Lex Fridman
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2023
3:38:43 · 4.8M views · Oct 27, 2021
A long Lex Fridman interview with Stephen Wolfram on complexity, cellular automata, computational irreducibility and the Wolfram Physics Project.
HN recommends it as an accessible way into Wolfram's physics ideas and his personality.
3 comments from Hacker News
Lots of comments about his "arrogance" but i just see someone passionate, judge for yourself! He has three long interviews on Lex Fridmans youtube channel! I greatly enjoyed watching those those. 1:[Stephen Wolfram: Cellular Automata, Computation, and Physics]( [LINK] ) 2:[Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe]( [LINK] ) 3: [Stephen Wolfram: Complexity and the Fabric of Reality ]( this video )
>If our brains are no more than computers and our own consciousness is software, then there exists some algorithm or combination of that gives rise to sentience. If these models arrived at this special algorithm during their training, much like the optimization of evolution arrived at the same, then we may have created something sentient. Joscha Bach gives a pretty good explanation of the algorithm we follow through the lens of Control Theory, and Stephen Wolfram has a pretty amazing Theory of Everything that explains how it can be arrived at. Joscha Bach: Nature of Reality, Dreams, and Consciousness [LINK] Stephen Wolfram: Complexity and the Fabric of Reality this video
A really interesting topic, especially from a philosophical point of view. A good discussion that touches on these ideas in a fairly accessible way: this video (Lex Friedman interviews Wolfram for the 3rd time) I enjoyed Sabine Hossenfelder's thoughts on this and other 'Theory of everything' projects (Do we need a Theory of Everything? [LINK] ). A little bit of a reality-check for those who get really invested in these ideas, but I, like her, think it's really cool that there are people like Wolfram et al thinking these interesting thoughts and trying to push Physics in new directions.