I think it’s really interesting to see the similarities between what Wolfram is saying and the work of Julian Barbour on time being an emergent property. Both suggest a similar underlying ontology for the universe: a timeless, all-encompassing realm containing all possible states / configurations of everything. But what’s really fascinating is that they reach this conclusion through different implementations of that same interface. Barbour talks about a static geometric landscape where time emerges objectively from the relational (I won’t say causal) structures between configurations, independent of any observer. On the other hand, Wolfram’s idea of the Ruliad is that there’s a timeless computational structure, but time emerges due to our computational limitations as observers navigating this space.
They’ve both converged on a timeless “foundation” for reality, but they’re completely opposite in how they explain the emergence of time: objective geometry, vs. subjective computational experience
Do physicists think time actually exists? I wonder if someone has reasoned that time is an accounting method that humans have developed to make sense of their experienced change of systems.
Wolfram uses the words progression and computation a lot in his essay, but there’s an implicit bias there of assuming a process is deterministic, or has some state it’s driving towards. But none of these “progressions” mean anything, I think. It seems they are simply reactions subject to thermodynamics.
If no one observed these system changes, then the trends, patterns, and periodicity of these systems would just be a consequence of physics. It seems what we call “time” is more the accumulation of an effect rather than a separate aspect of physics.
For example, I wonder what happens in physics simulations if time is replaced by a measure of effect amplitude. I don’t know, tbh, I am not a physicist so maybe this is all naïve and nonsense.
- In a much larger universe, write down in a log book every event to every particle at every instant, from the Big Bang to the restaurant.
- Put it on the fireplace mantle and leave it there.
This is basically a log of a simulation. It exists in much the same way as an ongoing simulation would, except that its time dimension isn't shared with the simulating universe. But every observer within has had the same observations as if it did.
Is any of what he’s saying here, something he hasn’t essentially already said before?
The parts of this which were a little surprising to me (e.g. the bit about comparing time to heat, and the bit about running out of steps to do at an event horizon) iirc all linked to a thing posted a while ago?
I don’t share his enthusiasm for the phrase “computational irreducibility”. I would prefer to talk about e.g. no-speedup theorems.
foundry27 ·74 days ago
They’ve both converged on a timeless “foundation” for reality, but they’re completely opposite in how they explain the emergence of time: objective geometry, vs. subjective computational experience
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lisper ·74 days ago
https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/10/parallel-universes-and-a...
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nis0s ·74 days ago
Wolfram uses the words progression and computation a lot in his essay, but there’s an implicit bias there of assuming a process is deterministic, or has some state it’s driving towards. But none of these “progressions” mean anything, I think. It seems they are simply reactions subject to thermodynamics.
If no one observed these system changes, then the trends, patterns, and periodicity of these systems would just be a consequence of physics. It seems what we call “time” is more the accumulation of an effect rather than a separate aspect of physics.
For example, I wonder what happens in physics simulations if time is replaced by a measure of effect amplitude. I don’t know, tbh, I am not a physicist so maybe this is all naïve and nonsense.
Show replies
worstspotgain ·74 days ago
- In a much larger universe, write down in a log book every event to every particle at every instant, from the Big Bang to the restaurant.
- Put it on the fireplace mantle and leave it there.
This is basically a log of a simulation. It exists in much the same way as an ongoing simulation would, except that its time dimension isn't shared with the simulating universe. But every observer within has had the same observations as if it did.
Show replies
drdeca ·74 days ago
The parts of this which were a little surprising to me (e.g. the bit about comparing time to heat, and the bit about running out of steps to do at an event horizon) iirc all linked to a thing posted a while ago?
I don’t share his enthusiasm for the phrase “computational irreducibility”. I would prefer to talk about e.g. no-speedup theorems.
Show replies