Stephen Wolfram | My Discovery Changes Everything

(Episode 388)

Has the second law of thermodynamics finally been proven?

The second law of thermodynamics has been shrouded in mystery for a century and a half. Now, after building on the recent breakthroughs in the foundations of physics, Stephen Wolfram has finally provided a resolution to the mystery.

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research and the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, and Wolfram Language. Over the course of 4 decades, he has pioneered the development & application of computational thinking. He has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions & innovations in science, technology, and business.

In this in-depth interview, he shares his findings, shines a light on some of the most misunderstood concepts in physics, and answers some of our most pressing questions about the nature of the second law, entropy, and the dark side of the universe.

Tune in!

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Key Takeaways:

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:31 Judging a book by its cover
00:10:33 Proving the second law of thermodynamics
00:14:44 What is time?
00:18:05 What is temperature?
00:30:30 The role of the observer
00:45:17 What do we know about dark matter so far?
00:54:26 Black hole entropy
01:03:31 Classical mechanics vs. quantum mechanics
01:15:41 The consequences of dimension fluctuations in physics
01:24:00 Questions from the audience
01:35:00 Outro

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Please watch: "Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Plays the Race Card!"
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[Appleblade]

For the ChatGPT points: It doesn't work... even at a quite basic logical level... for reasoning. I asked Chat to create a Venn Diagram for a categorical argument I knew to be invalid. It failed immediately, directing me to represent All S are P by placing a P circle inside an S circle, rather than the other way round. It only got worse from there. Pretty bad when an AI has no real I.

[bertpineapple]

Wolfram impresses me more each year. His sense of adventure coupled with that intellect is formidable. I am excited to see where he may be going.

[CalinColdea]

It feels surreal to live in a time when you can listen&watch such amazing individuals, so casually. 🤔

[kenw]

first discoverded wolfram in grad school at osu in late 90s. had to use maple symbolic manipulator and dipped into mathmatica. what a powerful program. wolfram is such a fire eater and a workhorse. he never settles on status quo.

[davemathews]

Wolfram is just amazing in that he can both brilliantly push the boundaries of scientific exploration AND explain what he is doing and thinking in the most clear and simple terms. My intuition is that people decades from now will still be discovering and acknowledging the brilliance of Wolfram's ideas.

[yeti]

I always find Wolfram to be a most fascinating scholar. 6 books during the covid is just a simple example of his monumental intellect. His confidence in taking on the entire physics in a both macro and micro way is daring. I find him very genuine. I would love to see a few numerical calculations and values coming out of his computation.

[DingbatToast]

I missed the bit where he changed EVERYTHING. It doesn't surprise me that he has written so many books as he has a real talent for saying a lot without conveying any new information.

[andreworlowski]

This is one of my top 5 channels I watch and has been inching its way closer to the top the more i watch. I don't work for free. And i dont expect others to work for free. I have happily subscribed. Its literally the least I could do for cutting edge info.

[rajdeepbosemondal]

Fascinating discussion with Dr. Stephen Wolfram! The insight into the computational nature of time and the second law is mind-boggling. The concept that you can't cheat the passage of time due to computational irreducibility adds a unique perspective. Looking forward to diving deeper into Wolfram Physics.

[justinrose]

Wolfram just about became consequential historically, but he stopped somewhere when he decided he had it all figured out, and shuts down other ideas that could even help his theory, because of his pride. Donald Hoffman's take on conscious agents for instance. I don't think Hoffman has the whole story either, but what's disconcerting about characters like Stephen is that they really think they have the whole story before they turn the caulculations and microscopes on themselves, potentially revealing not-so-hidden egotistical and personal-identity-bolstering reasons they're trying to climb the ladder of science and justifying stepping on the knuckles of those below them out of fear of being overtaken. He talks alot about the "young people" he brings in and how they're all working on "our" project. Its not a group project, sounds more like Stephen is relying on the gullibility and inexperience of youth to prop up his claims of greatness. You almost had it, then you went and tried to make an ideology out of your theory.

[turnabol]

I’m so grateful to have access to conversations like this at my fingertips. Thank you both for your scientific contributions and even more for taking on the burden of being public intellectuals.

[sMVshortMusicVideos]

Wolfram's life history is so fascinating and everything he does is so above the average genius..

[franciserdman]

No. He only pushes it back one level. He basically says (based on another interview I saw of him), that entropy increases due to "irreducible computational complexity". This might be true, sure, but another way to say "irreducible computational complexity" is that P (polynomial time complexity space) does not equal NP (non-deterministic polynomial time complexity space). So if he is saying entropy increases due to computational complexity, he is really saying entropy increases because P != NP, which, infamously, has yet to be proven. I don't necessarily disagree with him even - I myself have suspected a link between computational complexity and entropy, but he has not really solved the problem, just pushed it back one level. It is generally agreed that existing math (Set theory etc.) won't be able to solve P /= NP. I think homotopy type theory is promising for re-writing physics in one day, so maybe this will eventually shed light on computational complexity, but I'm not expert to be able to comment. So, basically, while it is clever suggestion that computational complexity explains why entropy increases, he (and nobody else either) cannot really explain computational complexity completely, because the mathematical tools are generally thought to not yet exist for that.

[pharaoh]

When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
(when you are a mathematician, everything looks like a computation)

[alankarmisra]

@1:11:10 He talks about "computational effort" as a limited resource to either move through space or move through time and he says that this is what leads to time dilation (preferring moving through space as opposed to moving through time). But what is limiting the computation effort? The matrix? (of course that's a joke but im intrigued as to what the real answer would be).

[victorfinberg]

10 min in:
absolutely fascinating.

not only does wolfram have the ability to talk at length, apparently entirely unscripted, and produce what qualifies as a brilliant piece of rhetoric, but ...

there is a massive amount of information coming through ... and ...

it remains almost fully accessible, even to people who know little physics.

(i say this as someone who DOES know a fair bit of physics, and teaches the same)

but while what he says is undeniably BRILLIANT, it isn't necessarily all CORRECT

[protobeing]

i am an artist and a game developer. It strikes my as incredible how many similarities there are between this description of the universe and the way I structure a game (albeit MUCH less complicated) in the open source engine I use - Godot. Its pretty crazy really.

[jeffjohnson]

Writing a book while the podcast is going! I’m dyyyying 😂😂😂😂😂.

[mykrahmaan]

Not only Chat GPT and The Second Law of TD, but the entire system of EOS (Experimental and Observational Science) is mere word jugglery, totally irrelevant to derive how the single entity in the entire known universe that delivers and sustains 100% of all life in it, THE PLANTS, develop from soil.

Hypergraph, like E= mC², is just one more hype in that sequence of vain glory.

[BeachBumZero]

18% of your viewers liking and subscribing is actually very good. You should know this. Congrats on that. If you want a higher percentage, maybe eliminate the imbedded ads. Definitely soils the enjoyment of the experience. People come to Youtube for very specific topics and dont like being railroaded.