What Is Ruliology?

> Since I invented the term, I decided I should write something to explain it.

I see the pompousness has not changed since "A new kind of science" :)

I actually think this is just computer science. Why? Because the first "computer scientist" - Alan Turing - was interested in this exact same set of ideas.

The first programs he wrote for the Atlas and the Mark II ("the Baby"), seem to have been focused on a theory he had around how animals got their markings.

They look a little to me (as a non-expert in these areas, and reading them in a museum over about 15 minutes, not doing a deep analysis), like a primitive form of cellular automata algorithm. From the scrawls on the print outs, it's possible that he was playing with the space of algorithms not just the algorithms themselves.

It might be worth going back and looking at that early work he did and seeing it through this lens.

I’m involved in the development of the Functional Universe (FU) framework [0], and I see some interesting intersections with Wolfram’s ruliology.

Both start from the idea that simple rules / functions can generate complex structure. Where FU adds a twist is by making a sharp distinction between possibility and history. In FU, we separate aggregation (the space of all admissible transitions - superpositions, virtual processes, rule applications) from composition (the irreversible commitment of one transition that actually enters history).

You can think of ruliology as exploring the space of possible rule evolutions, while FU focuses on how one path gets selected and becomes real, advancing proper time and building causal structure. Rules generate possibilities; commitment creates facts.

So they’re not the same thing, but I think they’re complementary: ruliology studies the landscape of rules, FU studies the boundary where possibility turns into irreversible history.

[0]https://github.com/VoxleOne/FunctionalUniverse/blob/main/doc...

One thing I can say about the Wolfram language is that is actually Lisp with syntax that looks weird at first sight.

However when you look at rule processing, it's like pattern matching on steroids that I haven't seen in lisp world. It looks quite powerful and applies throughout the language (eg the "Query" book).

Too bad the whole language is closed and so heavily licensed .

It's starting to sound an awful lot like a Ruligion.

Ruliology provides a powerful descriptive framework - a taxonomy of computational behavior. However, it operates at the level of external dynamics without grounding in a primitive ontology. It tells us that rules behave, not why they exist or what they fundamentally are.

This makes ruliology an invaluable cartography of the computational landscape, but not a foundation. It maps the territory without explaining what the territory is made of.

Wolfram's eulogy will be titled: "A life wasted on cellular automata"

I am struggling to understand what is new here - other than the word ruliad - which to me seems to similar to what we have in theoretical computer science when we talk about languages, sentences, and grammars.

Always found this term sounded like a half-backed one. I get that going full greek roots with nomology was a dead end due to prior art. But "regularology" was probably free, or even at the time "regulogy" or "regology" though by now they are attached to different notions.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regula#Latin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomology

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/ro/properties/http%253... https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/regology

Someone mentioned his apparently failed earlier work ANKOS. I had to look that up - it is 2002 book by Wolfram with seemingly similar ideas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science

But exactly what is the problem here? Other than perhaps a very mechanical view of the universe (which he shares with many other authors) where it is hard to explain things like consciousness and other complex behaviors.

Sure, it's typical Wolfram, inviting the typical criticism. If you can understand what he's talking about at all then you won't be very convinced it's new. If you can't understand what he's talking about, then you also won't be interested in the puffery and priority dispute.

The rest of his stuff tagged ruliology is more interesting though. Here's one connecting ML and cellular automata: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/whats-really-goi...

Surprised it’s not called Wolfrology. This man is ego personified - not reading.

This is some pompous shit.

I kinda liked some of his previous articles, but come on. A picture of a plaque for a department is pretty much a guarantee it won't happen.

Not to mention: departments?! Anybody still desiring to create new departments in the bureaucracy of our modern educational institutions has a stunted imagination. The appropriate attitude with which to approach creating a new department is while holding one's nose.

Ruliology is the nerdiest word ever invented, kudos to Stephen Wolfram.

This looks very exciting but wolfram language being paywalled makes me super sad I can't play around with it

he invented the term and so pleased its blowing up.

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Amount of "I" and "me" is astonishing.

Didn't find anything on falsifiable criteria -- any new theory should be able, at least in theory, to be tested for being not true.

Classic psychoceramicology. http://bactra.org/notebooks/psychoceramics.html