The "everything" frameworks - commentary about the Ruliad vs. The Symboliad

by Casian STEFAN, Principal Researcher at Essentia Mundi AI Lab. Contact: ai-AT-essentiamundi.com / ai.essentiamundi.com
Aug. 2024.

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A motivation

A few years back, I remember S. Wolfram published the discovery of the Ruliad. I was very excited at that time, affirming/reposting on a social platform, "wow, we may have a theory of everything," an all-encompassing framework able to explain different scientific views and perspectives from a top view: indeed it is as Wolfram puts it: "a kind of ultimate limit of all abstraction and generalization. And it encapsulates not only all formal possibilities but also everything about our physical universe—and everything we experience can be thought of as sampling that part of the ruliad that corresponds to our particular way of perceiving and interpreting the universe."
Here a commentary on that position and the perspective of the Symboliad in it. Symboliad, as it was born, naturally - can be traced from the World View and the Symbol from the former articles, and have to state from the beginning that:
- There was no intention to develop an "everything" framework in the first place
- I try looking for a position of comparing the two, I can acknowledge that they may be the same thing
- We can see if the Ruliad's Framework can enact Symbols Framework (in the sense of its causal graphs).
- I have no detailed research on Ruliad apart from the original post a few years back, by the author (its the Ruliad name that stuck).
- For now, I can only assume that the only thing in common with the Ruliad, would be the name similarity: but used to underline the "everything" meaning. A conclusion may be drawn.
- Use a 3h podcast on ToE YT channel that encompasses the views on Ruliad vs. a panpsychism flavor by D.Hoffman.

Setup

With a superficiality on my side, by not going in details of the Ruliad, I am using a transcript of a recent discussion on the "Theories of Everything" podcast by Curt Jaimungal "Consciousness vs The Ruliad" with Stephen Wolfram & Donald Hoffman from June 26, 2024(*), in order to reflect and see the position of my framework that can be drawn from that discussion of the two greats. The discussion is balanced, because it contains the Ruliad's perspective on one side and the positions on consciousness (differences in views) and on how Mr. Hoffman is on a trajectory to find some abstract, essential forms, that would account for building blocks of reality on the other side.

To begin with the commentary I also have to mention the setup but an historical one: Kant (ultimate subjects) and Leibniz (Monadology) aspiring to that "most basic or original substance." I argue that the intuition on this endeavor goes far more back in time - in the sense that, as a Working Assumption here - even the Bible can be seen as a scientific work (doxastic-credal games practiced on the same intuition - we could not have a different one at the very core, it only changes as we alter the world...).
One more interesting aspect, historically, the problem of consciousness, soul-body, seems to be around only for a few hundred years. This dualist view was not of great concern before that.

Let's begin (Ideas discussed and my commentary)

W: "Leibniz, you can't have mind from not mind."
My comment: Symbols Framework assumes a mortal basin as the basic "substance", in the sense that the not mind (matter) the structural side of the basin, is coupled with the electricity (not matter) of that basic ensemble (from our position, this may work not only for the brain but even at scales of cells - what possesses some form of electricity) that would enact the Symbol. In Leibniz, "the gear does not give an explanation about the function" - In our case, the coupling accounts for the gear and a basic explanation, representation, the very spark of the Symbol.(Not to be treated as a duality.)

D: "Physicalists, consciousness in past 30 years with IIT, GWT, orchestrated collapse of QS and microtubules - I would ask how your framework explains conscious experiences, like taste of chocolate..."
My comment: Symbols Framework assumes that the drive between Symbols, as entities in a certain measure by having the connection substrates to sensory interfaces, the working of the Symbols is always in concretizing their roundness, existence: a basin to be filled, gradually the subjectivity of the taste of mint, for example, is conjured that way, through sensory but also subjectively and culturally (in the Wittgenstein sense of habituation games between agents - and I would add, that are "alike" carrying the same structural "receptors", and even to some extent in an Hegelian way) reinforced: that is the enacted, shared, "externsively" defined Symbol for the taste of mint. It works great because we are quite alike. (Article on the Identical Twins minds to see even deeper the structural connection.) The Symbol of mint if not there, it has its basin, so contrary to what W. says: there is evidence that there is an area of the brain that fires similarly for the same Symbol. 

D/W: "...I hear the middle C on the piano...Can you convince me that you can hear that or feel those?...absolutely not!"
My comment: not directly, but being part of the same "form of life" in the very physicalist sense, we can't be that different as inputs. Then through our interactions, it is always a shared game, through which we reinforce the Symbols and their connections (a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent - Wittgenstein on private language.)
And solipsism as the "world is myself": well certainly the Symbols create such a world (in turn also open, shared...)

W/D: "...so you don't believe that the LLMs have those experiences? D: it's complicated than that...we take a headset...my consciousness created a headset to interact with other consciousnesses"
My comment: LLMs have a kind of different "consciousness" - from the answer above, it is different because is not the kind as ours, but that it can have some chunks of our Symbols that are at work! (The madman perspective.)  Headset: this is analogous to the Environment and an agent on Symbols: unconsciously mainly, we always load the ensemble of Symbols vis-a-vis the Environment we are in. And this allows us to see beyond the pixels in this case. We have the appropriate Symbols formed more or less, that allow us to see the whole. From this perspective of the Symbols Framework, we assume the "consciousness" is in the observer and in his Symbols primarily.

W: "...a frog has internal experience"
My comment: We as observers with our Symbols, we can only project a theory of mind, within our Symbols, to other systems. (This was the the initial aim, how to develop a way to measure consciousness levels across systems.) To humans is easy relatable, to other Systems we can assume based on input and behavior. A frog being a biological entity, that moves, etc. has certainly its set of Symbols although "alien" from ours. We can overlap eg. a pain feeling, but we can only know our pain kind. As the observer. The observer and the observed 

D: "...our headset has only got four dimensions. Why not have consciousnesses that are using headsets with a billion dimensions..."
My comment: from our Framework, our headset is doomed to that limitations in the short and middle therm. There is always a map-territory issue at play: unless we are not playing games with other abstract Symbols and self adjust to them, we can't see the forms they represent (just as a child when pointed out a thing, without further explanation, it can't see it.) But is seems this process can be expanded, allowing us to see more, by having some more work to do with self-domestication in those other different Symbols (we may need to have raised kinds that, with an adjusted Environment to that if possible, can really be embodied entities containing that different Symbols - eg. we are not able to see in big things) and grasp a meaning of them. The Symboliad in a certain part, is more and more round lately, in its old, established Symbols, eg. the physics needs take in new cones, to be able to transcend. And in this transitory age, we gradually domesticate with that new views (like Symbols Framework, Ruliad, abstract mathematics, etc.)
W: "do you think there are laws of physics...observational version of physics...what's happening in brains relating to the potential laws of physics..."
My comment: from the perspective of Symbols Framework, the inevitability of physics is derived from the fact that in the Symboliad there are cones, an accumulated interactions of ensembles of Symbols that are roughly "bathing" in the same electrical "basin." Cones manifest as ensembles of tighter and tighter connections, so at one moment one can't get out more out of this firing together unless one is going down the way for new connections. (This is probably a first hint at what the Ruliad is about: all possible ways at the cones.)
Another refinement from an essential drive. A squeezing that goes mainly in formalization direction, from causal / correlational insights to language, intuition, logic, formal logic, hypotheses, experiments, and the tip of the cone in the Symboliad's slice adopted (within an Observers view, that begins with simple assumptions and constrains, which gets further strengthened, by actually different biases: observer, completist, confounding causality/correlation, assuming new hypotheses, etc.) - In essence this is what I call the Observer Bias. Further described as the entity that stands in the way of seeing what is out there - that is probably until all the cones have been exhausted!)

W: "...I'm just going to set up the S-matrix and say, you know, this is given this initial configuration, what, you know, how will that translate to final configurations..."
My comment: That is all right, one creates a new hypothesis and sees what goes from there. The problem I see in this endeavor is the aforementioned Observer Bias, the kind of very hard problem of deduction in my view: the illusion of a strict causal nexus. For a fairly large number of variables, and those variables, in nature terms (with math. the abstraction, means detail reduction, isolation - always like saying "imagine that..."), can't be treated as isolated, the causality is in the Observer's view. By taking (even not consciously, it depends on the automatic load of the Symbols already, Environment, etc.) a slice in the Symboliad, one is "conjuring" some certain Symbols, from this there is first an inevitable rise in: A in relation to B. And from this dualism, the ramification to causality, logic. And at best these kind of adopted models coincidentally may land of a kind of round, tip of cone, final approximation to something, which only the Observer interprets (biased) which was intuitively expected. (A Symbol's more and automatic drive within the slice, initial assumptions, adopted.)
As a glimmer of hope I think that a causal graph may still be there, if the underlying structures adhere to a kind of repetitive (fractal zooming) pattern. That structuralist view would transcend the levels of generativity (something new at next level emerges.)

W: "...what matters to us is just this causal graph of events..."
My comment: the causal graph of events can only happen with the tip of the cones in the Symboliad. This graph has to have all the cones defined, in the sense there is no other slice that can be taken in the Symboliad that has no cone. Another hint maybe to note here: the Ruliad seem to find itself, at the cones tips in the Symboliad.

W: "I don't disagree that the construction of space is a feature of certain details of us being the way that we are"
My comment: the Symbols that we form can't be different at their very basic formation, so to speak, it is assumes as alike, for each one of our species kind. Evolution tuned.
From there on, the intuition they provide, is also of a kind. An externalization of the Symbols through the uttering of sounds, language is exactly sustaining this view of common core. The Symbols of space, arises, naturally, when we are in a certain Symbols space adjacent to the space Symbol. As in: Earth, planets, Sun, beyond our System...the emergence of the space is inevitable to our kind.

D: "...looking for new foundations for physics entirely outside of space-time and remarkably entirely beyond quantum theory..."
My comment: The structuralist approach through mathematics may reveal something. The problem I have, what is this something (if) represents? What to do with it? What Symbol it is to be representing? My feeling, through the Symbols Framework, is we should go in an opposite way, and recombine, create different ontologies to start with different slices. A return to a metaphysics stance and then again into a cone. I am sure this is also how this would happen, there is no more to add to this particular cone. A glimmer of hope, new mathematics to be also based on (to account for more representational means, not just descriptive.)

W: "I think that time, as I see it, is this kind of progressive application of computational rules, and space is this thing that you can reasonably construct as a way to describe what's in the universe."
My comment: Time from the perspective of Symbols Framework, may be: the succession of things that happen. The attention to a set of Symbols, while the other sets are there but marshaling in background. Waiting to be in front as needed (Symbols ensembles that are mostly unconsciously loaded, by their nature, bidirectional bottom-up, top-down.)

W: "...if those assumptions were changed, if we were observers different from the way we are, we would get different physics. We might not be able to communicate with those other observers who have such very different qualities"
At our level of attunement, our level of understanding, of creating the kind of Symbols. At our level, that I call frame of reference. The creation of water as Symbol, is that we are attuned to have it that way seen. And not as molecules jumping. We can say we use molecules of this substance that we use to wash the hands. The fact that we are dependent of that molecule and we habitually use it, in our communication, is more vital to our live, we accustomed with it as water. Symbols is naturally emerged, again, from use, from necessity to pass it over to others, close to our core, life. Was inevitable to be there. For other Symbols to form we need to extend, change the way we sense, change own world and environment, etc.
That is what in my "Why there are no aliens out there" article is about in the connection with the "form of life" in Wittgenstein terms. ("The weather as having a mind of its own" - not to be equivaled with our Symbols of movement, formation of differences, water transformations: it goes through the eyes of Observer and translated accordingly (anthropomorphize) but still a way to research it as a functional system in itself.)

W. "...why a single thread of experience..."
My comment: at the core there is a set of Symbols that keeps us on automatic drive. More threads of experience can be attained, some are not attuned to the navigating space, the Symbols are overlapping, the threads are also different, but then the classification would be a "mental disorder" within our society. The domestication effect, as in our world, our stable world plays an important role in the Symbols Framework. We have the Symbols for the way we live, with other agents too, and that is the accepted Zeitgeist. Any deviation is seen as problematic. (The article about LLMs and madness.) But maybe the defining obstacle, is the attention load, through the working memory, there is a limit as to one can in normal environment and circumstances, process.

W. "...concept encoding, language, decode by the other..." min. 30.
My comment: Language is just a tip of an iceberg. A word is committed to an entire web. When one says, "mint" there is a web of connections this one thing is bounded to. The means of transport is through the language, the pack is different than the unpack in the others. But this, if communicated openly, then the Symbols in the parties involved, would get updated too. (Or even enacted, if not present, but still if the adjacent web is present, at one point this would be enacted!)

[to continue]

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Exploration by C. Stefan, 21.Aug.2024 [about]
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References: 

C. Stefan - Domestication through Symbols [here].
C. Stefan - Of Environment and Madness [here].