Here’s an interesting thought. What if you were told that everything in your life has already been planned out?
Even stranger, what if your past, present, and future are all happening right at this moment?
An astonishing new theory known as the “block universe” theory claims that time does not actually “flow like a river”, but rather, everything is ever-present.
Stephen Wolfram is at his jovial peak in this technical interview regarding the Wolfram Physics project (theory of everything).
Sponsors: https://brilliant.org/TOE for 20% off. http://algo.com for supply chain AI.
Link to the Wolfram project: https://www.wolframphysics.org/
Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal.
Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE
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Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-wit…1521758802
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e.
Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything.
Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction.
00:02:26 Behind the scenes.
00:04:00 Wolfram critiques are from people who haven’t read the papers (generally)
00:10:39 The Wolfram Model (Theory of Everything) overview in under 20 minutes.
00:29:35 Causal graph vs. multiway graph.
00:39:42 Global confluence and causal invariance.
00:44:06 Rulial space.
00:49:05 How to build your own Theory of Everything.
00:54:00 Computational reducibility and irreducibility.
00:59:14 Speaking to aliens / communication with other life forms.
01:06:06 Extra-terrestrials could be all around us, and we’d never see it.
01:10:03 Is the universe conscious? What is “intelligence”?
01:13:03 Do photons experience time? (in the Wolfram model)
01:15:07 “Speed of light” in rulial space.
01:16:37 Principle of computational equivalence.
01:21:13 Irreducibility vs undecidability and computational equivalence.
01:23:47 Is infinity “real”?
01:28:08 Discrete vs continuous space.
01:33:40 Testing discrete space with the cosmic background radiation (CMB)
01:34:35 Multiple dimensions of time.
01:36:12 Defining “beauty” in mathematics, as geodesics in proof space.
01:37:29 Particles are “black holes” in branchial space.
01:39:44 New Feynman stories about his abjuring of woo woo.
01:43:52 Holographic principle / AdS CFT correspondence, and particles as black holes.
01:46:38 Wolfram’s view on cryptocurrencies, and how his company trades in crypto [Amjad Hussain]
01:57:38 Einstein field equations in economics.
02:03:04 How to revolutionize a field of study as a beginner.
02:04:50 Bonus section of Curt’s thoughts and questions.
Just wrapped (April 2021) a documentary called Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of “when does the left go too far?” Visit that site if you’d like to watch it.
Imagine you are at a museum. After a long day admiring the exhibitions, you are exiting the museum. But to be able to get out, you will need to exit through the gift shop. The layout of the gift shop can be set up in several ways. Maybe you can take a short and direct path to the exit, maybe there are long winding corridors stuffed with merchandise you need to pass through. If you take the longer path, you are more likely to lose more of your money before you get outside. The scientists at the CMS collaboration have recently observed a similar phenomenon in high-energy heavy ion collisions, as those illustrated in the event display.
The life of the tiniest particles making up ordinary matter — quarks and gluons — is governed by the laws of quantum chromodynamics. These laws require quarks and gluons to form bound states, like protons and neutrons, under normal conditions. However, conditions like in the early universe, when the energy density and temperature far exceeded those of ordinary matter, can be achieved in giant particle accelerators. In the Large Hadron Collider at CERN this is done by colliding lead nuclei that are accelerated close to the speed of light. In these conditions, a new state of matter, called the quark-gluon plasma, is formed for a tiny fraction of a second. This new state of matter is special, since within the volume of the matter, quarks and gluons act as free particles, without the need to form bound states.
Figure 1: A schematic presentation of a non-central (left) and central (right) heavy ion collision. The outlines of the ions are presented by dashed lines, while the overlap region in which the quark-gluon plasma is produced is colored in orange. The red star shows a position where two quarks might scatter, and green and blue arrows are alternative paths the scattered quark can take to escape the quark-gluon plasma.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will offer advanced 4-nanometer chips when its new $12 billion plant in Arizona opens in 2024, an upgrade from its previous public statements, after US customers such as Apple Inc. pushed the company to do so, according to people familiar with the matter.
25 years ago, the film Contact made its theatrical debut starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and told the story of Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) who picked up a radio signal from the star Vega and how this discovery impacted not just herself, but humanity as a whole. Over time, she discovers the signal has embedded instructions sent by the aliens to build a device capable of sending one person into outer space, presumably to meet the Vegans.
The device is built, and she is eventually hurled through a series of outer space tunnels where she meets an alien in the form of her long-deceased father. Right before she’s sent back home, the alien informs her, “This was just a first step. In time you’ll take another.” When she awakens, her colleagues inform her the pod she sat in fell straight through the device and she never actually left. With no hard evidence of both her travels and meeting the aliens, Eleanor is left scrutinized by both the public and Congress. She is ultimately given a “healthy grant” to fund further research into finding more signals from ET, and the film ends with her pondering her journey to the stars.
While some moviegoers were bummed that they didn’t see the aliens—who instead downloaded Jodie Foster’s consciousness so they could talk to her easier—the important message of the film, and the book that it’s based on, is to persevere, but also knowing there will be hardships and sacrifices along the way. In the case of Eleanor, she loses her father at a very young age who had gotten her hooked on astronomy. Later, she passes on love with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) to remain in pursuit of her research, all while consistently being roadblocked by her former boss. And even after she reaches her goal of contacting the aliens who sent the message, she’s still scrutinized and ridiculed.
“Houston, we have a new record.”
NASA’s Artemis I Orion capsule broke a new spaceflight record. The uncrewed Orion reached a distance from Earth of 249,666 miles (from 401,798 kilometers) on Saturday, November 26, at 10:17 am. ET, meaning it surpassed a record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 for the furthest distance traveled from Earth by a spacecraft designed to carry humans.
NASA’s Orion spacecraft broke a massive record.
The previous record was set by Apollo 13’s crewed Odyssey command module in 1970 when it traveled 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth. Orion crossed that threshold at 8:40 am. ET on November 26 before going on to extend the record.
NASA/Liam Yanulis.
The uncrewed Orion reached a distance from Earth of 249,666 miles (from 401,798 kilometers) on Saturday, November 26, at 10:17 am. ET, meaning it surpassed a record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 for the furthest distance traveled from Earth by a spacecraft designed to carry humans.
Vitaly Vanchurin, physicist and cosmologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth speaks to Luis Razo Bravo of EISM about the world as a neural network, machine learning, theories of everything, interpretations of quantum mechanics and long-term human survival.
Timestamp of the conversation:
00:00 — Opening quote by Vanchurin.
00:53 — Introduction to Vanchurin.
03:17 — Vanchurin’s thoughts about human extinction.
05:56 — Brief background on Vanchurin’s research interests.
10:24 — How Vanchurin became interested in neural networks.
12:31 — How quantum mechanics can be used to understand neural networks.
18:56 — How and where does gravity fit into Vanchurin’s model?
20:39 — Does Vanchurin incorporate holography (AdS/CFT) into hid model?
24:14 — Maybe the entirety of physics is an “emergent” neural network.
28:08 — Maybe there are forms of life that are more fit to survive than humans.
28:58 — Maldacena’s “principle of Maximal life“
29:28 — Theories of Everything.
31:06 — Why Vanchurin’s framework is potentially a true TOE (politics, ethics, etc.)
34:07 — Why physicists don’t like to talk to philosophers and ask big questions.
36:45 — Why the growing number of theories of everything?
39:11 — Apart from his own, does Vanchurin have a favorite TOE?
41:26 — Bohmian mechanics and Aharanov’s Two-time approach to quantum mechanics.
43:53 — How has Vanchurin’s recent paper been received? Beliefs about peer review.
46:03 — Connecting Vanchurin’s work to machine learning and recommendations.
49:21 — Leonard Susskind, quantum information theory, and complexity.
51:23 — Maybe various proposals are looking at the same thing from different angles.
52:17 — How to follow Vanchurin’s work and connect to him.
Vanchurin’s paper on the world as a NN: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01540
Vanchurin on a theory of machine learning: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.
Vanchurin’s website and research interests: https://www.d.umn.edu/cosmology/
Learn more about EISM at www.eism.eu.
SPEAKING at the University of Cambridge in 1980, Stephen Hawking considered the possibility of a theory of everything that would unite general relativity and quantum mechanics – our two leading descriptions of reality – into one neat, all-encompassing equation. We would need some help, he reckoned, from computers. Then he made a provocative prediction about these machines’ growing abilities. “The end might not be in sight for theoretical physics,” said Hawking. “But it might be in sight for theoretical physicists.”
Artificial intelligence has achieved much since then, yet physicists have been slow to use it to search for new and deeper laws of nature. It isn’t that they fear for their jobs. Indeed, Hawking may have had his tongue firmly in his cheek. Rather, it is that the deep-learning algorithms behind AIs spit out answers that amount to a “what” rather than a “why”, which makes them about as useful for a theorist as saying the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is 42.
The search continues for signs of ancient alien life on the red planet.
NASA’s Perseverance mission on Mars has performed several world firsts, including the first controlled flight on another planet and the first extraction of oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.
New Mars findings point to ancient alien life.
NASA / JPL-Caltech.
The mission also confirmed once and for all last year that the Jezero Crater on Mars was once a massive lake. Now, a new study shows that organic molecules featured abundantly in these waters. The findings provide compelling evidence that life may have once existed on the red planet, as per a report by IFLScience.
Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? The expansive force of the universe, dark energy, for example, is much weaker than theory suggests it should be—allowing matter to clump together rather than being ripped apart.
A common answer is that we live in an infinite multiverse of universes, so we shouldn’t be surprised that at least one universe has turned out as ours. But another is that our universe is a computer simulation, with someone (perhaps an advanced alien species) fine-tuning the conditions.
The latter option is supported by a branch of science called information physics, which suggests that space-time and matter are not fundamental phenomena. Instead, the physical reality is fundamentally made up of bits of information, from which our experience of space-time emerges. By comparison, temperature “emerges” from the collective movement of atoms. No single atom fundamentally has temperature.
