No, thanks very much for the transcript. Time as updating is an old concept. So, it's not clear to me that they're talking about anything new *there*. But they sound a bit wrong to me in decoupling the updating from the *subgraph* that gets updated as well as any kind of causal cascade of updating (dependent/sequential vs. independent/parallel). You can't separate dependency from the graph. So if there is a dependent update in one part of the graph, dependent on another part of the graph, then the updating cannot be independent of the graph. I.e. space and time are not independent and, perhaps, not different things at all. Perhaps progressive updating is *merely* that the graph has large scale cycles? So, an updating over there drives an updating here, which drives an updating over there?
Of course, they're way smarter than me. So I'm sure there's some deep literature somewhere and I should, but probably won't, RTFM. On 7/23/21 6:32 PM, Jon Zingale wrote: > Anyway, I hope including the transcript here was not too boring. [reordered rather than snipped] > Thank you for looking into it. Yes, that is the publication. Also, thank you > for posting "The post-truth prophets"[0]. Sean Illing manages to get at the > heart of what I find myself defending regarding postmodernism[1]. You may > remember that some months ago, I was on a "Bergson through the eyes of > Deleuze"-kick. Bergson, a prominent philosopher of mind, space, and time (in > his time) was driven completely underground by Einstein, Russell, and other > promoters of relativity theory. By many historical accounts, the work of > Bergson could have been all but forgotten had Deleuze not resurrected his > ideas, and especially their applications to film. Crucial to Bergson's > conception was to recognize time and space as explicitly different kinds of > things, and via his admiration of Riemann, sought out but never found a > mathematical treatment for his ideas. Listening to Wolfram's interview on > Sean Carroll's podcast[2], I cannot help but wonder if this recent work is a > step toward Bergson's > dream. Around 42 minutes into the interview, SeanC and SteveW record: > > """ > 0:41:26.7 SW: That is, you might have thought to get something as > computationally sophisticated as us humans with our brains and all this kind > of thing you need the whole process that’s led to us humans. But what the > principle of computational equivalence says is that’s not true. Even these > very simple systems with very simple rules can do it, and that has… Well, it > has lots of consequences. If you’re worrying about extraterrestrial > intelligence, for example, that tells you it’s everywhere. It’s a question of > whether we are sufficiently aligned with that intelligence to be able to > recognize it as something that, for example, has purposes that we can > understand as sort of human-like purposes. And I think this idea intelligence > requires liquid water is almost laughable. > > 0:42:10.2 SC: Right. [laughter] I’m on your side when it comes to that, but > intelligence might require spacetime in some sense, so let’s at least try to > get that. Is this naïve picture that I have in mind, where you have the > hypergraph, you update, it’s a discrete updating… Can I think of the graph at > any one update as space and the update itself as time, or is that too > simple-minded? > > 0:42:35.3 SW: Okay, so it gets a little complicated. And in fact, the > complexity that arises is quantum mechanics, I think. And so it’s, in a > sense, you try and make it that simple and you… Okay, so the basic point is, > the rule says if you have a lump of atoms of space that are connected in this > way, transform it into a lump that’s connected in this other way, and it… > Basically the rule just says that’s what you do. It doesn’t say where you do > it, it doesn’t say when you do it, it’s just any time there’s a lump that > looks like this, you can transform it into a lump that looks like that. > > 0:43:11.0 SW: And so those transformations can be happening all over this > hypergraph. And so it is not at all obvious that… That is, the only thing > that’s defined is these can happen. The question of when they happen, what > counts as the sort of simultaneity surface, what counts is that moment in > time, is something that’s really in the eye of the observer. > > 0:43:31.7 SC: Okay. But the updated graph is supposed to represent spacetime > and the things within it, or is it a more subtle map there? > > 0:43:37.9 SW: No, no. So at any given… What’s happening is this graph is > getting updated, and there are lots of little places where it can get > updated. And you can say, okay, I’m going to consider the graph with this > collection of updates having been done. I’m going to consider that as time T > equals 0, let’s say. And then another situation you’re going to say, now, I’m > going to say this collection of updates is time T equals 1, for example. And > at each one of those time slices, at each one of those sort of… Well, in the > language of physics, spacelike hypersurfaces, that represents an > instantaneous structure of space. But it is somewhat arbitrary what you > consider to be this instantaneous structure of space, just as it is in > general relativity. > > 0:44:26.9 SC: Well, sure, right. I mean, that’s very familiar from general > relativity, but I’m just saying is the collection of the whole shebang > spacetime, and the things within it? > > 0:44:35.0 SW: No. It’s just space. A single hypergraph, a single… > > 0:44:37.6 SC: No, the collection of all the updated hypergraphs, that’s what > I’m asking. > > 0:44:40.2 SW: Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. The sequence of updates, the hypergraph > together with all its updates is supposed to be spacetime. And one of the > things that is interesting and non-trivial here is most traditional views of > physics have thought of space and time as being the same kind of thing. In > this model they’re really not. > > 0:45:00.0 SC: Sure. > > 0:45:00.0 SW: Space is the extent of the spatial hypergraph. Time is the > computational process of updating this hypergraph. So time is the progression > of a computation. Space is just, oh, you follow these connections in the > hypergraph. And so that makes it not at all obvious that you’re going to get > things like relativity out of the model, because one is breaking apart the > traditional connection between space and time. > """ > > Anyway, I hope including the transcript here was not too boring. > > Cheers, > Jon > > [0] > https://www.vox.com/features/2019/11/11/18273141/postmodernism-donald-trump-lyotard-baudrillard > > <https://www.vox.com/features/2019/11/11/18273141/postmodernism-donald-trump-lyotard-baudrillard> > > [1] The other part is that this considerable body of work was the > result of serious thought by powerful thinkers. Discounting the whole > body of literature out of hand produces red flags for me. > > [2] > https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/07/12/155-stephen-wolfram-on-computation-hypergraphs-and-fundamental-physics > > <https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/07/12/155-stephen-wolfram-on-computation-hypergraphs-and-fundamental-physics> > -- ☤>$ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
