Here is a summary of the key points:
- Computation is a powerful way to formalize and understand the world, and Wolfram has spent decades building up science and technology based on this idea.
- Wolfram’s physics project aimed to determine if computation underlies everything in the universe. In 2020, they announced their discovery of the “ultimate machine code of the universe” which is computational.
- The universe can be built up by applying simple computational rules that give rise to space, time, matter, and physical laws like gravity and quantum mechanics. This leads to the idea of the “ruliad” — the entangled limit of all possible computational processes.
- Observers like humans with limited computational abilities necessarily perceive slices of the ruliad according to laws like relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics. Our physics arises because of the type of observers we are.
- Wolfram Language aims to create a full computational language to represent all knowledge and allow systematic, computational thinking. This can become a tool for both humans and AI to explore the vast possibilities of the ruliad.
- As automation advances, humans will need to focus less on mechanics and more on conceptualization, guided by broad thinking and computational language to define goals and paths in the ruliad. This makes computational thinking a key future skill.
