This is stupefyingly important and well-crafted. It has to be read more broadly. I am not sure how. Press on. X seems the more potentially expansive front-edge for the exposure needed whilst this substack will, for now, remain a repository visited by only a few. Thus, here, I add only a few practical questions; with the caveat that it is mostly above my pay grade and I may simply have mis-read or -understood.
Your ability to bring in mathematical representations, sometimes guided by a handy "what this means" notes, is excellent and appreciated. A non-mathematician but mathematically-comfortable reader can follow these and that is a big deal.
Your willingness to craft and link extended abstract constructions and then step forward into bigger pictures - including the theological and truly metaphysical brings importance to the work.
For now some quibbles and thoughts on outreach:
A. I felt that the progressions in your description of your 4 domains with "upward"/"downward" characterizations were linked to some notions of a continuous range of significance, but descriptively reversed, from those you used to describe Buelhler's. In my mind I had to keep invert-mapping references to moving downard in one scale to the opposite direction in another.
B. How do you avoid the "man with a hammer so everything looks like a nail" phenomenon. I feel that Wolfram falls into this trap. Perhaps the pace of your current discovery will overwhelm that - and your seeming natural humility helps a lot.
C. Engaging the scientists. Levin is hot right now (and rightly so). I see you pinged him in this piece. Can I ask: what happened to "material and "final" causes. Their absence raises provocative questions and is central to his extended thinking.
D. Engaging the philosophers. Matt Segall may be a key. He was on your Levin-group zoom. I think the linkage of your four domains, and cross-domain associations, to "qualia" (described in another article), is a powerful mapping and a possibly very useful "can opener" to pry the interest of philosophers like Segall into a closer look at your work. His is a very open mind. He has been shy to approach Wolfram or his work, and may paint you with the same brush. As a fellow Whiteheadian I think I see why. Whitehead's vast metaphysics of inter-relatedness is everywhere valenced. It is an Indra's net of value and "importance" and creativity, while Wolfram's seems starkly austere. Just graphs. But Segall is also drawn to a notion of god within Whitehead and enacted in the cosmos with which you and your comfort and facility with traditions of religious thought may forge a link.
E. Engaging the AI-alignment people. Absolutely. This piece is bulls-eye on that but such a wild I have little to suggest from my tiny corner.
I think the first point is this is a pointer - it's not full proof (yet - I'm designing an experiment to directly test heirarchy more explicitly)
On your questions:
A. This is fair enough - imagine the densest network (most rules) at the bottom and work up!
B. I can't. Every process can be modelled computationally so it's hard. Hence I always wonder if I'm overfitting!
C. I just did the Platonic Symposium. These questions are probably not ready for that network yet. Need to prove telos (more than the hints so far from that lab) is universal before you can ask those questions empirically
D. I'll reach out!
E. Appreciate it - if you can share the substack it's appreciated and invite ppl!
Well... Sam.
This is stupefyingly important and well-crafted. It has to be read more broadly. I am not sure how. Press on. X seems the more potentially expansive front-edge for the exposure needed whilst this substack will, for now, remain a repository visited by only a few. Thus, here, I add only a few practical questions; with the caveat that it is mostly above my pay grade and I may simply have mis-read or -understood.
Your ability to bring in mathematical representations, sometimes guided by a handy "what this means" notes, is excellent and appreciated. A non-mathematician but mathematically-comfortable reader can follow these and that is a big deal.
Your willingness to craft and link extended abstract constructions and then step forward into bigger pictures - including the theological and truly metaphysical brings importance to the work.
For now some quibbles and thoughts on outreach:
A. I felt that the progressions in your description of your 4 domains with "upward"/"downward" characterizations were linked to some notions of a continuous range of significance, but descriptively reversed, from those you used to describe Buelhler's. In my mind I had to keep invert-mapping references to moving downard in one scale to the opposite direction in another.
B. How do you avoid the "man with a hammer so everything looks like a nail" phenomenon. I feel that Wolfram falls into this trap. Perhaps the pace of your current discovery will overwhelm that - and your seeming natural humility helps a lot.
C. Engaging the scientists. Levin is hot right now (and rightly so). I see you pinged him in this piece. Can I ask: what happened to "material and "final" causes. Their absence raises provocative questions and is central to his extended thinking.
D. Engaging the philosophers. Matt Segall may be a key. He was on your Levin-group zoom. I think the linkage of your four domains, and cross-domain associations, to "qualia" (described in another article), is a powerful mapping and a possibly very useful "can opener" to pry the interest of philosophers like Segall into a closer look at your work. His is a very open mind. He has been shy to approach Wolfram or his work, and may paint you with the same brush. As a fellow Whiteheadian I think I see why. Whitehead's vast metaphysics of inter-relatedness is everywhere valenced. It is an Indra's net of value and "importance" and creativity, while Wolfram's seems starkly austere. Just graphs. But Segall is also drawn to a notion of god within Whitehead and enacted in the cosmos with which you and your comfort and facility with traditions of religious thought may forge a link.
E. Engaging the AI-alignment people. Absolutely. This piece is bulls-eye on that but such a wild I have little to suggest from my tiny corner.
Hey thanks for the detailed comments.
I think the first point is this is a pointer - it's not full proof (yet - I'm designing an experiment to directly test heirarchy more explicitly)
On your questions:
A. This is fair enough - imagine the densest network (most rules) at the bottom and work up!
B. I can't. Every process can be modelled computationally so it's hard. Hence I always wonder if I'm overfitting!
C. I just did the Platonic Symposium. These questions are probably not ready for that network yet. Need to prove telos (more than the hints so far from that lab) is universal before you can ask those questions empirically
D. I'll reach out!
E. Appreciate it - if you can share the substack it's appreciated and invite ppl!