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The Last Theory is an easy-to-follow exploration of what might be the last theory of physics. In 2020, Stephen Wolfram launched the Wolfram Physics Project to find the elusive fundamental theory that explains everything. On The Last Theory podcast, I investigate the implications of Wolfram's ideas and dig into the details of how his universe works. Join me for fresh insights into Wolfram Physics every other week.
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I’ve heard from many of you that you’d like the whole of my conversation with Jonathan Gorard in a single podcast. So here it is, the complete first interview. These three hours are a brilliant exposition of Wolfram Physics from a figure whose contributions to the project are second to none. — Jonathan Gorard Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics …
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You like Stephen Wolfram, right? I mean, if he’s to be believed, he has reinvented physics, not to mention philosophy. How could you not like such a thinker? Well... it turns out that there are plenty of people who don’t like Stephen Wolfram... or his physics... or his philosophy. Here are four criticisms of Stephen Wolfram I regularly hear... ...a…
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In this final excerpt from our conversation in October 2022, Jonathan Gorard explains how ideas from Wolfram Physics can be applied in fields beyond physics, including biology, chemistry and mathematics. He describes the concept of compositionality, and digs deeper into why the hypergraph is able to model so much of our universe. — Jonathan Gorard …
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You know who Stephen Wolfram is, right? Whether you love him or, you know, don’t love him, there’s no denying that Stephen Wolfram has founded a host of fascinating projects... most of them named Wolfram-something-or-other. What are all these Wolfram-branded projects? Who is Stephen Wolfram? — Some of the things Stephen Wolfram created: 1987 Wolfra…
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I asked Jonathan Gorard the question I’m asked the most: can the Wolfram model make testable predictions about reality, predictions that differ from those of general relativity and quantum mechanics, predictions that might prove that Wolfram Physics is right? Jonathan showed how the Wolfram model might shed light on some of the most mysterious phen…
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The Open Web Mind is a protocol for shared human intelligence, based on the knowledge hypergraph. Take a look at this quick introduction for subscribers to The Last Theory, then jump to the 2-minute trailer on the new channel. And if you haven’t done so already, make sure to subscribe to the new Open Web Mind channel, podcast and newsletter. If you…
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How big are electrons compared to the hypergraph? Is one electron formed of 10 nodes, or 10100 nodes? And if it’s 10100 nodes, might it prove impossible to simulate an electron on any computer we can possibly imagine? When I asked Jonathan Gorard this question, he took us on a tour of the scales of the universe, from the Planck scale to the Hubble …
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What if you’re inside a universe, and you want to measure the curvature of space? It’s important because getting a measure of the curvature of the hypergraph takes us one step further in Jonathan Gorard’s derivation of General Relativity from Wolfram Physics. Einstein’s equations relate the curvature of space to the presence of matter. So if we’re …
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In this excerpt from my conversation with Jonathan Gorard, he proposes that particles in Wolfram Physics might be persistent topological obstructions in the hypergraph. He starts with a toy model in which elementary particles are non-planar tangles moving and interacting in an otherwise planar hypergraph. But he doesn’t stop there. He explains that…
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What if you’re inside a universe, and you want to know whether space is curved? The reason I’m asking is that according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, our universe is curved, by the presence of matter. If Wolfram Physics is to be a true model of our universe, then the space represented by the hypergraph must also be curved by the prese…
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I asked Jonathan Gorard what it felt like when he realized that general relativity can be derived from the hypergraph. His answer took us in an unexpected direction. If the Wolfram model is to be an accurate model of our universe, then it must give us the Einstein equations. But what if any old model with any old rules can give us the Einstein equa…
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In my exploration of Wolfram Physics, I’ve come across one objection more than any other. Over and over again, people have told me that the Wolfram model must be rejected because it makes no predictions. I could respond by saying that Wolfram Physics does make predictions. It predicts Einstein’s equations. It predicts Schrödinger’s equation. But it…
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Here’s a masterclass from Jonathan Gorard. One of the most compelling results to come out of the Wolfram Physics is Jonathan’s derivation of the Einstein equations from the hypergraph. Whenever I hear anyone criticize the Wolfram model for bearing no relation to reality, I tell them this: Jonathan Gorard has proved that general relativity can be de…
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Here’s the first of two crucial excerpts from my conversation with Jonathan Gorard. The core idea of Wolfram Physics is that we can model the universe as a hypergraph. If we want this idea to be taken seriously, we’re going to have to derive physics from the hypergraph. The twin pillars of physics, as we know it, are quantum mechanics and general r…
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You know peer review, right? It’s the way academics check each other’s research papers. It ensures that only the good ones are published and prevents the bad ones from getting through. Right? Wrong. Peer review does precisely the opposite of what you think it does. It prevents the good papers from being published, and ensures that only the bad ones…
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“Sorry, this is now getting very metaphysical,” says Jonathan Gorard part way through this excerpt from our conversation. We start by talking about applying more than one rule to the hypergraph to create rulial multiway systems. This takes us part way towards applying every possible rule, in other words, towards the ruliad. We move on to the idea o…
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It’s pretty easy to see how three-dimensional space might arise from Wolfram Physics. The hypergraph kinda looks like space, and, for some rules, it kinda looks like it’s three-dimensional. But our universe isn’t just empty three-dimensional space. It’s mostly empty space, but there are also particles moving through that space: photons, neutrinos, …
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In the early days of the Wolfram Physics Project, Stephen Wolfram seemed to be seeking a single rule that, when applied to the hypergraph, could generate our universe. More recently, however, Wolfram has promoted the idea of the ruliad, the application of every possible rule to the hypergraph. So I asked Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the…
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John von Neumann might be the most important figure in Wolfram Physics prehistory. Whenever any of the most important prerequisites to Wolfram Physics were happening – quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, Turing machines, electronic computers, cellular automata – John von Neumann always seemed to be there. How did John von Neumann always come to be …
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The Wolfram model allows an infinite number of rules. Some of these rules generate interesting universes that are complex and connected, some of these rules generate plausible universes that look a little like our own, and others... go nowhere. In this excerpt from my conversation with Jonathan Gorard, I ask him how to find rules of Wolfram Physics…
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The twentieth century was a truly exciting time in physics. From 1905 to 1973, we made extraordinary progress probing the mysteries of the universe: special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, the structure of the atom, the structure of the nucleus, enumerating the elementary particles. Then, in 1973, this extraordinary progress... s…
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Causal invariance is a crucial characteristic for any rule of Wolfram Physics. According to Wolfram MathWorld, if a rule is causally invariant, then “no matter which evolution is chosen for a system, the history is the same, in the sense that the same events occur and they have the same causal relationships.” Causal invariance is one of the assumpt…
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Now that I’ve introduced you to the different kinds of edges that might make up a hypergraph – unary, binary and ternary edges, as well as loops and self-loops – we can have some fun. Some of rules in the Wolfram model give rise to fascinating universes. Today, I’m going to show you a few rules that seem to fabricate space itself in much the same w…
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Dugan Hammock creates beautiful animations of three-dimensional cross-sections through four-dimensional spaces. But his animations aren’t mere mathematical abstractions. He has also applied his geometrical skills to animating the hypergraph of Wolfram Physics, in such a way that it doesn’t jump from frame to frame. In this second part of my recent …
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Causal invariance is one of the most important concepts in the Wolfram model... and one of the most difficult to capture. So I really wanted to hear Jonathan Gorard’s take on it. In this excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan addresses the differences between causal invariance and confluence. Causal invariance means that regardless of the order in…
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So many of the most complex and most promising graphs and hypergraphs of Wolfram Physics involve loops and self-loops. They can play a crucial role in the evolution of graphs and hypergraphs... which means that they might play a crucial role in the evolution of the universe itself. Loops and self-loops matter, because including them in our models r…
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Dugan Hammock lives in the fourth dimension. As Jonathan Gorard mentioned in our recent conversation on How to draw the hypergraph in Wolfram Physics, Dugan has worked on plotting the evolution of the hypergraph over time. We get into that in the second part of our conversation, but in this first part, I get to know Dugan as a mathematician and art…
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Computational irreducibility means that there are no shortcuts when we apply rules to the hypergraph. I used to think that our existing theories of physics, such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, were examples of computational reducibility: shortcuts that allow us to make higher-level generalizations about how the application of rules to…
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There are two questions about Wolfram Physics I’m asked a lot: What’s beyond the hypergraph? And what’s between the nodes and edges of the hypergraph? There’s a simple answer to this question. Nothing. There’s nothing beyond the hypergraph. There’s nothing beyond the universe. But it’s not a very effective answer. So here’s a deeper response to the…
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The hypergraph is the universe. So if we want to see the universe, we need only draw the hypergraph. The question is: how? The nodes and edges of the hypergraph are determined by the rules of Wolfram Physics. But how we draw those nodes and edges is not determined. The drawing of the hypergraph is not the universe, it’s just a way of visualizing th…
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What is the Big Bang in Wolfram Physics? There’s a straightforward answer to that question. It’s the point in the evolution of the universe where the hypergraph goes from nothing to something. It’s the start of the explosion that eventually yields the uncountable particles, planets, stars and galaxies of our universe. So that’s pretty straightforwa…
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Here’s a slightly technical question: Does Wolfram Physics really need hypergraphs? Or could it based on graphs instead? Jonathan Gorard shares some interesting insights into the evolution of Stephen Wolfram’s model for a fundamental theory of physics. Wolfram started with trivalent graphs, in which each edge joins two nodes, and each node has thre…
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I’ve been blown away by your response to The Last Theory in 2022. How am I going to thank you for reading, listening, watching and subscribing? Well, by bringing you more Wolfram Physics in the New Year, that’s how. Here are 7 directions I want to take The Last Theory in 2023. — I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here. The full article…
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Wolfram Physics is based on hypergraphs. Why? What is it about hypergraphs that might make them a better model of the universe than, say, strings of characters, or cellular automata, or Turing machines? When I asked Jonathan Gorard this question, he gave an answer that was deeply insightful. It’s such a core question, so fundamental to why we shoul…
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For the last few hundred years, all our theories of physics have been mathematical. If Stephen Wolfram is right, from now on, our most fundamental theories of physics may be computational. This shift from mathematics to computation feels to me like a scientific revolution. Recently, I asked Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of T…
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Jonathan Gorard admits that it was a risk, for his academic career, to work on the Wolfram Physics project. In this third excerpt from my recent conversation with Jonathan, I asked him how he thought about that risk and why he decided to take it. He told me that the opportunity to work with Stephen Wolfram on this new model is a bit like being give…
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In Episode 15: Where to apply Wolfram’s rules? (listen to the audio ⋅ watch the video ⋅ read the article) I introduced a radical idea. When we’re applying a rule to a graph in Wolfram Physics, there are generally many possible places in the graph we could apply the rule, giving us many possible next states of the universe. Here’s the radical idea: …
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This is the second of a series of excerpts from my recent conversation with Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of The Wolfram Physics Project. I asked Jonathan why he found the computational approach to physics so compelling. In his answer, he broached a wide range of fascinating topics in the philosophy of science: how we moved …
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In my conversation with Jonathan Gorard about the founding of the Wolfram Physics Project, I said that I don’t like String Theory. Now, I’ll admit, I don’t really understand String Theory. It’s highly mathematical. And I’m not much of a mathematician. Actually, that’s an understatement. I’m not a mathematician at all. So if there’s a problem in the…
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In 2019, Jonathan Gorard and Max Piskunov goaded Stephen Wolfram into pursuing his ideas for a new kind of science. This led to the announcement of The Wolfram Physics Project in 2020. Last week, I talked to Jonathan Gorard about the revolutionary ideas that have come out of the project. In this first excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan talks a…
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Wolfram Physics models the universe as a hypergraph. Maybe I’m just seeing things, but it seems to me that hypergraphs are everywhere: physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, ecology, sociology, technology. What I want to know is: Why? Why are hypergraphs everywhere? — Molecular structure Styrene-butadiene chain2 by Guido Raos, professor of chemist…
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As you’ll know from Episode 8: Where’s the computer that runs the universe? ( read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch ), I have my doubts about the existence of a computer that’s whirring away, applying Wolfram’s rules to Wolfram’s graphs, performing the computations required to run our universe. This computer, if it exists, is necessarily invisible to us, and as I …
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Here are answers to some fundamental questions about hypergraphs: A hyperedge can connect any number of nodes: one, two, three, four, seventeen or any other number. And a hypergraph can include any of these different kinds of hyperedge, or all of them. Let’s take a look at what this means for Wolfram Physics... and at some of the beautiful hypergra…
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In previous episodes, I’ve been simulating Wolfram Physics using graphs. But you may have come across simulations of Wolfram Physics using hypergraphs. What’s the difference? What is a hypergraph? — This epsiode refers to previous episodes on dimensionality: How to measure the dimensionality of the universe audio ⋅ video ⋅ article Are Wolfram’s gra…
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Confession time: I haven’t been entirely honest with you about applying a rule to a graph in Wolfram Physics. I’ve explained precisely how to apply a rule, but I’ve been strangely silent when it comes to where to apply the rule. I know, it’s unlike me to be silent, right? Time to come clean. It turns out that the question of where to apply Wolfram’…
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In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein combined the three dimensions of space with the one dimension of time in what we now know as Einstein’s equations. Ever since, physicists have thought of space and time as effectively the same thing: components of four-dimensional space-time. This might be the biggest blunder physicists have ever made. …
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We’re used to thinking of space as continuous. A stone can be anywhere in space. It can be here. Or it can be an inch to the left. Or it can be half an inch further to the left. Or it can be an infinitesimal fraction of an inch even further to the left. Space is infinitely divisible. The graphs of Wolfram Physics, however, are discrete. If, as Step…
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We humans have always been fond of invisible things. Poltergeists, fairies, unicorns, the Yeti, the Lost City of Atlantis. Just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Scientists, no less than any other humans, suffer from this fondness for invisible things. Phlogiston, miasma, ether, strings. Just because you can’t see them,…
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We know what it means when we say that our universe is three-dimensional: it means that we can move in three orthogonal directions: left-right; up-down; forwards-backwards. But what would it mean to say that a universe is 2½-dimensional? Or 3.37-dimensional? Or 9-dimensional? When I measured the dimensionality one of Wolfram’s graphs, I found it to…
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Are Wolfram’s graphs three-dimensional? In Episode #009: How to measure the dimensionality of the universe – watch the video or read the article – I introduced a mathematically-minded crab, which was able to determine the dimensionality of its universe by measuring how much space it covered moving different distances in every possible direction. No…
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