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How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#71

Post by jfengel »

coder-3 wrote: post #24
jfengel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really distressing that I can't tell this from the usual physics crank gibberish. He's smarter than that. Or at least he used to be. It's scary because I was never as smart as he used to be. I could be even more off base with even less to back it up, and equally unable to see that.

Raw IQ doesn't mean you'll have good epistemology. His brain lets him reach deeper abstractions than most but it doesn't mean what he comes up with is grounded in base reality. If you're worried about being off-base, try: - Contact with reality (feedback). Predict, try, did it work? - Having a good reasoning framework. For some it's 1. Religious text, 2. what others they respect think, 3. reasoning for understanding.…

Unfortunately I don't know anything that guarantees a good epistemology. I am quite certain he'd insist he's doing all those things... including humility.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#72

Post by Salgat »

maxbond wrote: post #64
Salgat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more just the fact that our universe seems to fit extremely rigid, unbreakable rules definable by math. If we lived in a simulation for example, you could have phenomena that "break" these rules at any given time.

But wouldn't we just interpret that "break" as more rules for us to learn and study and build world models around? Why would we think "the simulation has broken" and not "physics is weird huh? Especially in edge cases like absurdly high energies or absurdly tiny scales." (I don't think the universe is a simulation, to be clear.)

In this case though there'd be nothing to learn, since math couldn't explain this phenomena.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#73

Post by aik »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20
MichaelRazum wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess two reasons - the theory is not mainstream, guess it is not attractive enough to study it right now - the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet). This has to change I think to get traction.

> the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet) AFAIK, the theory is not able to make _any_ predictions yet. It purports to be one of those "theories of everything" in the form of a kind of "universe building kit". But all it produces are a bunch of pretty "hypergraphs" that have some loose analogies with some physical theories. If, at the end of the day, one's "theory of everything" can't replicate classi…

I agree. Though I know things like classical mechanics are emergent phenomena that I believe are many many levels up from what he has been dealing with thus far (quantum scale) as well. Given computational irreducibility and how poor we are in general at predicting/estimating phenomena in complex systems (chaos), it’s likely we’re far from “simulating” most physics at this scale anytime soon.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#74

Post by Y_Y »

TheEzEzz wrote: post #45
cornel_io wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the fundamental problem with Wolfram's approach: he 1) came up with a model of physics (which is fine), 2) noticed that it reproduced many of the normal things that are necessary in a viable theory of everything, like the basic results of quantum physics and relativity (also fine), and 3) declared success, taking 2) as an indication that he's absolutely right and this is the real theory of everything and we're…

I'm sympathetic to your take on how overly grandiose the language is, but I also think you're being too harsh here. The idea that the universe is discrete/computational is a fine idea, but underspecified and useless on its own. There's an infinite array of computable rules to choose from. But the fact that with a few assumptions on the rules you can then limit to both GR and QM is very non-trivial and, in my opinion,…

> But the fact that with a few assumptions on the rules you can then limit to both GR and QM is very non-trivial and, in my opinion, pretty surprising.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the literature here, but GP isn't exaggerating, using e.g. Noether's Theorem you can derive the expected laws of physics from very simple symmetry principles. This means that any model with these symmetries will produce these behaviours.

If you make up a new model of Newtonian mechanics that doesn't depend explicitly on time, so that your laws are the same tomorrow as today, then it's proven that such a model will conserve "energy". You could point at this as an indication of the correctness of your theory, but it's really unavoidable. You can play a similar trick for the fundamental forces if you have the patience to work through the derivation.

A better test is these models is if they're predictive, and I haven't seen a such a result about this CA-physics outside of Wolfram's blog.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#75

Post by maxbond »

Salgat wrote: post #72
maxbond wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't we just interpret that "break" as more rules for us to learn and study and build world models around? Why would we think "the simulation has broken" and not "physics is weird huh? Especially in edge cases like absurdly high energies or absurdly tiny scales." (I don't think the universe is a simulation, to be clear.)

In this case though there'd be nothing to learn, since math couldn't explain this phenomena.

But that happens all the time in science, and we come up with different math that does explain it. Eg Jupiter's orbit couldn't be explained, the math didn't add up, so we came up with the idea that light had a speed and that Jupiter was far enough away that the speed impacted our calculations.

If you think about quantum mechanics, it's something that could sure look like a bug. Systems that you expect to be deterministic are stochastic if you look closely enough? If it were a program I was writing, I'd start wondering if there were rounding errors and/or concurrency issues. But we've come up with math to understand it.

Math is very general, I'm not sure there's a process that you couldn't describe with a complex enough mathematical system, and thereby conclude it had it's origins outside of our universe.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#76

Post by drdeca »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20
MichaelRazum wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess two reasons - the theory is not mainstream, guess it is not attractive enough to study it right now - the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet). This has to change I think to get traction.

> the theory is not able to make any new predictions (yet) AFAIK, the theory is not able to make _any_ predictions yet. It purports to be one of those "theories of everything" in the form of a kind of "universe building kit". But all it produces are a bunch of pretty "hypergraphs" that have some loose analogies with some physical theories. If, at the end of the day, one's "theory of everything" can't replicate classi…

Hasn’t the project produced software which they claim is useful for simulating black hole mergers?

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#77

Post by kelseyfrog »

nathanfig wrote: post #58
hackinthebochs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One might use computational irreducibility to says that the only way to predict your behavior is to observe your behavior. Any system that could predict you must first recreate you. For those that see determinism as undermining free will, this gives one way to conceptualize the idea that you have ownership of your choices despite determinism.

Not sure this allows a meaningful definition of free will, since if nothing can predict me neither can I.

I love this conceptualization of free will. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's grounded in the idea of independence, right?

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#78

Post by Salgat »

maxbond wrote: post #75
Salgat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case though there'd be nothing to learn, since math couldn't explain this phenomena.

But that happens all the time in science, and we come up with different math that does explain it. Eg Jupiter's orbit couldn't be explained, the math didn't add up, so we came up with the idea that light had a speed and that Jupiter was far enough away that the speed impacted our calculations. If you think about quantum mechanics, it's something that could sure look like a bug. Systems that you expect to be determini…

The difference is that there's no possible model for this kind of hypothetical phenomena, it's by definition undefined behavior. Imagine a universe where the formula 𝜏=rF would just randomly be violated for no absolutely no reason, such as a person sometimes accidentally throwing a baseball that leaves the atmosphere, or a child accidentally lifting a house. Even the randomness of quantum mechanics can be explained using models that are very consistent and testable, but the only theory we could come up for this wouldn't be based in math, it'd be the equivalent to blaming it on magic, and no amount of advancement in science would ever come closer to explaining it.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#79

Post by nathanfig »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #59
nathanfig wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this allows a meaningful definition of free will, since if nothing can predict me neither can I.

Nothing turns on whether you can predict your actions/choices. You do not need the power to predict yourself to act.

So with no power to predict the outcomes of my actions, or even predict how I will pick an action, I bear witness to myself acting anyway- and this we call free will?

What troubles me is that the more we take away any determining factors for free will the more it sounds like randomness.

Re: How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

#80

Post by hackinthebochs »

nathanfig wrote: post #79
hackinthebochs wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing turns on whether you can predict your actions/choices. You do not need the power to predict yourself to act.

So with no power to predict the outcomes of my actions, or even predict how I will pick an action, I bear witness to myself acting anyway- and this we call free will? What troubles me is that the more we take away any determining factors for free will the more it sounds like randomness.

You can "predict" your general disposition to respond to certain kinds of reasons given your values and so on. But you can't predict how arbitrary factors will weigh on your decision making in a given moment. E.g. you skipped breakfast and your blood sugar is low, so in this moment you happen to weigh satisfying hunger more than, say, the diet you're on. This doesn't make your decision not "up to you" just because minute factors can't all be accounted for prior to acting.

Whether there is any meaningful notion of free will here is another matter. IMO the term free will is a red-herring. We obviously make choices and those choices are attributable to us. The only relevant question is whether we have a sufficient kind of authorship over our choices such that we can/should be rendered accountable for their outcomes. But this is mostly tangential to the kinds of disputes people have about free will.

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