The Last Theory

Stephen Wolfram has many philosophical ideas, but I’ve not heard him talk about pure philosophy.When I asked him about the relationship between physics and philosophy, I understood why.Stephen revealed that he’s much more at home in the concrete world of computer experiments than in the arguments of the philosophers.“When I look at the arguments,” he says, “I can’t tell if they make sense or not. There’s too much wiggling...”—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordPeople and conce...

Do different observers think differently? Or does the principle of computational equivalence mean that all observers think the same way?Stephen Wolfram takes this question and runs with it.If we had brains the size of planets, he suggests, the finite speed of light would force us to think of space and time differently, and abandon the fiction of an instantaneous state of space.If we had brains the size of molecules, he says, we’d no longer think of the motion of molecules as random, and we’d find the heat death of t...

Physics, the way we’ve thought about it for the last few hundred years, requires us to make assumptions about time.In our old way of thinking, just as we must assume three axes of space – scales along which we can measure what’s where – so we must assume an axis of time – a scale along which we can measure what happens when.It doesn’t matter whether, like Newton, we assume an absolute scale along which we can measure what happens when according to a giant clock in the sky, or whether, like Einstein, we assume a...

Different observers, from different regions of the ruliad, experience the universe in different ways.To what extent can these different observers communicate their different experiences?Can dogs, with their olefactory ways of mapping their worlds through scent, truly understand humans, with our one-dimensional ways of mapping our world through language?Can humans, with our one-dimensional streams of language, truly understand AI image generators, with their parallel diffusion models?If we ever met aliens, would we be able to communicate with them?How might it be to think like an...

The ruliad is every possible computation. What could you possibly say about such an enormous, all-encompassing object?Well, that’s where we come in.Particular observers sample the ruliad in particular ways.Observers like us sample the ruliad in ways that give rise to physics as weknow it.Ruliad + observer = physics.In this excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, he explores how physics, mathematics and biology all arise from this same enormous, all-encompassing object, the ruliad.He gets to aliens, too, asking such provocative questions as ho...

The hypergraphs generated by Wolfram Physics are complex and chaotic.The multiway graphs that trace every possible evolution of these hypergraphs become extremely complex and extremely chaotic after only a few iterations.The causal graphs that plot which of the events in these multiway graphs has to happen before which of the other events look like spaghetti.If we’re going to find mass/energy or momentum in Wolfram Physics – or special relativity or general relativity or quantum mechanics – then the causal graph is the place to look.But if we’re going...

It’s been a while since my last episode of The Last Theory or Open Web Mind.Where am I?It might look like I’m lazing in the sun, but actually I’ve been working hard.For The Last Theory, I’ve been working on a long episode, more involved than any I’ve ever made, and more important than any I’ve ever made.It’ll unlock mass/energy, momentum, special relativity, general relativity and quantum mechanics.And I’ve been working on Open Web Mind, too, making serious p...

Electrons may be tiny black holes propagating through the hypergraph.After all, electrons and black holes have much in common: they’re carriers of pure motion, they’re all the same – from the outside, at least – and we don’t know what’s going on inside them.Just as black holes may cloak the remants of collapsed civilizations, so electrons may hold secret histories of their paths through the universe.Stephen Wolfram takes this idea further. If particles, such as electrons, are the carriers of pure motion in physical space, what are the carriers of...

The multiway graph shows every possible evolution of the universe.So, if we can compute every possible reality, does that mean that there’s no single objective reality?Well, the causal graph, it turns out, collapses every possible reality into a single objective reality in a way that’s so unexpected that you’ll be left wondering: how did that just happen?—References:The hypergraph   video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleThe multiway graph   video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleThe causal graph   video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleCausal invariance   video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleDifferent observers might follow different paths through the multiwaygraph, but they see...

In this fascinating exposition, Stephen Wolfram connects two of the most important breakthroughs of our time: AI and the ruliad.I ask Stephen how he thinks about knowledge hypergraphs, which I’m exploring at Open Web Mind.He offers several important insights.Stephen draws a distinction between human-like minds and formal knowledge.Human-like minds include both our own brains and Large Language Models. Such minds, Stephen suggests, are good at making broad but shallow connections.Formal knowledge, on the other hand, is deep and precise. Stephen has spent a li...

Can you hold in your mind two different threads of experience?In this five-minute excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, he introduces the strange idea of a multiway mind.Most of the time, we as observers succeed in weaving multiple different paths through the multiway graph into a single thread of experience.In some circumstances, however, we’re unable to do this. If we’re unfortunate enough to find ourselves on the surface of a black hole – at the event horizon in physical space, at the entanglement horizon in branchial space – we might fi...

Fields don’t exist.I mean, a field with grass in it, that kind of field does exist.But a field in physics?A gravitational field? An electric field? A magnetic field? A quantum field?No such thing.I’m not knocking the physicists who came up with these fields.These fictions can be convenient.But sometimes, these fictions can blind us to the underlying reality.And that’s what’s happening right now in physics.Our long-time love affair with fields i...

In the previous excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, I asked him how I can remain a single, coherent, persistent consciousness in a branching universe.In this excerpt, we went deeper into this question. As a conscious observer, I have a single thread of experience. So if the universe branches into many timelines, why don’t I branch into many versions of me?Stephen’s answer touched on many profound aspects of the Wolfram model.He started with the failure of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to consider the...

When the universe branches, we branch with it.Those branches don’t remain forever apart. They come back together.So we, as conscious observers, are rescued from splitting into an immense number ever-so-slightly different versions of ourselves.When the branches of the universe – and the versions of ourselves – come back together, we don’t worry that the many paths we took to get there are ever-so-slightly different.We equivalence all those different paths. We treat all those ever-so-slightly different branches of history as if they were more-or-less the same.I asked...

The causal graph is at the core of Wolfram Physics.It’s crucial to the derivations of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.And if that’s not enough to convince you that you need to know about the causal graph, how about this:The causal graph is a reflection of the nature of causality, the nature of objectivity, the nature of reality itself.—Einstein’s train thought experimentWhat is the multiway graph? video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleWhat precisely is...

Is everything that’s ever going to happen in the universe already determined?Or does something else – maybe randomness, maybe free will – play a role?Stephen Wolfram’s answer to this question is straightforward: the ruliad is fully determined.But there’s a twist. The ruliad is determined, but how we observe the evolution of the universe depends on where we are in the ruliad.In a fascinating introduction to the role of the observer in the Wolfram model, Stephen touches on some of the deepest philosophical questions in physics, finishing on one of...

Hypergraphs can have any number of dimensions. They can be 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, 4.81-dimensional or, in the limit, ∞-dimensional.So how does the three-dimensional space we observe emerge from the hypergraph-based Wolfram model?Why is space three-dimensional?Stephen Wolfram’s surprising answer to this questions goes deep into space, time, computation and, crucially, our nature as observers.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordPeople mentioned by StephenEuclidHermann Minkowski—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web...

Stephen Wolfram reveals that his first major wow along the path towards a fundamental theory of physics was his realization that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are the same theory, played out in different kinds of space.Many other dominos have fallen along the way, from the derivation of Einstein’s equations to applications of the ruliad beyond physics.But the aspect of Wolfram Physics that Stephen Wolfram himself finds maybe the most compelling is this mirroring of the two pillars of twentieth century physics.Perhaps General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics aren’t as i...

It feels like everyone has their pet Theory of Everything these days.So why should you take my preferred Theory of Everything seriously?Well, give me 5 minutes, and I’ll give you 5 reasons why I find Wolfram Physics more compelling than anything else that’s happened in physics in my lifetime......and maybe you’ll want to take it seriously too.—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full...

Here’s a question.Why does the universe exist?Why is there something rather than nothing?One of Stephen Wolfram’s boldest claims is that he has the answer.Let me know whether you’re convinced by his argument!—Ideas:Wolfram PhysicsMathematical PlatonismOccam’s RazorThe Last TheoryPeople:Stephen WolframJonathan Gorard—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.The full article is h...