The Jacob Collier of mathematics*

In the history of physics, aether theories (also known as ether theories) propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium for the propagation of electromagnetic or gravitational forces. Since the development of special relativity, theories using a substantial aether fell out of use in modern physics, and are now replaced by more abstract models.

Let's see... lasers? Gravitational wave detectors? Modern intetgrated circuits? etc?

I would love to see this channel move beyond only the Wolfram project, and fulfill its name "The Last Theory"! ... one very interesting aspect that it would also cover and analyze, which is also related to the Wolfram project, is the concept of the "atoms of space", AKA the "Aether", a concept that has a lot of history that predates both Einstein's relativity and quantum physics.

Maybe, all that we have discovered so far has been low hanging fruit!

At a small enough scale there wouldn't be room enough for information, sort of the opposite problem of a black hole. But i dont see anything that tips the scale on the question of discreteness.

Great video! I love your chanel and have watched all your videos

But isn't it a problem that something completely immaterial and theoretical like a computation and resulting graphs are supposed to result in something tangible, measurable. How can a node in a graph have mass? Not getting my head around that 😆

Is this sort of the same way we can measure a computationally irreducible algorithm and make general statements about its results, like "It is complex" or "It is sort of random but shows pattern x"? Like of course we can't reproduce or predict the exact results of the computationally irreducible algorithm but we can sort of expect or be unsurprised by future general patterns within its next few steps?

For the latter part of his career, it was more like John Von Neumann and the art of being where the U. S. military wanted him to be. Figuring our the exact height from which to detonate an atomic bomb over a country already effectively beaten, with the explicit intention of killing the most people? John Von Neumann was there. Invention of AI without the slightest concern for how it could affect the future of humanity? John Von Neumann was there. The online hagiography for this guy is intense, and science fans could really use more nuanced attention to his faults. I guess nuance is too much to expect on YT.

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 means that Asimov's Psychohistory is possible.

I've got a 1:1 scale map in my knapsack.. but I haven't yet found the occasion to unfold it...

Since the 20yr disclosure and been extended youd think the studies of the technology being steered into frequency's of the operating peramiters of the human body and mind. One would think thered be a decent dollop of information regarding this disclosure but nope the disclosure term isnt disclosure at all but the holding of information. Science is no longer science and knolage become stagnant for our next generation is nolonger furthering discovery using previously descovered truths. Science seems to engeered its own platoe and is contently stationary....

The problem, I feel, is that physicists tend to misuse the word "universe". The universe is all that there is. It makes little sense to think of the UNIVERSE as discrete. Now, spacetime on the other hand... THAT seems to be what Wolfram is actually talking about.

The deepest characteristics of the observed universe are its apparent laws of conservation, and the associated symmetries. The interactions between patterns in cellular automata illustrated here show no such conservation. A more interesting question might be: 'What is conserved, in Wolfram's universe?'. Another question is begged, by this presentation.. 'What is a particle, in the universe of consensus physics?' That's not a given. 'Particle' may well turn out to be a term of convenience for a localized consequence of the interaction between 'measuring' and 'measured' fields.. they may not pre-exist the interaction at all.

What do the Twistors of Roger Penrose and the Hopf Fibrations of Eric Weinstein and the "Belt Trick" of Paul Dirac have in common? In Spinors it takes two complete turns to get down the "rabbit hole" (Alpha Funnel 3D--->4D) to produce one twist cycle (1 Quantum unit). Can both Matter and Energy be described as "Quanta" of Spatial Curvature? (A string is revealed to be a twisted cord when viewed up close.) Mass= 1/Length, with each twist cycle of the 4D Hypertube proportional to Planck’s Constant. In this model Alpha equals the compactification ratio within the twistor cone, which is approximately 1/137. 1= Hypertubule diameter at 4D interface 137= Cone’s larger end diameter at 3D interface where the photons are absorbed or emitted. The 4D twisted Hypertubule gets longer or shorter as twisting or untwisting occurs. (720 degrees per twist cycle.) If quarks have not been isolated and gluons have not been isolated, how do we know they are not parts of the same thing? The tentacles of an octopus and the body of an octopus are parts of the same creature. Is there an alternative interpretation of "Asymptotic Freedom"? What if Quarks are actually made up of twisted tubes which become physically entangled with two other twisted tubes to produce a proton? Instead of the Strong Force being mediated by the constant exchange of gluons, it would be mediated by the physical entanglement of these twisted tubes. When only two twisted tubules are entangled, a meson is produced which is unstable and rapidly unwinds (decays) into something else. A proton would be analogous to three twisted rubber bands becoming entangled and the "Quarks" would be the places where the tubes are tangled together. The behavior would be the same as rubber balls (representing the Quarks) connected with twisted rubber bands being separated from each other or placed closer together producing the exact same phenomenon as "Asymptotic Freedom" in protons and neutrons. The force would become greater as the balls are separated, but the force would become less if the balls were placed closer together. Therefore, the gluon is a synthetic particle (zero mass, zero charge) invented to explain the Strong Force.

I used to spend hours playing with the Golly app. I always thought he was on to something. Crabs, butterflies, and even faces took shape countless times. How can it not have something to do with convergent evolution?

The most powerful and amazing visions of modern commology are Wolfram's formalism and Donald Hoffman's theory of consciousness... the next 200 years will be about these two revolutionary concepts...

Nice overview. I think you're right. I do watch alot of stuff that SW is getting out in perticular the livestreams give an impression on how open the employees are to him. Results and usability are key for SW and rightly so I would claim. I have the impression that he's more interested in "claiming" his ideas then really working them out in detail in papers. Working all out in detail will also cost alot of time.. There are so many people that are arrogant or full of themselves etc which I normally really ignore. We indeed should focus on what he claims and decide on it's usefullnes. That SW does not mention the names of the people doing the hard work is I would claim self-destructive and plain stupid and unneccesary. If he would put Max and Jonathan more in a spotlight he could get way more energy (and succes) out of the team. I do think he really thinks it's unimportant. It must be his experiences from the past whispering this in his ear?

progress isn't redoing basic laws, jesus christ, you are posting this high definition, phonefilmed video through fast internet connection, doesn't that seem odd for you that it wasn't there 20 years ago?

Being egocentric and/or dogmatic is not flawed in the sense that its part of intelligent human nature and the scientific world that critisizes him 😂 Dont the rest appreciate his great contribution to discussion with things such as computational irreducibility, equivalence and boundedness?

The science of particles

Because there is an intentional obscurantism. Real scientists like Jean-Pierre Petit are silenced by pseudo-academics.

Thank you for your excellent video. You have finally accomplished what seemed impossible, to cut down a very complex concept into sufficiently small and simple thoughts that even an old and dumb person like me can understand. Blessings to you and your family

Sthephen are original in every way you look at

Without peer review, how do you separate the gems from the mountain of slush? You didn't even hint at an answer to that. Recall that review found a significant flaw in Wiles' first version of a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem?

The value of the wolfram phisics is ,this research is looking for a primordial geometric development of the chords, and not the mathematical configuration, the after analysis of the shapes will bring the mathematical relationships

no progress in physics... useless physics didnt stop wars physics cant stop the crumbling of your nation you are toooooo late kiddo

I think there is a lot of weight to the "no peer review" criticism. If you notice, all the people but Wolfram who are involved with the project are still publishing, like Jonathan for example. They are putting some of the nuggets out there. The problem I think Stephen's more bold claims are not fully mathematically worked out for them to be published. Even the primary concept of computational irreducibility does not have a strong mathematical basis. I think the maths will come in time hopefully but the folks who criticize Stephen for not publishing are not wrong either. At least until the project publishes the central ideas and has other scientists vet the ideas in a formal setting, these ideas have to be dealt with as the interesting hypotheses that they are.

I don't know much , this sounds very good and I am excited with Wolfram Physics proposals but, why not submit to peer review despite it's flaws and possibility to get rejected, wouldn't this at least give this new framework more credit as to dare to be subjected to the available reviews? Because it is a solid proposal? Eventually if Wolfram Physics nails it in many real problems , the peer review will have to retract and will promote a better way to filter good science from bad.

Do you think relativity, black holes, neutrinos, higgs and the rest of the zoo of elementary particles has to be challenged?

I think his work on the human mind as a computational device at some point in the ruliad progressing to another point is the best work he has ever done. Now Wolfram physics as a graph of discrete cellular automata, in my humble opinion, looks like junk... Furthermore trying to sell this as a settled fact, as he often does, is off-putting to me. I would be more open to him if he started off saying "I have a wild idea that has very little supporting evidence but is very powerful and could ultimately be found to represent the true nature of reality." In that context I would be very open to him but that isn't where he is at. At a minimum he is brilliant and definitely deserves the attention he gets. That being said, no, I'm sorry, I just don't think there is enough evidence for a cellular automata universe yet and it seems unlikely that this will be our best path forward. If I'm wrong and we find evidence for that I will gladly admit it. Either way I wish him the best and hope he continues his work. Nobody can deny his brilliance.

When they stop looking the other way every time plasma and electromagnetism raise their heads, things will change.

He probably needs to retitle his work: "A MORE Fundamental Theory THAN Physics..." or his "A Theory of Everything" should also be subducted into this new title (because strictly speaking it CANNOT be everything in the future and secondly there's an even more fundamental level that remain a mystery prior to this lower level he appears to be uncovering), to quote from his article on Path to TOE in Physics, April, 2020: "I soon realized that if that was going to be the case, we’d in effect have to go underneath space and time and basically everything we know. Our rules would have to operate at some lower level, and all of physics would just have to emerge." So his is where he's operating and it's simpler perhaps to state this upfront and call it by another name than Physics at this level: There's clearly a connection from raw Mathematics/Logic that has a transformative ability from this into Physical Phenomena as we know it aka "within Space-Time". It should be more explicit that what he's proposing is indeed this "link" and it seems based on upon numbers creating topology and self-ordering information that then manifests emergent phenomena aka physics. Physics is no different to being an emergent phenomena in the same way that it also gives rise to the emergence of chemistry and thence biology and we're going to see shortly that biology is giving rise to more emergence such as sentience and consciousness as even higher orders of intelligence manifestation in the cosmos and beyond biology abstracting into cultural evolution and that will then produce AGI operation/awareness from that still further. His basic insight has got to hold true as above the trend can be predicted and expected to continue: "...that even when the underlying rules for a system are extremely simple, the behavior of the system as a whole can be essentially arbitrarily rich and complex." In science taking a system, then taking it apart aka reductivism and from that deduction has proved immensely powerful. Reversing that and taking simple elements and rules and allowing them to play out or "simulate" into a system aka emergence is an opposite useful method he seems to have deployed with success because taking a macroscopic view of our universe: It looks a lot like smaller structures of other systems of density of networks of connections eg neurones in a brain in 3d could easily look like the structure at macro scale of our universe! When Charles Darwin came up with Evolution, he had a lot of data to use to formulate a Theory and a lot of it at the macro scale held up and only later with Mendell's genetic units did the mechanism (amongst others) support it. I think this approach will follow suit: The observation of the universe as a giant such structure perhaps a kind of hypergraph will eventually yield new insights because the reconception using this way to picture it will help break through beyond current models' limitations by joining up things more coherently that seems separate. For example to reconceptualize "Time" as sort of "CPU Tick Cycle" of information propagation across the system is a very useful different way of looking at time and it seems to provide explanatory value eg Time Dilation. The criticisms you cite are about the Person, not the above idea so seem to be of incidental interest. What might be the best outcome of this theory? It seems to me things might start to change quite quickly in the coming years and the least benefit of a number of such potential benefits from this theory will be the demystifying of the physical universe at least in so far as our human minds can apprehend it: Those little computational universes or microcosms for example can be held in the palm of our hands, why not the nature of the universe too - at a very zoomed out focus of course!

@3:00 self-promotion is not a criticism of the guys ideas. You cannot divide and conquer like this, you need to consider Wolfram Fyzzix holistically, the whole deal. When you comprehend the whole deal, and think carefully about what the word "physics" really should mean, only then can you see the blatant self-promotion is simple ego. The guy honestly believes he is onto something yuuuge. But he's not, he is just delusional, like many geniuses before him (who did not have the Internet to promote themselves). You know what else gets believed and promoted with millions of clicks on the t00bs? Celebrity cracker culture and gambling grfits. That's not to say Wolfram is a grifter, just to point out what becomes popular is not necessarily good for you. Even Jonathan Gorard is denying Wolfram physics is a serious thing, he claims it is only a model, one "contender" among many. Which is still not even true. Wolfram physics is a language for exploring computational systems. If you can find a real physical system that conforms to his rules, then he is doing physics. But mostly he is not doing physics, he is doing some mathematics and desperately looking for physics in them. But that's Ptolemy all over again. If you can make enough scratches on paper using the symbols of English and math, sooner or later you will write down a Lorentz transformation. This does not mean your language is what The Universe (so-to-speak) speaks. To account for entanglement with a _physical_ theory you need something simple and natural. Why? Because entanglement is extremely basic and elementary, it is the simplest phenomenon we know that the universe is built up from. You cannot put it in by hand, that's "cheating". Wolfram Fyzixx puts it in by hand.

is there such a thing as an undirected hyperedge. where the order of nodes within the curly brackets does not matter?

is chaos random? is it possible to have non-random indeterministic process?

The main issue with the Wolfram's Physics Project is that the ideas lack compelling, explanatory power. So far, there are no new deep insights afforded by his approach. His ideas are definitely interesting, but they don't shed any new explanatory light on existing theories. Maybe it's too early, but that's the key criticism in my view. Also, his ideas haven't generated any new physics yet. That's ok if it's early, but it's not going to get much attention until he has something really new and original to say about the physical world. So far, he's trying to march through the history of physics massaging his approach and framework to support existing accepted physical theories, and there are still very significant gaps there too. So in short, I wouldn't get too caught up on the cult of the personality - that's a mere distraction. I would look at those other two objections a lot more carefully though.

I like SW and his philosophy, but believe his physics model is wrong(partially). People who hate him are schmucks.

Did you actually read A New Kind of Science? Because I did, after buying a copy. I'm a fan of digital physics and was hoping he had made progress. Only nothing of the kind is proposed. It's not even about peer review. It's like buying a book title A New Way to Bake Cakes and finding only a intracate lengthy tomb on different way to milk cows.

when traversing can you follow an edge opposing the direction?

Maybe, after Wolfram has finally demonstrated anything that he and you claim, including that his work has 'predicted' anything, including Quantum Mechanics in any meaningful way, you might have a case. Sorry.

I have met Stephen Wolfram in the context of the Wolfram Tech Conferences and Summer schools. He knows who I am, which is something. I find him interesting in the extreme, with a reality-distortion field that rivals Steve Jobs. I have no problem naming things 'Wolfram', having struggled with naming software programs. Naming a company after oneself has a long tradition -- Ford Motor corp, Hewlett-Packard, etc. etc. Peer review seems to be broken at the moment and it is not the only way to present ideas. I do not know enough Physics to understand the Physics project, but I do understand enough maths to know that the mathematical aspects of the project is very interesting, and I see applications of many of his ideas outside of fundamental physics. As you point out, it is the ideas that count, and Stephen has provided more than enough information for anyone to assess the ideas. When I was a research specialist (physical biochemistry), it was well known that papers (even good ones -- peer reviewed, of course) left out critical technical details that made it hard to replicate experiments. For myself, I am convinced that there is enough to the ideas for me to spend my time (and resources) on understanding it.

A scientist is never less scientific than when criticising an idea that they don't believe to be scientific enough to be worth their time. Wolfram's personality has nothing to do with anything. Yet somehow this seems to be the topic of most discussions rather than the content of his theories. Newton was a renowned asshole... but 350 years later we all know his name. I admire Wolfram's tenacity. Even if everything he has ever worked on turns out to be gibberish, the world needs people like him who are willing to go against the grain, regardless of how others may view them. Ostracising a person will only fuel their narcissism.

I got to know about Stephen Wolfram in a podcast where he was discussing with Eric Weinstein and bought the book "A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics" immediately. I started reading the book, and to be fair not in super detail by computing the result of each rule, but just enough detail to get a rough understanding. After the explanation of the multiway graph, immediately something "clicked" in my brain, and all the weird stuff I knew about quantum mechanics suddenly made sense (I'm not a physicist, I just like to read about the topic but usually I'm too lazy to do the maths to understand the stuff deeply). At some point, the book explains that in these models time is seen as the actualization of space itself, rather than a different dimension, and that fits way better to my personal experience and my formal training in computer science. After all, the map is not the territory, models are not reality, they are just tools that help us understand it. The concept of computational irreducibility made also so much sense to me, and for me became kind of evident everywhere. Of course, the universe is deterministic but that doesn't mean that everything is predictable. That's the reason we can learn about things about the universe, do science, and as living beings we need to stay attentive. There are multiple examples not only from the book but also from different podcasts of him, that make so much sense based on stuff that I've been thinking for years that somehow very few people seem to question like what is a thing? Is order something that exists physically or just something arbitrary that we impose on the state of the universe? what is life? why there is something rather than nothing? The answers that Stephen provides make a lot of sense to me. In my opinion, he can come across as a bit too arrogant on podcasts so I can see why that can be a turn-off sometimes, Nevertheless, the ideas he discusses are amazing. Regarding giving credit I do not know at the moment if he is doing the right thing or not by keeping Jonathan and the other young researchers out of the spotlight because the proposals of Wolfram Physics are a bit controversial and he already has enough fame, money, and status to handle these controversies. On the other hand, for young researchers, these controversies might be career destroyers. I really hope that more credit will be given to these great minds once there is no risk for them to be associated with the project.

It does seem like Wolfram is intentionally gatekeeping. This looks bad for two reasons that I can think of, 1) He actually isn't sure it will stand up to intense scrutiny; in other words the research is not complete enough to share even parts of it, and/or 2) He really does want any discovery all to himself, both the credit and the rewards, and if someone stumbles upon it besides him, he wants it to be someone under his employ. Other than that, I applaud his genius and also his unapologetic attitude. I say to naysayers: let him run, stop complaining, and see what happens. Just like I would with Newton or Davinci, I myself would not give him money, but I'd probably buy him a beer.

does the direction/arrow of the edge restrict the path that can be walked? are they the same as a one way street?

Don't forget Bruno Marchal.

@lasttheory I also enjoyed you bringing in the Jesuit, because physics is a kind of priesthood, more so than other science disciplines. Neal Stephenson ran with this idea in his book Anathem...