Stephen Wolfram: Observer Theory Solves the Entropy Problem
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
Curt Jaimungal
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2024
⏱️ 164 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone who's watching is an observer, and what you've published is called Observer Theory. |
| 0:06.1 | What's your latest discovery about? |
| 0:08.0 | About observer theory, what's that about? |
| 0:10.8 | It's about the question of sort of characterizing what it means to be an observer. |
| 0:15.5 | We have, for example, when it comes to asking what does it mean to do a computation? We have kind of a way of understanding that. We kind of start from touring machines. We know their equivalent to lots of other kinds of computational models. We have this notion of what it's like to do a computation. So I've been interested in what is it like to be an observer? Why do I care |
| 0:40.1 | about that? I care about that because in our physics project, it's become an essential thing to |
| 0:46.7 | understand what we're like as observers because it seems to be the case that what we're like as |
| 0:52.6 | observers determines what laws of physics |
| 0:55.4 | we perceive there to be. So it becomes important to be able to characterize what are we like as |
| 1:01.2 | observers. Because if we were observers that are different from the way we are, we would perceive, |
| 1:06.5 | I think, laws of physics that are different from the laws of physics that we perceive. |
| 1:11.4 | So in fact, I think in the end, the picture is going to be that the laws of physics, they're different from the laws of physics that we perceive. So in fact, |
| 1:16.3 | I think in the end, the picture is going to be that the laws of physics are what they are because we are observers of the kind we are. So it's a kind of a different, it's sort of a reframing |
| 1:22.5 | of thinking about what does it mean to have a fundamental theory of physics? It's a theory of physics that is the |
| 1:31.0 | theory that has to be the way it is for observers like us. It couldn't be the case that you could |
| 1:36.5 | kind of wheel in another theory, that God could have invented a different theory of the universe. |
| 1:41.8 | For observers like us, it is, I think, inevitable that the laws |
| 1:45.9 | of physics are the way that they are. So, okay, so how do we understand what is an observer, |
| 1:53.6 | what is an observer like us? Right. So what is an observer like us? |
| 1:58.2 | So first we have to kind of ask, what is an observer doing? The world's a complicated |
| 2:03.9 | place. We have finite minds. The goal of us as observers is to take the complexity of the world |
| 2:11.0 | and kind of find a way to stuff it into our finite minds. And in a sense, what that's doing |
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