The Last Theory

Stephen Wolfram is an extraordinary thinker.
He doesn’t seem to think like other scientists. He doesn’t seem to think like other technologists. And he certainly doesn’t think like an academic.
So I asked him how he thinks. How does he have all the ideas I’ve been exploring at The Last Theory?
Here are 10 ways to have big ideas, derived from Stephen’s answer:
Drill down to the foundations
Experiment with your ideas
Try to understand your findings
Have the humility to doubt your expectations
Have the confidence to push ahead regardless
Explain your ideas to others
Discuss your ideas with others
Get to know when an idea will take flight
Don’t miss a step: imagine, experiment, explain
Visualize your ideas
—
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram
The Wolfram Physics Project
Wolfram Institute
Wolfram Institute Community Discord
Concept mentioned by Stephen
Computational irreducibility
—
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.

If physics is computational, then what gets computed when?
This is a surprisingly deep question.
The seemingly even computation of the universe gives us a clue, not just to the nature of time, but to the nature of the universe.
And it leads us to a wider question:
Why are we in the universe we’re in?
Let me introduce you to three different answers to that question... sodifferent that they don’t even agree on whether one universe exists, or every possible universe exists.
—
References
Anthropic Principle
Credits
Image of Messier 101 galaxy by ESA/Hubble licensed under CC BY 4.0
Image of galaxies by NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team licensed under CC BY 4.0
Retina image by د.مصطفى الجزار licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
—
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.

Stephen Wolfram has many philosophical ideas, but I’ve not heard him talk about pure philosophy.
When I asked him about the relationship between physics and philosophy, I understood why.
Stephen revealed that he’s much more at home in the concrete world of computer experiments than in the arguments of the philosophers.
“When I look at the arguments,” he says, “I can’t tell if they make sense or not. There’s too much wiggling...”
—

Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram
The Wolfram Physics Project
Wolfram Institute
Wolfram Institute Community Discord
People and concepts mentioned by Stephen
Immanuel Kant
Kant’s antinomies
Computational equivalence
The Ruliad
The Concept of the Ruliad
—
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.

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.
—
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
—
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.
—
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
—
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.