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A prediction on the origins of biological systems within the Wolfram Model

Posted 3 years ago

This is meant to be for fun. Just an idea to bat around the community to stoke some philosophical fires! This is an informal paper that is mainly philosophical in nature. I hope you enjoy!

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POSTED BY: Eli Parker
6 Replies

Nice paper, but I think I am missing your general point. Are you saying that living organisms are a just a manifestation of quantum phenomena, like every other physical phenomena (water in a glass)? Or do you mean that living organisms are somewhat different from the rest of the world in the sense that they shape their environment to bear information about them (a statue)?

Moreover, I had some difficulty interpreting this paragraph:

Like this simplistic example of the glass of water, we can begin to consider expansion as a necessity because, ironically, the system must obey the conservation of energy. The first question to address is, “How does the expansion of the universe affect the hypergraph?” We can consider answering this by saying, as the universe expands the total energy-density must increase to compensate for the conservation of energy. This means that more atoms-of-space must be populated to account for the overall increase of total volume.

You first seem to imply that the expanding universe must conserve energy, which, in general relativity needs not to be the case. I know it is a subtle issue, but anyway, in the wolfram model it is clear that, if the hypergraph is expanding, energy (the number of causal edges traversing a spacelike hypersurface) is surely not conserved.

Then you say that "as the universe expands the total energy-density must increase to compensate for the conservation of energy". I don't understand this, because I would think that if the volume expands and the energy-density increases, the total energy = volume*energy-density must increase as well, instead of remaining constant.

I would appreciate if you could clarify these points for me.

As a final remark, I really can't understand louis sarwal's comment. Quantum entanglement has been proven experimentally and understood from a theoretical point of view since the '70.

POSTED BY: Ruggero Valli
Posted 3 years ago

First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my paper. I appreciate it very much. I agree with you about "Louis Sarwal's" comment. I knew this, but still want to show appreciation for all who take the time to read anyhow. Second of all, thank you for linking articles so I can read and better understand your question and learn myself.

Since the universe is expanding, I am positing that this is due to "new" atoms of space popping into existence and updating the relationships between the atoms of space. So, I am visualizing the universe (through the lens of the Wolfram Model) that everything that exists is a collection of these atoms of space, like water in a glass. As the volume of the water increases (more water goes into the glass) the dynamics of the molecules change because more molecules are added to the system which knocks around all the other molecules. Energy in their model, as you showed, is associated with the update events happening all over the place. To be completely honest I don't know enough about GR or cosmology to try and talk about the volume of the universe respecting the universe's total energy-density (the subtle points will kill me! that's why i love feedback). Now, the crucial point (I probably didn't define well) is that constant updates to the relationships of atoms of space conserve the information of their interactions in unique structures. That could be particles, unbelievably immense clusters of gas in space, stars, planets, solar systems, galaxies, so on...

Okay. So... I am declaring that just as organisms conserve the information of their interactions in geometric structures in the environment, we (organisms) are the information which has been conserved between interacting quantum systems in a local region of space in the universe, namely Earth. A biological system's unique structure and all its complexity arises from initial conditions which are the state of the environment that the organism is embedded in. My whole paper is really trying to say that all complexity (especially organisms) are the result of information being conserved amidst constant rewriting of the hypergraphs. If this does not make sense, please tell me your thoughts. Thanks again for your helpful feedback!

POSTED BY: Updating Name

Thank you, it is a lot clearer now.

POSTED BY: Ruggero Valli
Posted 3 years ago

But things like quantum entanglements can not necessarily be proven, so any model based on particles will fail.

POSTED BY: louis sarwal
Posted 3 years ago

Thank you for taking the time to read! I appreciate any and all feedback!

POSTED BY: Eli Parker
Posted 3 years ago

First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my paper. I appreciate it very much. I agree with you about "Louis Sarwal's" comment. I knew this, but still want to show appreciation for all who take the time to read anyhow. Second of all, thank you for linking articles so I can read and better understand your question and learn myself.

Since the universe is expanding, I am positing that this is due to "new" atoms of space popping into existence and updating the relationships between the atoms of space. So, I am visualizing the universe (through the lens of the Wolfram Model) that everything that exists is a collection of these atoms of space, like water in a glass. As the volume of the water increases (more water goes into the glass) the dynamics of the molecules change because more molecules are added to the system which knocks around all the other molecules. Energy in their model, as you showed, is associated with the update events happening all over the place. To be completely honest I don't know enough about GR or cosmology to try and talk about the volume of the universe respecting the universe's total energy-density (the subtle points will kill me! that's why i love feedback). Now, the crucial point (I probably didn't define well) is that constant updates to the relationships of atoms of space conserve the information of their interactions in unique structures. That could be particles, unbelievably immense clusters of gas in space, stars, planets, solar systems, galaxies, so on...

Okay. So... I am declaring that just as organisms conserve the information of their interactions in geometric structures in the environment, we (organisms) are the information which has been conserved between interacting quantum systems in a local region of space in the universe, namely Earth. A biological system's unique structure and all its complexity arises from initial conditions which are the state of the environment that the organism is embedded in. My whole paper is really trying to say that all complexity (especially organisms) are the result of information being conserved amidst constant rewriting of the hypergraphs. If this does not make sense, please tell me your thoughts. Thanks again for your helpful feedback!

Ps. Please ignore the redundant post below this reply. I accidently posted that while not signed into my account and cannot delete it.

POSTED BY: Eli Parker
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