbits of Pluto and the planets _are_ predicted by Wolfram Physics.
By the way, what are you using to code the graph simulation and rendering? On the surface it seems to me you could leverage compute shaders on a GPU to really crunch through these evolutions, as well as efficiently render large graphs (could even pass them to a particle system in Unity's VFX graph and do some very pretty realtime visualisations I think)
I keep things pretty simple: I use C to code the application of the rules and the positioning of the nodes and edges; then I render them in SVG and animate them using Javascript.
If a rule deletes all the edges to/from a node and doesn't create any new edges to/from that node, does the node still continue to exist? In other words, can there be nodes which exist but have no edges linking them to other nodes?
Good question. According to the model, it’s the edges that exist. So if all the edges from a node are deleted, then that node no longer exists. One way of thinking of this is that without edges, the node cannot be involved in any future application of rules, since rules match edges, not nodes. So that node plays no further role in the universe.
So, at the moment your rules are incomplete - which edge do you choose next in order to evolve the 'universe'? Or do you end up in the mother of recursion, calculating all possibilities? Also, isn't it a bit misleading to say you have an n-gon, when really you are just looking at a topology?
Good question: "which edge do you choose next?" Take a look at my video on where to apply Wolfram's rules: ruclips.net/video/kW-nr7ehVlM/видео.html It runs through the possibilities, including the one you suggest of calculating _all_ possibilities. Much more to come on this!
Hi David, thanks for the question! I'm hoping to pull all the ideas in these videos together into a book on Wolfram Physics next year: make sure you're subscribed at lasttheory.com/ for updates! And in the meantime, you should check out Stephen Wolfram's masterpiece _A project to find the Fundamental Theory of Physics_ lasttheory.com/book/a-project-to-find-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-by-stephen-wolfram It's 750 truly beautiful and inspiring pages!
When I am watch video of people running Cellular Autometon Games, and see one that create a Cellular Autometon out of itself, I was quite alarmed. Does that mean that a system can be run on the creation of itself? If so, the universe doesn't need a physical comupter system. Anyway, that's too philosophical for me, it's killing my head.
Not surprised that this one's making your head hurt... it's a deep question. Stephen Wolfram's answer would be that you _don't_ need a physical computer system to run the computation of the universe. This is a model, so it might not even correspond to what's actually producing our universe; and in any case, there's no need to postulate a computer to run these computations any more than you need to postulate a slide rule to calculate the trajectories of the planets around the sun in the old, mathematical paradigm. See my video _Where's the computer that runs the universe?_ ruclips.net/video/m6pI9ndsEK8/видео.html for more on this.
Thanks! Your videos have been more addictive than a netflix series, so far
Thanks, I really appreciate that!
My new favourite channel.... Thanks for all the effort
Thanks, Rajat, I really appreciate that! I'll keep the videos coming!
Your channel is becoming more and more professional. Excellent work! If, as Wolfram says, our universe is "running" all possible rules with all possible updating events, what is the universe "running" on? Or what is doing the updating? Or what is choosing which rule to update at which node? If he means that all rules are using all updating possibilities at every node, then we not only have multiple possible universes, we have infinite number of. universes. But even so, they all started somewhere running on something.
Thanks, I appreciate that! These are fascinating and fundamental questions you’re asking. I’m planning to address them soon… so much to say about them!
Theoretically, isn't it impossible for an observer embedded in a system to truly examine the substrate in which they exist? It's quite possible that there's no way for us to answer the question of 'what does the universe run on' and 'what does the updating'. Would be so cool if we could though!
If the ruliad is a 'necessary object', does that imply that there's no need for the concept of a 'creator' of the system ? Of course, that does nothing to answer the question as an organism experiencing time sequentially, and raises questions about the beginning of time, the original state of the graph and the arrow of time. Interesting stuff!
@@lowlightlabs I think you're on the right track. The Universe isn't a static thing, or at least we can't understand it as such. We only ever consider a part of it, or what Buckminster Fuller called 'scenario Universe'. So each and every scenario Universe runs according to rules that we can understand, since it's our scenario we're observing. Universe runs on us!
Great illustrations of vectorial geometry, fascinating to see how simple rules can produce a circle from a triangle, for example.
Thanks! Yes, it's worth it putting in the time to explore these simulations, it really helps understand how the different rules give different results.
I really appreciate being able to see these ideas come to life.
Does this mean we can warp around like star trek? That is my secret reason for studying the WPP !!!
Thank you so much for helping make this available to the world. Do you think Wolfram is currently paused with his project and what is this meta-maths he is working on?
Thanks again sir for this ! Wish I had your help a year ago !!!
The moment I understand how to create a warp drive, you'll be the first to know!
I don't think the Wolfram Physics Project is paused, I just think Stephen Wolfram has an enormously wide range of interests. I think he's done the right thing by setting up the Project to support others to dig deeper into the physics applications of his ideas.
Thanks for following along!
The meta mathematics is the structure of the physics project applied to the rules of math. He is stil working on the project and has recently launched an institute that studies it.
I'm loving the low level explanations! It's really helpful for someone like me, with no formal learning in math or graphs. For example, I didn't consider that the direction of the relation was important.
I could watch graph evolutions all day :)
Thanks Andrew! I like to dig down to the lowest level details, otherwise I don’t feel like I truly understand!
Andrew, in general, graphs have edges that are either directed or undirected, depending on which is more useful to your application. Wolfram chose to use graphs with directed edges, for reasons that will presumably become apparent later in this video series.
Love this step by step visual explanation. Thanks !
Thanks Fabien! Lots more visual explanations to come!
My question: what evaluation rule do your illustrations go by? By that I mean, when the initial condition (the part on the left of the transformation) is met by any number of already existing edges, by what criteria do you decide to apply the rule to _this_ edge rather than _that_ edge? Or further still, what inhibity you from applying it to all available candidates simultaneously and only considering that 'step' as completed once it has been applied to all available candidates?
Your animations only ever evaluate a single edge at a time, and so it appears that every 'generation' is a 'tick of the clock'... what if a 'tick of the clock' only completes when all candidate edges have been subjected to the rule in question?
Sorry, it seems a bit confused and it's not easy to frame with words... I hope you understand and can take a stab at answering. So far it seems to me that animating it one edge at a 'time' is no so much 'methodical' as it is utterly arbitrary... but then again, I haven't tried it myself (my coding skills are far too inferior to create the tool necessary to experiment myself).
Thank you for this series, by the way. I subbed and am definitely sticking around for more!
This is a really good question, thanks. For the animations in this video, where the rule can be applied in many different places, I simply choose one at random. As you rightly point out, this is kinda arbitrary!
But it turns out that applying the rule in every possible place has its problems. Sometimes, you can apply the rule to one set of edges, or to another set of edges, but not to both, because the two sets of edges overlap, and applying it to one set destroys the match, so you can't then apply it to the other set. So you still have to choose.
I go into this issue in detail in my video _Where to apply Wolfram’s rules?_ ruclips.net/video/kW-nr7ehVlM/видео.html and the follow-up video _What is the multiway graph in Wolfram Physics?_ ruclips.net/video/QncEB6i2nUY/видео.html
The approach I suggest in these videos is to _avoid_ choosing between the possible matches. This approach leads to the multiway graph, which is crucial to understanding Wolfram Physics.
Hope that helps, thanks again for the question!
I like your method/shorthand at the top, very clever sir!
Thanks! I'm always trying to find ways to make this simpler to see.
Thanks for these videos, I’m slowly working through them. My gut feel is to start with a complete graph and see where that leads, by operating on the complete graph and seeing if a network of nodes and edges are able to be produced that meet the tests used elsewhere to characterise Wolfram Models. I’m positive that some people have already explored this idea, I hope that it is not just me, and I can learn off their experiences. I suspect this approach is a bit like course graining to derive equations of a successful fine gained Wolfram Model that may need massive computational power to be validated.
Yes, that's one of the worries with Wolfram Physics, that it'll take too much computational power to do any meaningful simulation of the universe. Still, it's fun to try!
The Wolfram Physics Project needs to be in our schools !!!
Yes! I was disappointed that my university physics course didn't cover more up-to-the-minute stuff (too much 19th-century stuff!) We really need to allow students to explore new and unproven ideas.
If I understood right, only thing that matters are relationships. Numbering nodes only helps in tracking what happens (purely visualisation thing), all nodes are actually same.
In this light, first boring rule is exact equivalent to second and third boring rule, especially if orphaned nodes are deleted.
Well, whether or not to label nodes, and how to label nodes, is an important and undecided question. Are nodes different by virtue of when they were created? Or by virtue of how they are connected? Or their history? It's difficult to accept that a node on one side of the universe is identical to a node on the other side of the universe, so it seems that _some_ kind of labelling is necessary.
Why is an orbit around a mass circular type or is pluto also a good orbiter?
Ah, that's a complex question! It's most easily answered at the level of General Relativity. An ellipse (of which the circle is a special case) is the shortest path through space-time for a small body orbiting a large body. Wolfram Physics doesn't really have anything to add here. Happily, however, it _is_ possible to derive General Relativity from the hypergraph, so the orbits of Pluto and the planets _are_ predicted by Wolfram Physics.
By the way, what are you using to code the graph simulation and rendering?
On the surface it seems to me you could leverage compute shaders on a GPU to really crunch through these evolutions, as well as efficiently render large graphs (could even pass them to a particle system in Unity's VFX graph and do some very pretty realtime visualisations I think)
I keep things pretty simple: I use C to code the application of the rules and the positioning of the nodes and edges; then I render them in SVG and animate them using Javascript.
If a rule deletes all the edges to/from a node and doesn't create any new edges to/from that node, does the node still continue to exist? In other words, can there be nodes which exist but have no edges linking them to other nodes?
Good question. According to the model, it’s the edges that exist. So if all the edges from a node are deleted, then that node no longer exists. One way of thinking of this is that without edges, the node cannot be involved in any future application of rules, since rules match edges, not nodes. So that node plays no further role in the universe.
@@lasttheory Thanks for clearing that up for me.
So, at the moment your rules are incomplete - which edge do you choose next in order to evolve the 'universe'? Or do you end up in the mother of recursion, calculating all possibilities? Also, isn't it a bit misleading to say you have an n-gon, when really you are just looking at a topology?
Good question: "which edge do you choose next?" Take a look at my video on where to apply Wolfram's rules: ruclips.net/video/kW-nr7ehVlM/видео.html It runs through the possibilities, including the one you suggest of calculating _all_ possibilities. Much more to come on this!
Hello, where can I find your books?
Hi David, thanks for the question!
I'm hoping to pull all the ideas in these videos together into a book on Wolfram Physics next year: make sure you're subscribed at lasttheory.com/ for updates!
And in the meantime, you should check out Stephen Wolfram's masterpiece _A project to find the Fundamental Theory of Physics_ lasttheory.com/book/a-project-to-find-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-by-stephen-wolfram
It's 750 truly beautiful and inspiring pages!
One rule to to make a star,
One rule for stasis,
One rule we hope will be
A Turing-complete basis.
Nice! Thanks Kevin!
When I am watch video of people running Cellular Autometon Games, and see one that create a Cellular Autometon out of itself, I was quite alarmed. Does that mean that a system can be run on the creation of itself? If so, the universe doesn't need a physical comupter system. Anyway, that's too philosophical for me, it's killing my head.
Not surprised that this one's making your head hurt... it's a deep question.
Stephen Wolfram's answer would be that you _don't_ need a physical computer system to run the computation of the universe. This is a model, so it might not even correspond to what's actually producing our universe; and in any case, there's no need to postulate a computer to run these computations any more than you need to postulate a slide rule to calculate the trajectories of the planets around the sun in the old, mathematical paradigm.
See my video _Where's the computer that runs the universe?_ ruclips.net/video/m6pI9ndsEK8/видео.html for more on this.
the ruliad is the consummation of all universes .. if i understand right ..
The ruliad is a fascinating concept. I think I’ll need to understand it a bit better before I can confidently cover it!