This reminds me STRIKINGLY of Sean Carrol’s musings on the way to approach quantum gravity using the concept of emergent spacetime. He posits that space could emerge from the graph of all entanglements between variables, with ‘more entangled’ becoming ‘close together’ rather than the other way around. He has some very preliminary math showing similar things as here, specifically that under certain assumptions you get the equations of general relativity out of it.
EDIT: On a sort of stylistic note… I am reminded of the way that in every epoch, whatever is hardest to understand that is newly understood is understood in terms of the most successful and powerful technology or new concept of the day. Classically, along one historical stream minds and nervous systems were talked about in hydraulic terms, then in terms of wiring diagrams, then in terms of computation. At this moment in history computation is a very powerful set of organizing metaphors and tools, and could stand to kick open new areas. That being said, I would bet that one would be able to find other formalisms that are equivalent after kicking down the door...
That being said, I would bet that one would be able to find other formalisms that are equivalent after kicking down the door...
At least, we’ve now hit one limit in the shape of universal computation: No new formalism will be able to do something that couldn’t be done with computers. (Unless we’re gravely missing something about what’s going on in the universe...)
This reminds me STRIKINGLY of Sean Carrol’s musings on the way to approach quantum gravity using the concept of emergent spacetime. He posits that space could emerge from the graph of all entanglements between variables, with ‘more entangled’ becoming ‘close together’ rather than the other way around. He has some very preliminary math showing similar things as here, specifically that under certain assumptions you get the equations of general relativity out of it.
See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHLfMXvQqX8
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/07/18/space-emerging-from-quantum-mechanics/
https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08444
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.02803
EDIT: On a sort of stylistic note… I am reminded of the way that in every epoch, whatever is hardest to understand that is newly understood is understood in terms of the most successful and powerful technology or new concept of the day. Classically, along one historical stream minds and nervous systems were talked about in hydraulic terms, then in terms of wiring diagrams, then in terms of computation. At this moment in history computation is a very powerful set of organizing metaphors and tools, and could stand to kick open new areas. That being said, I would bet that one would be able to find other formalisms that are equivalent after kicking down the door...
At least, we’ve now hit one limit in the shape of universal computation: No new formalism will be able to do something that couldn’t be done with computers. (Unless we’re gravely missing something about what’s going on in the universe...)