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 the universe a far more interesting prospect.

And if we were able to hold multiple paths through the multiway graph in our minds at the same time, we’d have multiple threads of experience... and some complicated conversations!

We think the way we think because we are the way we are... if we were much larger-scale, much smaller-scale or if we had multiway minds, then we’d think very differently.

And this has some serious consequences, Stephen suggests, in fields as diverse as molecular biology and parallel computing.

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

Credits

• Fullerene by YassineMrabet licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 relative scale along which we can measure what happens when according to a tiny clock in each and every reference frame.

Either way, we must assume an axis of time.

Wolfram Physics, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to make anyassumptions about time.

We need only posit the application of rules to the nodes and edges of the hypergraph, and time emerges.

The evolution of the hypergraph is time...

...which gives us a profound clue, not just to the nature of time, but to the nature of the universe.

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References

• The canonical mass of a neutron star is 1.4 solar masses
• The mass of the Sun is 1.988416 × 10^30 kg
• The mass of a neutron is 1.67492750056(85) × 10^-27 kg
• So the number of neutrons in a neutron star, assuming neutron stars are made entirely of neutrons (which they’re not), is 1.4 × 1.988416 × 10^30 kg / 1.67492750056(85) × 10^-27 kg ~ 10^57

Credits

• Pulsar animation by Michael Kramer licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
• Retina image by د.مصطفى الجزار licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

The full article is here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 alien?

Stephen Wolfram explores some of the mind-bending implications of different regions of the ruliad giving rise to different experiences of the universe.

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Stephen Wolfram

• Stephen Wolfram
• The Wolfram Physics Project
• Wolfram Institute
• Wolfram Institute Community Discord

References

• Ruliad definition
• Ruliad article

—

The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.