This Russian-born American physicist says Our Entire Universe could be a Giant Neural Network. He published a research paper that redefines our Reality, suggesting that we’re living inside a massive neural network that governs everything around us. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitaly-vanchurin-959a45135/)
Dr. Vitaly Vanchurin was born in Moscow and is a professor at the University of Minnesota. He teaches theoretical physics and cosmology. Dr. Vanchurin has a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Tufts University, where he studied the evolution of cosmic strings.
Dr. Vanchurin's current research focuses on several complex topics, including: - The expansion of the universe (cosmic inflation) - The idea of multiple universes (multiverse cosmology) - The behavior of strings in space (string theory landscapes) - Fluids that exist in multiple dimensions - Gravitational waves - How light travels through the universe.
Dr. Vanchurin has been in the news for his new theory about "cosmological neural networks", which is a fascinating idea that combines cosmology and computer science. Dr. Vanchurin attempts to reframe reality in a particularly eye-opening way — suggesting that it's a "possibility that the entire universe on its most fundamental level is a neural network."
For years, physicists have attempted to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. The first posits that time is universal and absolute, while the latter argues that time is relative, linked to the fabric of space-time. In his paper, Dr. Vanchurin argues that artificial neural networks can "exhibit approximate behaviors" of both universal theories. Since quantum mechanics "is a remarkably successful paradigm for modeling physical phenomena on a wide range of scales," he writes, "it is widely believed that on the most fundamental level the entire universe is governed by the rules of quantum mechanics and even gravity should somehow emerge from it."
"We are not just saying that the artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing physical systems or for discovering physical laws, we are saying that this is how the world around us actually works," reads the paper's discussion. "With this respect it could be considered as a proposal for the theory of everything, and as such it should be easy to prove it wrong."
Dr. Vanchurin's paper caused debate among physicists and experts in machine learning. The paper mainly says that: Quantum mechanics equations can help explain how systems behave when they are close to balance (equilibrium). Classical mechanics equations can help explain how systems behave when they are far from balance. He thinks this connection is interesting and can help us better understand how the natural world works. He admits that this might just be a coincidence, but it still supports our current understanding of the physical world.
Dr. Vanchurin explains how universe might fundamentally be a neural network. He said," The first way is to start with a precise model of neural networks and then to study the behavior of the network in the limit of a large number of neurons. What I have shown is that equations of quantum mechanics describe pretty well the behavior of the system near equilibrium and equations of classical mechanics describes pretty well how the system further away from the equilibrium. Coincidence? May be, but as far as we know quantum and classical mechanics is exactly how the physical world works.
The second way is to start from physics. We know that quantum mechanics works pretty well on small scales and general relativity works pretty well on large scales, but so far we were not able to reconcile the two theories in a unified framework. This is known as the problem of quantum gravity.
Clearly, we are missing something big, but to make matters worse we do not even know how to handle observers. This is known as the measurement problem in context of quantum mechanics and the measure problem in context of cosmology.
Then one might argue that there are not two, but three phenomena that need to be unified: quantum mechanics, general relativity and observers. 99% of physicists would tell you that quantum mechanics is the main one and everything else should somehow emerge from it, but nobody knows exactly how that can be done. In this paper I consider another possibility that a microscopic neural network is the fundamental structure and everything else, i.e. quantum mechanics, general relativity and macroscopic observers, emerges from it. So far things look rather promising.
Dr. Vanchurin said that he wrote a paper titled "Towards a theory of machine learning" which explains that how deep learning works. The initial approach was to apply statistical mechanics methods to study the behavior of neural networks. However, it was discovered that the learning dynamics of neural networks are similar to quantum dynamics in physics, in certain limits.
This led to exploring the idea that the physical world might be a neural network. He wrote that to prove the theory was wrong, "all that is needed is to find a physical phenomenon which cannot be described by neural networks." "The idea is definitely crazy, but if it is crazy enough to be true? That remains to be seen."
The idea that the Universe is something like an organism or a brain isn’t a new one. This concept goes back at least to 500 B.C. when it was first dreamed up by Anaxagoras. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher proposed that an intelligent cosmic force, or “Nous,” guides the development of the Universe toward a more organized and purposeful state of existence. Today we might describe Nous as the principle of self-organization. While the specifics of Anaxagoras’ theory of the Universe contain concepts that are not consistent with modern science, breakthroughs in our understanding of the nature of reality are breathing new life into the idea that the world as a whole may be very similar in structure and function to the biological organisms and information networks it has produced through the evolutionary process.
Scientists have recently emphasized that the physical organization of the Universe mirrors the structure of a brain. Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder — renowned for her skepticism — wrote a bold article for Time Magazine in August of 2022 titled “Maybe the Universe Thinks. Hear Me Out,” which describes the similarities.
Like our nervous system, the Universe has a highly interconnected, hierarchical organization. The estimated 200 billion detectable galaxies aren’t distributed randomly, but lumped together by gravity into clusters that form even larger clusters, which are connected to one another by “galactic filaments,” or long thin threads of galaxies. When one zooms out to envision the cosmos as a whole, the “cosmic web” formed by these clusters and filaments looks strikingly similar to the “connectome,” a term that refers to the complete wiring diagram of the brain, which is formed by neurons and their synaptic connections. Neurons in the brain also form clusters, which are grouped into larger clusters, and are connected by filaments called axons, which transmit electrical signals across the cognitive system.
Physicist Hossenfelder notes a striking similarity between the cosmic web and the brain's connectome, citing a study that found they share mathematical properties. This leads her to wonder if the Universe could be thinking. However, thinking requires information processing, like neuronal signaling in the brain.
She speculates about signals transmitted along galactic filaments, but notes the Universe's vastness and expansion make cosmic-scale information processing unlikely, given the immense time it takes for signals to travel. Hossenfelder explains that sending signals across the cosmos, even at light speed, would take 80 billion years, and 11 million years just for a signal to travel to our nearest galaxy. But Hossenfelder speculates over whether “hidden connections” could allow for faster signaling.
In a section called “Everything is Connected,” she explains how mechanisms like quantum entanglement or other forms of “non-local connections” could enable longer-range computations. “A non-locally connected Universe would make sense for many reasons,” Hossenfelder writes. “If these speculations are correct, the Universe might be chock full of tiny portals that connect seemingly distant places.
The physicists Fotini Markopoulou and Lee Smolin estimated that our Universe could contain as much as 10 to the 360th power of such non-local connections. And since the connections are non-local anyway, it doesn’t matter that they expand with the Universe. The human brain, for comparison, has a measly 10 to the 15th power connections.”
Dr. Vanchurin argues that the world is literally a neural network, with an interconnected network of “nodes” existing at the microscopic scale that is equivalent to the network of neurons inside our skulls. This network allows the Universe not just to evolve, but to learn, and it is a hypothesis that may actually be testable someday. Dr. Vanchurin’s theory is very impressive but important to note that in this model the neural network is not a “thinking machine”, it does not recognize patterns, etc. as we use them in computer technology; he is using it as a mathematical model of particles.
But what if the particles and even space and time are not fundamental? The non-fundamentality of space-time is something weird, but not a new thing.
Donald Hoffman is a big prophet of the theory of the “conscious Universe”. In his theory, the most fundamental thing is the conscious agent, and space-time and the particles are only emergent properties of the conscious experience.
The idea that the Universe is a brain, a neural network, or a self-organizing complex adaptive system analogous to an organism invites us to reexamine our understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it. If the Universe is indeed alive and evolving, then the emergence of life and consciousness on Earth would be a natural part of its development, not just a coincidence. As conscious beings, we are not just observers, but active participants in the Universe's growth towards greater complexity and interconnectedness.
Our understanding of the Universe has changed over time, from a clockwork to an engine, then a computer, and now a neural network. This might make it seem like our descriptions are just human projections that will eventually be proven wrong. However, it's more likely that our understanding is progressively deepening as we learn more about the Universe's dynamics and structure.
by Vicky Verma at X @Unexplained2020 on August 29, 2024
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