Edge #572: Computation All the Way Down - A Conversation with Stephen Wolfram

News from Edge To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. June 19, 2020 THE THIRD CULTURE [Computation All the Way Down]( A Conversation with Stephen Wolfram We're now in this situation where people just assume that science can compute everything, that if we have all the right input data and we have the right models, science will figure it out. If we learn that our universe is fundamentally computational, that throws us right into the idea that computation is a paradigm you have to care about. The big transition was from using equations to describe how everything works to using programs and computation to describe how things work. And that's a transition that has happened after 300 years of equations. The transition time to using programs has been remarkably quick, a decade or two. One area that was a holdout, despite the transition of many fields of science into the computational models direction, was fundamental physics. If we can firmly establish this fundamental theory of physics, we know it's computation all the way down. Once we know it's computation all the way down, we're forced to think about it computationally. One of the consequences of thinking about things computationally is this phenomenon of computational irreducibility. You can't get around it. That means we have always had the point of view that science will eventually figure out everything, but computational irreducibility says that can't work. It says that even if we know the rules for the system, it may be the case that we can't work out what that system will do any more efficiently than basically just running the system and seeing what happens, just doing the experiment so to speak. We can't have a predictive theoretical science of what's going to happen. STEPHEN WOLFRAM is a scientist, inventor, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. He is the creator of the symbolic computation program Mathematica and its programming language, Wolfram Language, as well as the knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha. His most recent endeavor is The Wolfram Physics Project. He is also the author, most recently, of A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics. [ [Continue...]( Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. [EDGE.ORG]( John Brockman, Editor and Publisher; Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher; Nina Stegeman, Associate Editor Copyright (c) 2020 by Edge Foundation, Inc., 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001. All Rights Reserved. --------------------------------------------------------------- Visit [edge.org]( "Fabulous" —The New York Times • "Thrilling" —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung • "Wonderful" —The Wall Street Journal • "Fantastically Stimulating" —BBC Radio 4 • "Astounding" —The Boston Globe • "Splendidly enlightened" —The Independent • "Audacious" —La Vanguardia • "Brilliant" —The Sunday Times • "Enthralling" —The Daily Mail • "Exhilarating" —The Evening Standard • "Stunning" —New Scientist • "Enjoyable" —Salon • "Provocative" —La Stampa • "Marvelous" —Prospect • "Awesome" —Wired • "The brightest minds in the known universe" —Vanity Fair • "A lavish cerebral feast" —The Atlantic • "An intellectual treasure trove" —San Francisco Chronicle • "The world's smartest website" —The Guardian --------------------------------------------------------------- Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](