The Last Theory
The Last Theory
The Last Theory
29 December 2022

Where I’m going with Wolfram Physics in 2023

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I’ve been blown away by your response to The Last Theory in 2022.

How am I going to thank you for reading, listening, watching and subscribing?

Well, by bringing you more Wolfram Physics in the New Year, that’s how.

Here are 7 directions I want to take The Last Theory in 2023.

1 ⋅ Core concepts

In 2023, I’ll be going deeper into the core concepts of Wolfram Physics.

I’ve talked about space in 2022, but there’s much more to say about how three-dimensional space arises from the hypergraph.

And I’ll be going wider, too.

I haven’t talked so much about time, or energy, or momentum, or matter.

I think you’ll find it fascinating to see how all these core concepts arise from the hypergraph, too.

2 ⋅ Advanced concepts

I’ll be moving on to more advanced concepts, too.

I didn’t know, when I launched The Last Theory, how much there’d be to say about Wolfram Physics. Now I know that there’s more to say than I could possibly fit into one year, or two, or three, or more.

It seems that there’s no end to the ideas that can come out of this computational framework.

This year, I introduced the multiway graph, but that’s just the beginning.

Next year, I want to go deeper into the concepts that follow from the multiway graph: branchial space, causal invariance, computational irreducibility, the ruliad.

3 ⋅ Philosophy

In some of my content in 2022, I’ve been using Wolfram Physics as a way to explore philosophical ideas. Why is physics the way it is? How should we think about concepts that we can’t observe directly? Where’s the computer that runs the universe?

I love these philosophical questions.

Wolfram Physics raises many more such questions. Do we live in a simulation? Is the hypergraph real? Why does the universe exist?

Wolfram Physics even offers some answers.

I’ll be asking more of these questions, and exploring more of the answers, in 2023.

4 ⋅ Criticism

One thing I’ve been surprised by this year is the vigour of the opposition to Wolfram Physics.

When I first came across the Wolfram model, I was extremely excited about it. Still, rather than rely solely on Stephen Wolfram’s own accounts, I searched the web to see what others thought about it. I found nothing but negativity.

To some extent, this is to be expected. Every scientific revolution is dismissed by the establishment as unscientific. After all, that’s what a scientific revolution is: a way of doing science that breaks the rules of the established way of doing science.

But the vigorous opposition gave me pause. Maybe Stephen Wolfram was a crackpot. Maybe his project to find the fundamental theory of physics was a pipedream.

Next year, I want to address the criticism of Wolfram Physics.

Some of it is valid. Incisive critique plays an essential role in science.

Some of the criticism, however, is misinformed. I want to get into why so many of the objections are simply wrong.

5 ⋅ People

For me, the highlight of The Last Theory in 2022 was my conversation with Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of The Wolfram Physics Project.

Jonathan is so honest, so precise and so brilliant that he stands as a one-man retort to the critics.

As well as gaining deep insights into the Wolfram model from my conversation with Jonathan, I was interested to learn why he took the risk of working on something so far from the mainstream.

In 2023, I’d like to learn more about the people involved in Wolfram Physics: who they are, what they’re working on, and why they’re risking their careers on this moonshot.

6 ⋅ Fields

One of the most promising aspects of the Wolfram model is that it might have important applications not only in physics, but also in other fields as diverse as mathematics, chemistry, neurology, ecology and linguistics.

I’ll continue to focus on the quest to find the fundamental theory of physics, but I’d like to touch on some of the other fields that might be revolutionized by computational models.

7 ⋅ Simulation

I’ve worked hard in 2022 to code simulations of Wolfram Physics.

I try to include as many images from these simulations as possible in my articles, and as many animations as possible in my videos.

These visuals really help me see what’s going on in the hypergraph, whether it’s physical space, branchial space or rulial space.

And they really help me explain what’s going on, too.

Many of you have asked me for more visuals, and I agree with you: the more visuals, the better.

In 2023, I’ll continue working on my software to visualize the hypergraph.

And I won’t just be reproducing what Stephen Wolfram and his team have been doing with their code, based on the Wolfram Language.

I’ll be running my own experiments, to test the limits of what’s possible in the Wolfram model on my underpowered laptop.

I want to find out for myself how far we can go with this.

2023

That’s it for 2022.

I look forward to seeing you back here in the New Year.

Make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube or in your podcast player, or, even better, sign up for my newsletter at lasttheory.com to make sure you don’t miss anything I put out, either on this channel or elsewhere.

Who knows where we’ll be with Wolfram Physics by the end of 2023?

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