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 channel, 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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Finishing my PhD in high energy physics in a couple of months. This video says nothing of substance. Waste of 11 minutes. Academia and physics has its problems, but this particular video doesn't touch any of them. Or anything meaningful, really.
Thanks for the comment, and good to hear that you're making your contribution in high energy physics. I'm sorry if my video doesn't speak to you, but I do thirst for significant progress in fundamental theoretical physics. Maybe you'll be the one to make it!
The new kid on the block for sure. Great times ahead. Seen him twice and sense greatness. Makes me want to take it serious.
Yes, Jonathan's so clear and incisive, someone to watch, for sure!
sry for being so late, that one took me a while 😄 Great editing! 🤗 Can't imagine how many micro-decisions had to be made 🤭 I think subtitles would be great and make it much more accessible. Also chapter marks could help. All in all: A historic document, in my book 😍
Yep, it takes a while to get through the whole thing, but it's worth it! Running through the whole interview again to tweak the editing really cemented some of Jonathan's insights in my mind. Thanks, as ever, for the feedback and the support!
Thank you so much for posting full length interviews vs the shorts.
No problem, it took me a while to edit, but I got there in the end. Glad you're enjoying the full interview, thanks Justin!
Dark matter is proof physics barking up wrong tree
Yes, thanks John, I agree. Scientists never seem to admit that they don't know all the answers. Instead they invent terms like "dark matter" to make it _sound_ like they know what's missing.
@@lasttheory And to top it off they claim Dark Matter is the major constituent of the Universe. Which means at less than 50% .. THEY GET FAILING MARKS🤣
someone buy this gentleman a strap for his glasses
Great to hear an explanation of theoretical physics. Lots of complexity in how things have developed.
Yes, thanks. Complex, for sure!
Its far from a theory explaining nature. Its only a framework in which to frame such a theory. It really has no explanotory power, but it gives a way how theories can be formed outside of space time. And thats amazing. But, the question still remains, why universe exist and why it is this specific way.
Yes, absolutely, it's a framework. Why the universe exists is a question we may never be able to answer - though Stephen Wolfram _claims_ to have an answer. But why it is this specific way is a fascinating question which I'm hoping this framework will be able to shed more and more light on.
I knew, one day someone would explain whats going on.
I _hope_ this turns into a full explanation of what's going on! Thanks Dmitry.
I promise you: We are cartoons drawing cartoon tools.
*If he had lived long enough, Mr. Von Neumann would likely have won a Nobel Prize -- in Economics, for his work on Game Theory. But Nobel Prizes in Economics were not awarded until 1969, more than a dozen years after Mr. Von Neumann's death.*
Yes, it's extraordinary that a mathematician made contributions in so many fields well beyond mathematics!
What about Wolfram’s idea that black holes and electrons might be the same thing. So causally disconnected regions in the data structure. does that relate to the idea of a particle being a Conwayesque structure?
Yes, absolutely, black holes might also be modelled as persistent tangles in the hypergraph, from the smallest scales to the largest. I'm not sure about the causal disconnection in the case of black holes. I know Jonathan Gorard has done some work on this, so I'll certainly ask him next time I talk to him! Thanks for the prompt, Sam.
I was looking for the date or at least year of the interview, but instead discovered Los Alamos is run by "Triad National Security, LLC," which is both more personally relevant and something I should have known.
The date of the interview is 19 October 2022. And yes, I agree, Dess, that it's absurd that the lawyers at Los Alamos make me put that entire text in the description as a condition of using the photos of John von Neumann and Stanisław Ulam. They need to lighten up a little!
@@lasttheory Like everything else surrounding nukes, turns out Triad is headexplode.gif "Triad is made up of three members" except it also has "two integrated subcontractors" and "three small business contractors." Big laugh about how among many things, Triad handles "stockpile management" and "nuclear nonproliferation" but a couple paragraphs later one of these "integrated subcontractors" handles what could only be described as "proliferation." "Huntington Ingalls Industries provides personnel, systems, tools and corporate reachback in the areas of pit production, plutonium manufacturing, production scale-up and nuclear operations and manufacturing." I'm not talking UFOs, but I'm sure between this being private and the DoE's own classification system there's space for all sorts of interesting stuff to lurk.
Yay finally get to see the whole thing. Thanks for interview.
Yes, I got there in the end! Thanks Jaime
When I was around 13 years old, over 30 years ago, I was thinking deeply about time and the speed of light, and other things like zetos paradox. I came to the conclusion then that either time or space or probably both HAD to be discreet, it was the only answer that made any sense. Ive been troubled ever since, until I found out about Wolfram's physics, that noone in science was talking about this. Tbh learning about WP was a relief. At least now I know it's something someone is studying earnestly, and that gives me much comfort.
That's really good to hear, thanks Samuel. I think the tools of continuous mathematics have been so productive in physics for so long that we didn't put enough thought into the question of whether that continuity might be a mere approximation to an underlying discreteness. It has taken the tools of discrete computation to change this. I'd be interested to hear why your 13-year-old self thought that space or time or both must be discrete?
This is just exactly how I felt as well, until i found somebody was studying it And I hope to study it when I grow up as well
@@ireneisahuman Thanks, Irene, that's good to hear. I'm happy that there are people like you who'll be studying these things in the future!
@@lasttheory ^_^
Pure gold. My favourite new generation scientist, J.G. Thanks for your effort, both.
Thanks Marko. I agree, Jonathan is incredible.
13:53 nine minutes of gold: on computationalism and constructivism “people confuse the substrate of a model for a statement about ontology” This reminded me of Joscha Bach talking about how “Correspondence Theories” are fundamentally flawed: it can’t be about setting individual pointers to reality right, because models can per definition only point (and talk) within themselves. kzread.info/dash/bejne/iqd7yKWffbTNftY.htmlsi=Y5kRvydF131HHinB 22:39 “… there are situations in which you can prove formally: No experiment that you can in principle do, could distinguish wether the universe is discrete or continuous”, “it keeps running away from you” 31:30 nine more minutes of pure gold: wanting rewriting rules that preserve distance in the causal structure (- otherwise you would lose a notion of locality) - the hypergraph is what drops out naturally / obviously 40:55 implementation: how to do the plumbing 46:44 Edit: I finally have time to continue with this video. 1:34:14 The multiverse is more trivial than the universe. - Intuition: There is some content to the universe. // In my own words: You have to have starting conditions; you can’t just start with rules and arrive at our universe; the rules have to act on something preexisting. You can have a multiverse from nothing, but you can’t have “our” universe from nothing. It’s like a (random number?) “seed” in a sandbox-(computer-)game, that distinguishes this universe from all possible universes. 1:39:01 Where to place the computational burden? Bottom Up, or Top Down? The role of the observer in “slicing the Ruliad”. 1:41:10 Being more realistic about the nature of the observer: GR and QM were a start, what’s the next logical step? The observer imposes a coarse graining / “fake rules”: the observer imposes causal invariance post-hoc. 1:50:13 getting QM for free (- I’ll have to rewatch that a few more times.) 2:10:47 GR is more generic / less “special” than one might have hoped for: it applies quite “naturally” to a large part of possible hypergraph rewriting rules; it doesn’t narrow down / pick out “our” universe; vice versa: our type of universe might not be uncommon in the hypothetical space of reasonably constructed universes. 2:12:58 particles
Thanks for these timestamps! And yes, Jonathan is extraordinarily clear both on the mathematics and on the philosophy.
@@lasttheory didn’t have time for watching the rest today; might continue tomorrow
@@Stadtpark90 Yes, it's a long one! Worth persisting for more brilliant insights from Jonathan. Anyway, thanks again for the timestamps!
Yeah, I had tears in my eyes.
The physical <> computational correspondence clicked for me when I realized how distributed computing is inherently bound by special relativity, and you can directly observe the effects here (and you have to work around them).
Yes, thanks Jonathan. I find it takes a while for these ideas to click.
uploading a 3 hour video with no timestamps is very unethical
Yes, sorry, it's hard to fit timestamps, or much of anything else, into the details box, with all the legal nonsense the Los Alamos National Laboratory et al makes me put in there.
Timestamps now added! I've had to remove a bunch of the links to make room, but you can still find all the links at lasttheory.com/channel/059-jonathan-gorard-the-complete-first-interview
@@lasttheoryI believe you can put them into a comment and pin the comment to the top.
@@scenFor109 Ah, I did wonder about that! I've made room for them in the description this time, but I'll try that trick next time, thanks!
@@lasttheory Thank you
Neat.
You even know what your working on you little freak
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🐸😊
Your perspectives and videos have been very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you so much, that means a lot to me!
Well said.
"Wake up kids, we have a Last Theory upload."
Simple awesome stuff. What a gift to the world!
The theory of the mule and the cockroach! Planet of the apes is planet of endless wonders!
Settling in with the popcorn
Yes, thanks Sam, it's a long one... enjoy the popcorn with your hypergraphs!
literally the same. Got some fine toffee popcorn 😋
Informative and candid interview! Well done 👏
Thanks Hank!
Incredible. I love the wolfram physics project! Can't wait to see more progress
👍 You had the best interview with Jonathan. I would love to hear another one
Thanks, I really appreciate that! And yes, I'd love to do another one. I'll be reaching out to Jonathan again shortly!
If it takes you 2 years to post it, don't bother
@@mitchtroumbly7056 Hey, Mitch, I've been releasing excerpts from this conversation every few weeks for the last year and a half. So yes, it has been slow, but I've put a lot of time and effort into editing them and adding information on-screen, so I think it has been worth the wait. Most of what Jonathan talks about in this interview is timeless.
So this is the interview from last year?
From 2 years ago it would seem
Yes, it's from October 2022, so a year and a half ago now. I'd really like to get an update from Jonathan and dig deeper into some of the topics we discussed. I'll be reaching out to him again soon!
@@lasttheory Excellent!
You might be wrong saying Von Neumann understood math. In the man's own words "... in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
Yes, I love that quote, thanks James!
J. von Neumann was an intellectual thief. I am well aware of the credit that he STOLE for ENIAC. I'd sooner trust Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass with my intellectual property.
Yes, he was a complex character, for sure, and not always a likeable one. Have you read The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut? It's an excellent fictionalized account of John von Neumann's life that focuses on the darker side. Thanks for the comment, Peter.
He's just autistic. Autistic with genius IQ and high conscientiousness and curiosity. I believe he's a great man.
The entire time this dude was giving this talk he was listening to Europe performing the song "The Final Countdown" on loop at top volume.
"Wolfram physics" is proposing to use certain mathematical tools (graphs, automata...) as the basic tools to formulate physics (formalism). Those are powerful tools that are currently not much used in physics. So, there is much "space" to investigate and potentially much to contribute to Physics itself. "Wolfram physics" also proposes a set of ideas of how to "represent" many physical facts (like space dimensions, or QM superposition etc.) in terms of those mathematical tools (hyper graphs and automata). In a way it is similar to string and M-theories that uses mathematical tools like spaces (and also objects) with higher dimensions and different topologies and other "advanced" mathematical tools (and should not be called "theories" either). I think that "wolfram physics" is promising, but, like in the case of the "string theory", there exist the "trap" of forgetting that this is physics (not mathematics) and that empirically testable (falsifiable!) predictions should be made asap. An exposition of "wolfram physics" should begin by saying how the main concepts in "standard" physics emerge, for it to have some meaning to physicists. It should begin by saying, for instance: how is the spacetime interval defined in terms of the graphs/hypergraph, or how do the "amplitudes of probability" and phases of QM emerge. Does a point of spacetime corresponds to a node in the hypergraph? or does it corresponds to certain graph structures? etc. etc.
I agree with all of that, thanks Pablo. So yes, we should begin with how physics emerges from the Wolfram model. First is General Relativity. I'm working on a series of videos about how it emerges from the hypergraph, but for a more technical overview, see _How to derive general relativity from Wolfram Physics with Jonathan Gorard_ kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y6ieyqdphZDTl8Y.html Next is Quantum Mechanics. This one's more difficult, conceptually, but I'm working on it! Again, for an overview, see _How to derive quantum mechanics from Wolfram Physics with Jonathan Gorard_ kzread.info/dash/bejne/i46cpbuFisTUdag.html Also, there are the basic concepts like mass/energy, space and time. I have a few videos on space already kzread.info/head/PLVwcxwu8hWKkVdyXUcRLphco6Ie02OI-3 but much more to come on these! Hope my channel helps give you what you're looking for!
@@lasttheory Thank you for the links. I will look at them as soon as time permits.
A work colleague and I were discussing this very question the other week. He has a degree in physics whereas im just a commoner. His explanation was that Stephens work isn't attached to any university amd therefore there is a snobbish ignoring of it.
Right, yes, exactly. I suspect that the antagonism between Stephen Wolfram and academic is mutual. Jonathan Gorard, on the other hand, is working within academia, at major universities like Cambridge and Princeton. I hope that'll bridge the gap and get these ideas a fair hearing. Thanks Samuel!
Does anyone here know if these models naturally collapse from infinite to 3 dimensional in particular?
That's a great question! It's on my list to ask Jonathan next time we talk. Sorry I don't know the answer, but I'm hoping Jonathan will enlighten me.
Nice!
For Gosh sakes it was “Johnny.” Teller, Bethe,Feynman- none of them ever called him “ John.”
Thanks Andrew! I'm sure you're right, and those three called him Johnny. Others called him János or Jancsi. We all have different names. I never knew John von Neumann, and certainly never received his permission to call him Johnny, so like most current sources (other than the Hungarian ones) I went with John.
Lovely!
I agree that most of physicists , especially in the field of particles research, are very closed minded to anything new. They just want to repeat what they read in a book and never try something else.
Yes, it's a real problem when a passion for physics becomes a career. The incentives change. Conformity to your supervisor's preconceptions becomes more important than following your own ideas.
In terms of the observer vs the universe, it maybe that fractal processes underlie the evolution of the universe and that somehow, the observer and the initial conditions and fractal processes of the early universe are equivalent. Here, the observer is a consequence of the observed but that the qualities of the observer that arose from the observed are the elements that permit limited observation. In other words, just as you can see copies of the Buddha in the Mandelbrot set (each being non-identical but yet mostly similar to the original form) so it is possible that varying structures generated by the universe exhibit consciousness, and that human consciousness is simply residing at some level of the overall fractal expansion of the whole universe. In this model the universe develops consciousness and that consciousness re-synthesizes self-consciousness, which itself re-synthesizes consciousness. Thus, our view of the universe is distorted by our own internal mental representations which have arisen as a result of our exposure to the world. The output of our consciousness will inform the development of human beings yet to come, such that their conscious experiences in 400 years from now~~~having been modified by the output of 400 years more observing~~maybe unfathomable by our current human paradigms.
In terms of bottom up versus top-down or downwards causation, we see this clearly in molecular biology. For instance, it's clear that amino-acids combine to form proteins: the folding of strings of amino acids under the control of post-translational modification during the transit of newly synthesised amino-acid strings through the golgi apparatus leads to secondary structures that further fold into tertiary structures. These can then combine into quaternary structures which form functional proteins or enzymes. If those proteins happen to be Histones, they are sent to the nucleus to act as spools that DNA is wrapped around in order to facilitate the compression of DNA. One spool is composed of 4 histones, and many spools in sequence combine to condense the whole DNA string for a chromosome. Yet, that step is not enough: further folding of that string of spools into a rope conposed of spools and that rope is then folded upon itself to generate still more data compression~~~here we see evidence of bottom up processes leading to massive data compression. Yet, in order for any organism to survive, it must react to challenges in the environment. All the books in the library cannot be read unless they are first found, and second, extracted from the moving shelves~~by winding apart these moving book cases that sit on tracks to get access to the information. In the library system, a book is only read if am external agent comes to the library with the instruction to access a particular book. Similarly, if specific cell receptors are bound by their cognate ligands~~and if the ligands exist due to some change in the external world leading to the synthesis of a particular ligand~~then those bound receptors change their morphology such that second messengers connected to those receptors at the inner wall of the cell membrane become enzymatically modified. This event kicks off a whole sequence of modification events that travel towards the cell nucleus. Eventually, the signal reaches the nucleus leading to changes in Histone configuration that permit a section of DNA to be unwound and copied into messenger RNA. That mRNA is then cleaved of its non-coding sections and then sent to the protein manufacturing factory (the Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum) where the mRNA is used as a blueprint for the construction of a string of amini-acids. Ergo, the external world acts upon structures generated from a bottom up construction, leading to an internal response to the external challenge. Complex systems may form from bottom up cooperation due to non-component specific interactions leading to emergent structures and resulting functionality. Yet, due to complex structures sitting at the edge of chaos, external events can radically change the internal system such that the internal system rearranges itself into an alternative state. From the pov of modelling, this biological complexity will be hard to find from bottom up assumptions just because chaotic systems evolve quite differently from relatively minor changes in initial conditions, yet the question is which precise conditions lead to human biological systems. It might be practically impossible to bottom up reconstruct human biology, ergo you might need to start with that system and work backwards to define which sets of initial conditions exist that would permit evolution of eukaryotic biological systems.
CERN is total BS
I’m not understanding. Why would the physics community deny a better method offered by Wolfram… How could one deny the reality of a solution?
Thanks for the question, Randy. The problem is that the Wolfram model isn't a solution, it's just an idea. And academia isn't denying it, so much as ignoring it. It just doesn't fit into academia's way of doing things. The idea might yet prove right or wrong, but it does seem like a promising approach, so it's a shame that it has received so little attention.
The Standard Model was fairly complete by the mid 1980s. The Higgs boson was detected at the LHC in 2012. And that's about it - nothing major has happened in fundamental physics since then. All BSM (beyond the standard model) hypotheses have come up short. Strings, supersymmetry, axions, etc - none of these have been detected. Why? Because they don't exist. But the real problem is at the very core of every research university - the obsession with getting grant money. I was a graduate student in physics when I had the realization that what REALLY mattered was getting grants - I saw professors spending more time writing grant proposals than doing actual research. A friend of mine, an oceanography professor, told me flat out that tenure depended on how much money one could bring in. At that point, I decided I really didn't want to go down that road. Yes, I got my PhD, but I went to a teaching college instead of a research university. Honestly, researchers scrambling for the next big grant reminds me of drug addicts looking for the next fix. All the thousands of papers on the arxiv are just there to get grant money - most of them are at best minor results and at worst complete garbage. Well, I've said my peace.
Yes, seems like this is what always happens when people's livelihoods start to depend on an institution: it stops being about what it's supposed to be about, in this case science, and starts being about securing those livelihoods. Thanks for the comment, and sorry to hear that this was your experience.
This little "unstable" patterns / knots, Could be the equivalent to dark matter or dark energy? Something that is definitively there but we cannot see.
Right, yes, that's a great question. I don't know, but yes, possibly. It might be that there are tangles in the hypergraph that are too small and/or too transient to count as particles, but still have mass/energy, so could account for what's missing in our equations. It'll be interesting to see how this develops. Thanks Pedro!
Clearly the density and rate of high level abstract ideas is way too dense to digest - for the concepts to be given any tautological inspection and validity. The guy is super switched on and there is way too much trust in his abilities and correct analysis being relied on. On the very plus side the list of references and links is very thorough - so very well done in recovering integrity in that regard. Overall this appears to be a commentary on the evolution of convergence of spacetime to a three dimensionality. Which is interesting but no where near giving any answers to bridging continuity of general relativity into quantum theory - which is required for the solution of the current stalemate
Yes, Jonathan's conversation is pretty dense in ideas, I agree! And you're right, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered with the Wolfram model. But there is some interesting progress in seeing general relativity and quantum mechanics emerging from the _same_ graph dynamics. Much more to come about this on this channel.
So for two electrons to repel each other in the hypergraph, I assume they don't touch, but still interact by sending virtual photons between them. Are we searching for persistent tangles that are constantly shooting out other persistent tangles?
Right, the term "touch" can be a bit difficult to define, but yes, there's the same action at a distance, transmitted through perturbations in the hypergraph that can be interpreted as an exchange of photons, just as in existing theories. So yes, you're spot on, this entails "persistent tangles that are constantly shooting out other persistent tangles".