Is the universe a tautology? with Jonathan Gorard

“Sorry, this is now getting very metaphysical,” says Jonathan Gorard part way through this excerpt from our conversation.
We start by talking about applying more than one rule to the hypergraph to create rulial multiway systems.
This takes us part way towards applying every possible rule, in other words, towards the ruliad.
We move on to the idea of measuring the complexity of a structure in terms of the minimum amount of information needed to express it.
Jonathan applies this idea to the ruliad, pointing out that it takes almost no information to express, since it encompasses all possible rules.
Since he believes, however, that there is some content to the universe - that it is not a tautalogy - this leads Jonathan to reject the idea of the ruliad.
We dig into why he has this intuition is that the universe is not a tautalogy.
Jonathan invokes theologians like John Duns Scotus, who promulgated the idea the the world is neither completely reducible nor completely irreducible.
He follows the scholastics in steering a middle path, suggesting that there’s enough content in the universe that it’s interesting, but not so much content that we can’t write down well-defined laws of nature.
This brings us, for the first time, to the role of the observer in the Wolfram model.
Again, Jonathan steers a middle path between placing the computational burden entirely on the universe and placing the computational burden entirely on the observer.
I find this 9-minute exposition fascinating. It gets to the heart of some of the philosophical differences between Jonathan Gorard and Stephen Wolfram, and to the nature of the universe and our role as observers.
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Jonathan Gorard
• Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project www.wolframphysics.org/people...
• Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view...
• Jonathan Gorard on Twitter / getjonwithit
• The Centre for Applied Compositionality www.appliedcompositionality.com/
• The Wolfram Physics Project www.wolframphysics.org/
People mentioned by Jonathan
• John Duns Scotus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duns_Sc...
• Xerxes D. Arsiwalla www.wolframphysics.org/people...
• Hatem Elshatlawy www.wolframphysics.org/people...
Research mentioned by Jonathan
• Homotopies in Multiway (Non-Deterministic) Rewriting Systems as n-Fold Categories arxiv.org/abs/2105.10822 by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan Gorard, Hatem Elshatlawy
• Pregeometric Spaces from Wolfram Model Rewriting Systems as Homotopy Types arxiv.org/abs/2111.03460 by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan Gorard
Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
• Rulial Multiway System writings.stephenwolfram.com/2...
• ∞-category en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-c...
• ∞-groupoid en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%88%...
• (∞,1)-topos en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%88%...
• Grothendieck’s homotopy hypothesis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotop...
• Algorithmic complexity theory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computa...
• Algorithmic information theory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorit...
• Kolmogorov complexity en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogo...
• Einstein field equations en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstei...
• Curvature invariant en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curvatu...)
• Qualia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
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The Last Theory lasttheory.com/ is hosted by Mark Jeffery markjeffery.com/ founder of the Open Web Mind www.openwebmind.com/
Prefer to listen to the audio? Search for The Last Theory in your podcast player, or listen at lasttheory.com/podcast/044-is...
Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

[@Zeuts85]

This is so well described here! Jonathan's depth of knowledge and ability to articulate these ideas is insanely impressive to me. I love how you put up the captions for vocabulary and things he references, I'm sure that takes significant time and effort. Thanks so much for doing these, and asking great questions!

[@lasttheory]

Thanks, Matt, I really appreciate that! And yes, Jonathan is brilliantly articulate, isn't he?

[@pvc25]

Jonathan's closing remarks here are so lucid, precise and succinct that it left me speechless. Folding in conscious observers, you essentially reach Iain McGilchrist's claim of attention being co-creative of reality and therefore a fundametally moral action. That may be a step too far for a purely physics perspective, but was it Wheeler who said that every theoretical physicist was really a sort of 'tamed metaphysicist'! This was beautiful, thank you for making content like this.

[@lasttheory]

I really like that "tamed metaphysicist" quote! I've just done a web search and it looks like Wheeler got it from Einstein, who wrote: "I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist." Thanks so much for your comment, and yes, I really like it when Jonathan strays from physics into metaphysics!

[@mitchtroumbly7056]

These should really be about 2hrs longer

[@lasttheory]

Yes, there's so much in every sentence Jonathan says, isn't there? There's much more I'd like to talk to him about, so I'm hoping there'll be much, much more of this to come.

[@darrennew8211]

Actually, the words you pop up at the bottom when you use a specific term is an excellent idea. Anyone wanting to follow up now has the google term to start looking into it. I appreciate that. I think Tegmark actually thinks there's a universe for every possible mathematics. It just isn't *our* universe. I'm sure you know about it, but others here might not have heard of him. He points out that each type of particle only has a few small numbers associated with it, and that completely determines the behavior of the particles.

[@lasttheory]

Thanks, Darren. I don't know as much about Tegmark's ideas as I should, thanks for the pointer!

[@stormos25one]

Thank you as always for putting these videos together! Also thank you for putting all the details within the description. Its so easy to follow up, as I often times have no idea what Jonathan is talking about haha. I love the pursuit of knowledge, and trying to keep up with these great minds!

[@lasttheory]

Thanks! I have to do some research myself after these conversations. I'd certainly never heard of an (∞,1)-topos before Jonathan mentioned it! But it's absolutely worth it, Jonathan has so much to say.

[@Sam-we7zj]

For the love of Pete please make these conversations longer

[@lasttheory]

Yep, sorry Sam. It takes me days to edit and prepare each of these episodes, fitting it in with all the other stuff I have going on. Doing my best to get them out there fast... the next Jonathan Gorard episode is going to be twice as long, so that's _something_ I guess!

[@Sam-we7zj]

@@lasttheory appreciate all the work, thanks for a great channel!

[@NightmareCourtPictures]

Damn good video. Thanks so much for these.

[@lasttheory]

Thanks, yes, Jonathan never fails to deliver!

[@dynastyst]

Brilliant video. On the “balance” he talks about in the end, I think we are exactly this part of reality (substitute “reality” for “the expression of the ruliad” if you want to make it rulialist) that we find ourselves in. He correctly points out it’s not A without B or B without A, and that they’re both dualistic views of the same thing!

[@lasttheory]

Yep, thanks. Jonathan's pretty brilliant here, isn't he?

[@James-ll3jb]

​@@lasttheory. Not really. It's actually dogmatically parsimonious...

[@lasttheory]

@@James-ll3jb Sorry, James, I'm not sure what you mean by "dogmatically parsimonious"

[@MA-ie6hl]

Thank you Jon and Mark.

[@tarkajedi3331]

Absolutely 💯 brilliant work!!!!

[@lasttheory]

Thank you! Jonathan is so good at explaining these ideas!

[@Dyslexic-Artist-Theory-on-Time]

Spherical symmetry forming and breaking could form the type of Universe that is explained in this video. If we have light waves, radiating out from a centre point, based on Huygens’ Principle, it will form a sphere. The interior of the sphere will naturally create three-dimensional space. The two-dimensional surface of the sphere forms a manifold or boundary condition that forms the continuum of time with an uncertain ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π probabilistic future. The spherical 4πr² surface creates the particle characteristics of light, with photons ∆E=hf continuously transforming potential energy into kinetic Eₖ=½mv² energy of what is actually happening as the future unfolds. Each point on the surface of the sphere has the potential for a new spherical wave front, with our three-dimensional world continuously changing with the movement of charge. The inner concaved surface creates negative charge and the outer surface creates positive charge. We have an infinite number of line symmetries within a sphere, as long as the sphere is expanding. In this theory, each line symmetry represents a potential time line for future possibilities and probabilities. The greatest probability is that this process of spherical symmetry forming and breaking will form entropy or disorganization. But, because the geometry forms infinite time lines there will always be a small chance that the symmetry will form the emergence of greater complexity. We see this symmetry in the beauty of the Fibonacci spiral, in the diversity of cell life and in the potential forever more abstract mathematics. ~

[@davidmcsween]

Ok then the block universe is the bottom up construction, while our transit of it at the light speed edge is the observation of the block as a top down structure... so your point of view matters. 🤔

[@tommysullivan]

With the Anthropic principle in mind, if there is a ruliad, with all possible structures instantiated, then some subset of those could give rise to universes in which you record almost exactly this same video; or in which at minimum there are intelligent species doing science, and the “content” it would take to constrain the full set down to the subset consistent with us finding ourselves in one or more of those universes isn’t necessarily fundamental, it’s like the content of a very specific integer, which is notable but does not need to be written down to capture the full overall notion. So I don’t know that there really does need to be this content fundamentally or if that is the result of the anthropic principle ultimately that gives the temporary illusion of content to us

[@tommysullivan]

Btw I just heard this term ruliad so I might be misapplying or totally misunderstanding it; if so then scratch that word and the intent of the statement survives

[@lasttheory]

Right, yes, In Stephen Wolfram's concept of the ruliad, there's only _one_ universe, in which every possible rule is applied to each state of the universe. But it's possible for different observers to make sense of the universe in different ways, i.e. through the lens of different rules, depending on their position in rulial space. It's a mind-blowing concept!

[@hypercube717]

Interesting.

[@lasttheory]

Wow, thanks! Let me know if there's anything I can add for you! lasttheory.com/contact

[@dr.chrismaldonado]

I am a computer scientist find area of research life's far apart from the profound investigations you are undertaking. But I am an insatiable incorrigible curious. I would like to propose some research using neural networks blowing through the ruliad. Is there any chance we can get to talk.

[@frun]

SW mentioned NN and computer architectures. Ruliad have to do with category theory and might encompass entire math, as far as i understand, not just NNs.

[@lasttheory]

Yes, the intersction of neural networks and the ruliad, that sounds fascinating, Christian. You can contact me at lasttheory.com/contact

[@lasttheory]

And yes, absolutely, @frun, this gets into metamathematics too.

[@tear728]

Trivial observation on my part, but if truth and existence are equivalent, wouldn't the universe by definition be tautological? 😅 The rules could only produce something that can exist.

[@lasttheory]

Whoosh, that's a truly tangly philosophical question: are truth and existence equivalent? I think this might be another of the differences between Stephen Wolfram, who I'm guessing would say yes, and Jonathan Gorard, who I'm guessing would say no. Which is why, as you point out, Stephen would say that the universe is tautological, and Jonathan would not. Good observation, thanks!

[@duncankilburn7612]

If (and a big if) the laws of nature dont actually add up/are fundmentally inconsistent - is evidence for the matrix (simulation theory).

[@lasttheory]

Right, yes. That's a whole can of worms! I'll be talking more in future videos about the question of whether we live in a simulation... and how we would know! Thanks Duncan!

[@Verboten-xn4rx]

It may not be trivial but it's still mostly nothing.

[@lasttheory]

Yes, mostly nothing! In the eyes of large creatures like us, at least. At the scale of the hypergraph, I imagine there are endless fluctuations. It's just that they aggregate to nothing at _our_ scale.

[@coupsdestylo]

possibly the universe is vain, why else would it create parts of itself to look at itself

[@lasttheory]

Nice ;-) Seriously, though, I don't think I'll ever understand how parts of the universe can observe the universe itself. The hard problem of consciousness...

[@coupsdestylo]

​@@lasttheory tiny people who can reverse entropy, like a broken mirror, lots of little reflections of the whole, every observation is a reflection, so yeah she's vain as, if we also consider the hostility to life on this planet, the lack of life paradox thingy and black holes which took our best madmen eons of collective science to think up then there's more than a little evidence to suggest she's hostile or outright malevolent, coupled with the vanity and the only confident statement I can make is she's a sherry drinker.

[@coupsdestylo]

@@lasttheory it is strange, you could consider it to be reflections of an intrinsic property as we don't stand apart from the system when observing it.

[@lasttheory]

@@coupsdestylo Yes, exactly!

[@James-ll3jb]

How could the universe be a tautology?😅

[@lasttheory]

Yep, it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around, isn't it? One way to reframe the question _Is the universe a tautology?_ is like this: Does _mathematics_ meean that the universe is _inevitably_ the way it is? Thanks, James, for your comments!

[@James-ll3jb]

​@@lasttheoryEverything inevitably is as it is, and mathematics inevitably describes this. What's the big secret?

[@lasttheory]

@@James-ll3jb Are you _sure_ everything inevitably _is_ as it _is_? Might not randomness play a role, as it does in our current theories of quantum mechanics?

[@James-ll3jb]

@@lasttheory Randomness then too part of "the is as it is"!

[@lasttheory]

@@James-ll3jb OK, thanks James! If you include randomness in your definition of a fully deterministic universe then yes, the universe is fully deterministic. But then that becomes a pretty meaningless statement: most definitions would hold randomness to be directly counter to determinism. It'll be interesting to see whether randomness remains part of the Wolfram view of physics, or whether we'll finally move on from the randomness of quantum mechanics as currently formulated. Thanks for the back and forth!

[@James-ll3jb]

Listen to this guy at ¾ speed to render him intelligible😅