Mindscape 155 | Stephen Wolfram on Computation, Hypergraphs, and Fundamental Physics

It’s not easy, figuring out the fundamental laws of physics. It’s even harder when your chosen methodology is to essentially start from scratch, positing a simple underlying system and a simple set of rules for it, and hope that everything we know about the world somehow pops out. That’s the project being undertaken by Stephen Wolfram and his collaborators, who are working with a kind of discrete system called “hypergraphs.” We talk about what the basic ideas are, why one would choose this particular angle of attack on fundamental physics, and how ideas like quantum mechanics and general relativity might emerge from this simple framework.

Stephen Wolfram received his Ph.D. in physics from Caltech. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, and the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language. Among his awards are a MacArthur Fellowship. Among his books is A New Kind of Science. He recently launched the Wolfram Physics Project.

#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[jtetrfs]

This is an excellent episode--no matter your position in branchial space.

[bitdribble]

Great interview in that Sean Carroll is letting his guest speak, even when he might have his own ideas

[spsmith]

I remember seeing a demo of Mathematica in the early 90s. It seemed like magic. I could not believe they were doing what they were doing on the computer hardware they had to work with back then. It was mind blowing.

[davealaya]

Take a drink everytime Wolfram says "fuzzics" and by the end of this episode you will be a hypergraph.

[russellvarriale]

You guys MUST do a followup to this. So much more to explore. Would loved to hear more about testable predictions like the affect of dimensional cooling on the CMB! Awesome stuff.

[ivocanevo]

Absolutely next level. Whether or not he's right — and I'm not saying he isn't — this is the sort of perspective we need to answer the deepest questions.

[StrawhatBunny]

Two of my favorite modern day physicists having a talk - really looking forward to this!

[johndaly]

Very technical conversation that was difficult to follow at times, but it's good someone is thinking outside the box on something so fundamental. I hope Sean goes on Wolfram's podcast.

[spsmith]

1:33:20 I love the analogy that trying to derive Einstein's equations from hypergraphs is like trying to derive fluid dynamics from molecular dynamics.

[TheMrMxyspptlk]

What I love of this talk is that no philosophical or metaphysical topic is feared.

[alexwilson]

Been waiting for this episode for 9 months. I’m beyond grateful, Sean. I’ve only listened to it 4 times so far, hoping to reach 10x for full comprehension.

[matthewrossmann]

This is probably the best one yet. The development of of an SHO in a universe with closed time like curves sent chills down my spine.

[Utopian]

This video made me reach the valley on the Dunning Kreuger graph

[TheMemesofDestruction]

Between your lectures and Professor Wolfram’s Q&A’s I have learned so much! Thank you.

[elwood.downey]

Best episode I've listened to, bar none. On the bleeding edge, but not crazy. Many thanks.

[kalpanaji]

Thanks, Sean and Wolfram. I will have to watch this many times, to consume correctly.

[Telemahk]

My mind felt completely splitted into different branchial spaces listening to Steven Wolfram

[Bobbias]

So, I've listened to all the episodes of the greatest ideas series, have spent hours on Wikipedia reading whatever I could understand and following links down rabbit holes. And more recently I've been trying to get a grasp on the concepts of category theory, type theory, lambda calculus, Compiler design, and graph visualization (motivated by being able to visualize the algebra over some types/functions in a program).

I definitely got the basic gist of things, and I've got to say I like this theory more than I expected going in. While I couldn't even begin to work out any of the math involved here, I feel like I have a reasonably good sense of what this theory looks like conceptually.

It's absolutely incredible to get such a long deep dive into the weeds on how things actually work in the theory rather than just glossing over the underlying mechanics.

[SandipChitale]

This episode would have really benifited from visuals as the whole idea of nodes, graphs, distances between nodes and ancestry in branchial space is very visual. The lack of visuals hindred the comprehension of Stephen's explanation.

[rossHemsley]

Wolfram's ideas can sometimes feel a bit like "a solo mission diving down a rabbit hole"; but on the other hand, there are some quite attractive ideas mixed in.

The idea of using the tools from theories of computation to reason about physics is somehow quite natural and has a nice "Occam's razor" feel to it,
it feels like his guiding thought is "I should be able to write a program that describes the evolution of the universe, it should be a short one, and in fact that program is the best way to understand what the universe is doing"... Then again, perhaps I fully misunderstand :)