What cellular automata reveals about entropy | Stephen Wolfram and Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Stephen Wolfram: ChatG...
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GUEST BIO:
Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company behind Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram Physics and Metamathematics projects.
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[@LexClips]

Full podcast episode: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpWoXqqXiN1gmpo Lex Fridman podcast channel: kzbin.info Guest bio: Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company behind Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram Physics and Metamathematics projects.

[@ZennGordon]

Stephen steady dropping knowledge.

[@BitwiseMobile]

1984 was the time when I read about Conway's Life in Scientific American. I was 13 and I was teaching myself programming. That started me on my journey of cellular automata. Also, I just commented on another video about how life finds order out of chaos - it's all about the second law. The second law is more profound, I think, than a lot of people realize. It might just be that all the other laws are extensions of the second law. Is conservation of energy driven by the second law? I think so. Those two are the most fundamental laws of the universe. Conservation of energy/mass/momentum/etc... and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Mother nature is always trying to drive things toward the zero state, but the uncertainty of the universe ensures that it can never reach the zero state, so everything is oscillating around that zero state. That's vacuum energy.

[@wendyg8536]

Thank you Stephen, I love your work and are a subscriber. ... I would like to mention here, an incredible artist, the late Martin Thompson, who made the most beautiful drawings, on as fine as 1mm grid paper, each cell coloured he calulated in his mind, in sequential progress, prescribed to a formula set for each drawing, and an accompanying reciprocal image, time consuming, exact and detailed. I had the opportunity to meet him at his opening exhibition, and being a fractal enthusiast as well, it was just astounding and a joy, for him to show me, where amongst all the pattern and complexity of cells, in a single work of the entire exhibition, he had the ability to recognise and point out where he had made one lone cell a minor calculated mistake, just amazing. A great loss to the NZ, and International Art and Mathematics worlds, .. Martin, and his well travelled folder of drawings, will be remembered by many. Without any computational devices, other than his own brain, if there was anyone who discovered the secrets of order and chaos in mathematics , it was him.

[@jaddaj5881]

Don’t get it. First we don’t need cellular automata to understand how randomness comes from deterministic rules. Chaos theory is enough to establish and formalise such a connection. It seems he is saying the second law is only true because observers are computationally bounded, i.e., the second law isn’t a true statement about reality itself but rather some kind of observer dependent fiction. So when nobody is looking is it likely for the broken egg to jump back on the table and reassemble into an egg again?

[@RakibHasan-ee2cd]

His logic is flawed

[@blidardiapinal]

4:50 I would add that the arrow of time is produced by the expansion of the universe so maybe at an atomical level that phenomena is not influenced by that

[@reck0n3r]

*computational irreducibility intensifies*

[@russmarkham2197]

Conway's Game of Life tends to develop 4-way or 2-way symmetry because it evolves on a square lattice - a condition imposed at the start. It does not tend towards symmetry due to the second law of thermodynamics. I think that is B/S.

[@Lobo-tommy10]

Time is digestion of the observation taker.

[@WalterSamuels]

What about seed brute-forcing, but in reverse? I.e., start with a HUGE ridiculously long seed (perhaps a million digits of pi). And then playing pi backwards towards 3.14, and applying that seed to a set of rules, look for correlations of chaos -> order. Could it reveal anything useful or interesting?

[@jaybingham3711]

Each digit (each step) would involve huge (exponentially increasing) permutations. We aren't anywhere near having such processing capabilities. And ultimately it can only ever be but a crude approximation...even if we had the processing power of a Jupiter Brain. An interesting bit of intense modeling could be done..for sure. But still just as likely to be wildly off target of some unfathomable set of weird-ass actual initial conditions. And building an even bigger computer won't cut it either. Eventually its size will cause it to succumb to gravity and collapse into a black hole. All that work only to see your efforts still fall way, way short. Prior to imploding, that object would still be but a tiny blip in comparison to the entire universe...which we presume is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than what we can see (i.e., the 'meager' approximately 92bly diameter sphere we refer to as "our observable universe"). Not having access to the complete full topology of the entire universe...welp, that's more than a minor inconvenience. Our observable universe may just happen to be located in a section of the entire universe that is substantively different on average...hence, unwittingly materially handicapping us in our evaluation right out of the gate.

[@rickgoranowski9428]

Is there a connection between Rule 30 and Turing's 1954 speculation over how the tiger got its stripes?

[@sukatz]

Nice

[@UtilaReal]

I was thinking about the today. Entropy is a lack of understanding. I was watering grass on an inclined plane. As the water poured from the hose it was possible to see and predict the route of the water. The variables were three dimensionality, in the form of variations in grade and obstacles and saturation levels in the soil. It all made sense.. Entropy is only completely. Typing without glasses. God bless

[@n-digo]

This is a bunch of nonsense

[@prtauvers]

Maxwell’s Daemon is Computationally-Unbounded, but, thankfully, metaphysically impossible.

[@bat-amgalanbat-erdene2621]

Also one of the most fundamentally revealing rule that challenges the 2nd law of Thermodynamics is the rule number 34. You can google mathematician rule number 34 if you want.

[@jamesh318]

I’ve never heard Stephen mention John Conway, yet his work seems parallel and perhaps somewhat derivative. Obviously he’s gone much farther since then. Is it an ego thing or am I missing something?

[@dannyarcher6370]

Well, Conway himself didn't talk about his cellular automata as he came to despise them so... 🤷🏻‍♂

[@hocly22]

So did someone prove Rule 30 when they sent their work in to Stephen? Seems to me like Stephen slightly dodging the question

[@juneshasta]

The second law of thermodynamics turns out to be the way for our coherent existence. The middle column of Rule 30 may be the Ruliad flying out of the nest after a number of evolutions, inviting infinite things to discover.

[@animanaut]

i think all these "satisfying" videos scratch that itch. they show something predictable, something that goes back to order, something that is not supposed to happen and yet does

[@chrisrhome6638]

Is randomness actually perfection?

[@staskoNL]

❤

[@andrewferg8737]

"Nothin from Nothin leaves Nothin" (Billy Preston). To determine the initial conditions of a disordered state presupposes order, which equates to antinomies like "there is no truth". Reality is based on something, not nothing. Ipsum esse subsistens, ergo est. Esse est ipsum esse, ergo deus ipse est.

[@rolledoats9427]

But what is Rule 34 for cellular automata...?

[@rayaqin]

Rule 30 is a one-dimensional cellular automaton rule. The state of a cell in the next generation is determined by the states of the cell itself and its immediate neighbors in the previous generation, according to the following pattern: 111 => 0 110 => 0 101 => 0 100 => 1 011 => 1 010 => 1 001 => 1 000 => 0

[@eebamxela]

@@rayaqin I’m pretty sure rolledoats9427 is alluding to rule 34 from the “rules of the internet”. It’s something about porn.

[@mrmotl1]

What do you mean there's no version in which reality goes from disorder to order? It happens all the time, the main example being the pure noise of a solar system developing coherent planetary bodies and from that coherent life on top of that. How can anyone miss this reality? You must be looking at the rocks too much and forgetting about all the life that exists around it.

[@dannyarcher6370]

Wolfram is a god.

[@lucianmaximus4741]

RAPTURE444:360=1.23*MONAD

[@johnnyreggae969]

O yes I understand entropy now not