Halting Problems and Emma Machines
what if reality was just a giant crystal containing all possible computational permutations and also P = NP... jk.. unless? 👀
The halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running or continue to run forever.
The halting problem never made sense to me. “Will it halt?” is a stupid question, the answer is always yes. Nothing is infinite. No silicon based computer algorithm will be able to survive past the heat death of the universe
Even though I think it’s a stupid question, it is an incredibly useful framework, or if you will—Meme.
Q: Will the halting problem ever stop being a meme we share with others?
A: Only when it’s something everyone understands, and we have exhausted all permutations of it, and then it will live on as a ghost, a holographic imprint in consciousness.
My problem with the halting problem is that it doesn't define the universe it exists inside of or computational medium it uses. If you give me a computer program and an input, I can determine if it will finish running or not, but only if I know what kind of computer it is running on, and the nature of Time inside of the universe.
For example, the halting problem doesn’t make sense inside of this universe, and doesn’t make sense on the Emma Machine (if Turing gets to name a computer after himself I do too). An Emma machine is like a Turing Machine That Remembers. It’s holographic like a hologram or blockchain. It has computed everything, every possible program has been run and the output stored in memory holographically, so to find the answer to anything you just need to look it up.
For example: What’s the prime factorization of [insanely large number]? It knows from the time when it factored all numbers and can just remember whenever. btw this is actually a solution to p vs np—if you build a hyper efficient way to multiply all incredibly large prime numbers and then just access the memory of it whenever you come across the large number. I recommend using an optical computer, a suuuper large etched crystal (think size of the empire state building). You can shine a couple photons on the part corresponding to the large number on one side and on the other side the two numbers that combined to make it will light up, someone has already done the math for the etching pattern, it’s pretty obvious if you think about it (hint—light has resonant frequencies that already correspond to numbers) they’ve just never scaled it. Can’t find the source.
P=NP in the Emma Machine.
The Ruliad
Think of it as the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways.
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/
The Ruliad is the store of all knowledge and the Emma Machine is the way we interact with that knowledge. Using my example of an empire building size permutation crystal, the Ruliad is the structure and the Emma Computer is the light shining through it. The Ruliad contains everything that is computationally possible. The Emma Machine is the perception of it.
A new halting problem
Given that the ruliad is All Permutations, will it ever halt?
The answer is mu. Halting is only something you can experience if time exist, and time doesn’t exist outside of the ruliad.
A more interesting question in my opinion is surrounding the interaction between the Emma Machine and the ruliad, and the generation of the ruliad. what is the process that paths are generated and explored? How does the ruliad gain structure? Is there a most-efficient way? I have some fun theories but I’ll share them in another blogpost…
Conclusion
I unfortunately don’t have much time to invest in this idea right now as a solo startup founder but I’m posting it because I’d like to open up conversations with interesting people about it. And because YOLO, too many things are rotting in my drafts, math is fun, being curious about the universe is fun, and I think the Ruliad is so cool and want everyone to know about it.
xoxo,
Emma Salinas
PS: I don’t have any specific plans with this substack, just gonna post random fun theories I’m thinking about since I barely share them anywhere!
Subscribe if you’re cool with the chaos.
The Wikipedia page on hypercomputation is a fun (similar) rabbit hole...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation
super digestible, great read :)