Institute Output
Computational Metaphysics: A Survey of the Ruliad, Observer Theory and Emerging Frameworks
James K. Wiles
A concise survey of how recent computational models, such as the ruliad and observer theory, are transforming metaphysical questions into formal, testable frameworks.
On the Concept of Motion
Stephen Wolfram
It seems like the kind of question that might have been hotly debated by ancient philosophers, but would have been settled long ago: how is it that things can move? And indeed with the view of physical space that’s been almost universally adopted for the past two thousand years it’s basically a non-question. As crystallized by the likes of Euclid it’s been assumed that space is ultimately just a kind of “geometrical background” into which any physical thing can be put—and then moved around.
After 100 Years, Can We Finally Crack Post’s Problem of Tag? A Story of Computational Irreducibility, and More
Stephen Wolfram
For Post, the failure to crack his system derailed his whole intellectual worldview. For me now, the failure to crack Post’s system in a sense just bolsters my worldview—providing yet more indication of the strength and ubiquity of computational irreducibility and the Principle of Computational Equivalence.
Exploring Rulial Space: The Case of Turing Machines
Stephen Wolfram
Let’s say we find a rule that reproduces physics. A big question would then be: “Why this rule, and not another?” I think there’s a very elegant potential answer to this question, that uses what we’re calling rule space relativity—and that essentially says that there isn’t just one rule: actually all possible rules are being used, but we’re basically picking a reference frame that makes us attribute what we see to some particular rule. In other words, our description of the universe is a sense of our making, and there can be many other—potentially utterly incoherent—descriptions, etc.