
Algorithmic Theories of Everything (2000) - canjobear
https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0011122
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cromwellian
If I read this right, it's saying we live in a universe with either a short
program, or a fast program (program here means theory). From an algorithmic
information theory standpoint, this seems to suggest whatever fundamental
theory of physics we find, it'll be short. I'm wondering if this points more
to a cellular automata style theory being at the root of reality. Maybe
Wolfram was right?

~~~
amelius
Why are we not living in a universe with _all_ possible theories (short and
long), and there is only one of these theories which we actually see? Of
course, enumerating all possible theories might be actually a simple program
...

~~~
smaddox
Wolfram actually touches on this near the end of his fairly recent blog post
discussing recent advancements he and his collaborators have made on this
topic: [https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-
may-h...](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-
path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/)

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scribu
IMHO, a better title would be " _Probabilistic_ Theories Of Everything"

Contrast with the recent work from David Deutsch, which eliminates all
probabilities from physics.

Intro to Constructor Theory:
[https://youtu.be/wfzSE4Hoxbc](https://youtu.be/wfzSE4Hoxbc)

~~~
platz
this is basically just what happens in any deterministic hidden variable
theory

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Yeah, the aliens who are simulating us could be using a 64 bit prng at the
quantum level and we would still never know the difference, because our
measurement technology isn't there. The universe would be deterministic but
it's unlikely that we'd ever be able to prove it, unless they left breadcrumbs
intentionally.

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xenonite
Jürgen Schmidhuber, in the year 2000

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mcswell
Then was he 20 years ahead of his time?

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xenonite
Well, he (+his students) were ahead of the time in many things like in LSTM,
GAN, et cetera.

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m3kw9
Can someone explain in layman’s terms?

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GrantS
ELI5 is: If the universe is computable, might we be in the _simplest_
computable universe or the _fastest_ computable universe? Can computer science
and math help us figure out the reasons for the physics that run our world?

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ksr
When all the combinations have been played out, the universe will halt.

~~~
mcswell
Like this?
[https://urbigenous.net/library/nine_billion_names_of_god.htm...](https://urbigenous.net/library/nine_billion_names_of_god.html)

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techbio
Going from the title, it's all just a materialized Fibonacci Heap (though the
abstract would disagree with me).

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jarym
Well I’d love to give GPT3 the abstract as a starting point and see what comes
out the other end!

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msapaydin
Here is what comes out: "The history of our universe is a sequence of random
events. Each event is the result of a very small probability, and the events
are independent of each other. The probability that any particular event will
happen is very small. So the probability that any particular event will happen
twice is even smaller. So the probability that any particular event will
happen twice in a row is even smaller. So the probability that any particular
event will happen three times in a row is even smaller. And so on."

~~~
whymauri
"The probability that any particular event will happen is very small. So the
probability that any particular event will happen twice is even smaller. So
the probability that any particular event will happen twice in a row is even
smaller. So the probability that any particular event will happen three times
in a row is even smaller."

This sounds like a meta-joke, lol.

~~~
taberiand
"So the probability that any particular event will happen four times in a row
is looking a little suspicious. Five is right out"

~~~
ooobit2
"And I'm not even going to entertain the probability of six, though I can
confirm it will be exactly as many degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon."

