Stephen Wolfram on AI, human-like minds & formal knowledge

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 lifetime building computational towers of such knowledge.He proposes that Large Language Models might serve as interfaces to formal knowledge. He warns, however, that much of this knowledge might be inaccessible to minds like ours.To illustrate the difficulty, Stephen contrasts the 50,000 or so concepts to which we humans have assigned words, such as “cat” and “dog”, with the infinite variability an AI can generate, both within human concepts and in the interconcept space in between.Tying this back to physics, Stephen Wolfram posits that the concepts of space, time, energy, etc. we have internalized occupy only a tiny part of the ruliad.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordRelated writings from StephenGenerative AI Space and the Mental Imagery of Alien MindsHow to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and EverythingThe Concept of the RuliadMore on knowledge hypergraphs at Open Web Mind:Open Web MindOpen Web Mind YouTube channelSign up for my newsletter—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 find ourselves frozen, unable to form a classical thought.In just five minutes, Stephen not only introduces the possibility of multiple threads of experience in a single mind, he also succeeds in weaving in diverse topics from quantum computing to societal decision-making.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordConcepts mentioned by StephenQuantum computingDistributed computingEvent horizons and entanglement horizonsBranchial space—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 is blinding us to the true nature of space and everything in it.—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 here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 possibility that different branches of history can merge, in other words, come back together again. This failure is rooted in assumption that the universe is continuous; as soon as we start thinking of the universe as discrete, such merging seems not only possible, but inevitable.He went on to consider the concept of causal invariance, the idea that it doesn’t matter which of countless similar paths you take through the multiway graph, you end up in the same place. In the Ruliad, he said, causal invariance is inevitable.Then we got to the core of the concept of the observer. According to Stephen Wolfram, an observer equivalences many different states and experiences the aggregate of these states.I did not expect Stephen’s next move, to apply the concept of aggregation not just to observers, but to the universe itself.He made the profound proposal that in the Wolfram model of physics, in addition to the computation of the hypergraph through the application of rules, there’s a process of aggregation of possible paths through the multiway graph to weave the future.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordConcepts mentioned by StephenMany Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanicsComputational irreducibilityCausal invarianceThe RuliadSequentializationEquivalencing—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 Stephen Wolfram about this strangest of consequences of a branching universe.Through all this splitting and coming-back-together, how can I remain a single, coherent, persistent consciousness?Stephen’s answer takes us through branchial space to quantum computing, the maximum entanglement speed and the elementary length.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordConcepts mentioned by StephenEquivalencing or coarse-grainingBranchial spaceCoherence timeInfrageometryGeneral relativityQuantum mechanicsStatistical mechanicsQuantum computingDecoherence timeEuclidean geometryRiemannian geometryCategory theoryMaximum entanglement speedElementary time and lengthPeople mentioned by StephenEuclidAlbert Einstein—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 causal invariance? video ⋅ podcast ⋅ articleCausality ain’t what you think it is video ⋅ podcast ⋅ article—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 here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 the deepest: is there an objective reality?—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community Discord—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 incompatible as they’ve so long seemed.In this first excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, he tells the story of how he came to apply hypergraphs and hypergraph rewriting rules to the universe itself, and arrived at the first traces of a path towards what might be the last theory of physics.—Stephen WolframStephen WolframThe Wolfram Physics ProjectWolfram InstituteWolfram Institute Community DiscordPeople mentioned by StephenMax PiskunovJonathan Gorard—The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web MindI release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

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 article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.