Are all Cellular Automata models of universes?

[Suekdccia]

TL;DR Summary

Do Stephen Wolfram and Gerard 't Hooft propose that literally every Cellular Automata is a universe?

Both Stephen Wolfram and nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft think that the universe is a Cellular Automata.

As far as I know, 't Hooft developped a series of frameworks to build different models of Cellular Automata and Wolfram also proposed a framework where network nodes could produce different Cellular Automata universes.

Both of them proposed specific models of Cellular Automata to describe our universe (or rather they are working in a Cellular Automata description that can be applied entirely to our universe), but since they proposed a framework to create different Cellular Automata models, this makes me think that these authors think that literally every type of Cellular Automata correspond to a universe

So, does anyone here know of this is correct? Does anyone here know these works well enough to tell me if these physicists think that every Cellular Automata model corresponds to a universe?

 

[phinds]

Check out John Conways's "Game of Life". It's a cellular automaton. See if you think it could be a "universe" in any meaningful sense of that word.

https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

 

[Klystron]

I read Wolfram's cellular automaton book years back, interesting and relevant to computing projects I was involved. I remember an earlier work on manifolds as describing the structure of the universe but cannot answer your question without access to the texts.

 

[Suekdccia]

Check out John Conways's "Game of Life". It's a cellular automaton. See if you think it could be a "universe" in any meaningful sense of that word.

https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

In fact Conway's Game of Life has been worked as a model for the universe. For example, nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft has proposed a particular model for the universe partially based on Game of Life. There are lots of scientists that think our universe os a cellular automata (Richard Feynman could be one of them). There is even an entire field called Digital Physics (although it is partially philosophy)...So modelling the universe as a Cellular Automata is not an isolated idea from a conspiracy theorist's blog, it is a serious field developped by various scientists

 

[Suekdccia]

I read Wolfram's cellular automaton book years back, interesting and relevant to computing projects I was involved. I remember an earlier work on manifolds as describing the structure of the universe but cannot answer your question without access to the texts.

What earlier work on manifolds are you referring to? Did you read them in A New Kind of Science?

 

[phinds]

So modelling the universe as a Cellular Automata is not an isolated idea from a conspiracy theorist's blog, it is a serious field developped by various scientists

I did not mean to suggest otherwise. I was responding to the thought that ALL cellular automata are "universes". I was not aware that Conway's model had been used for anything so extensive. I've only seen it do fairly trivial things.

 

[Klystron]

What earlier work on manifolds are you referring to? Did you read them in A New Kind of Science?

Thanks for that reference, online and for free. Pardon my poor memory. I remember contents but not authors and titles.

Several years before I read Penrose's "Road to Reality" for the first time (2010 ?); I read a brilliant textbook where the author used mostly hand-drawn diagrams of N-dimensional manifolds and related objects to explain the nature of space-time. With a better understanding of differential geometry and in light of Penrose's ideas, I always meant to re-read that text but could not locate it again in my library system. A librarian friend suggested Wolfram, familiar to me from computer science more than physics.

 

[Suekdccia]

Summary: Is Gerard 't Hooft Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics background independent?

Gerard 't Hooft in his Cellular Automata Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262145006_The_Cellular_Automaton_Interpretation_of_Quantum_Mechanics_A_View_on_the_Quantum_Nature_of_our_Universe_Compulsory_or_Impossible) concludes:

"It may seem odd that our theory, unlike most other approaches, does not contain any
strange kinds of stochastic differential equation, no “quantum logic”, not an infinity of
other universes, no pilot wave, just completely ordinary equations of motion that we
have hardly been able to specify, as they could be almost anything."

Does this mean that 't Hooft's Interpretation is background independent? Can it be applied to any coordinate system?

 

[Andrea Panza]

This might be relevant: the authors demonstrated peculiar life-like behavior in particle cellular automata ruled by a simple motion equation

 

[diogenesNY]

If you have some time to invest and want a hands on experience, check out _Golly_, a freeware implementation of several different versions of Conway's Game of Life, along with several other cellular automata. Also included are LOTS of sets of starting data for each yielding some really amazing results and functions.

Just beware, monkeying around with this will likely cost you quite several hours or more of inexplicably lost time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golly_(program)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/golly/
http://golly.sourceforge.net/
diogenesNY

 

[WilliamKA]

Has anyone been able to use cellular automata to model space-time (in as many dimensions as required) in such as way as to demonstrate and quantify as to why matter preponderates in our universe rather than anti-matter ?

 

[arivero]

Is there some class of CA that allow for renormalization in the lattice? Say block spin, or something Kadanoff like.