## “What about Consciousness?

”
"那意识呢？"

我会说“这是一个棘手的话题”。 我将开始谈论顺序：生命、智力、意识。

多年来，我一直在回避这个问题。我将会讲一下我在计算宇宙说中的发现、计算的不可还原性以及计算等价性原则，你可能会问： "这和意识之间有什
么关系呢？"我想说的是 "这个问题比较复杂"。我将会按照：生命、智慧、意识的顺序来解答。

那么"生命的抽象定义是什么？"我们知道在地球上生命和其所组成的核糖核酸、蛋白质和其他的结构。但是生命到底是什么？我们应该如何定义它呢？
我认为，生命其实就是一个复杂的计算机器，而计算等价性原则认为，计算的复杂性无处不在。什么是智能。我认为和生命的定义类似。我们知道人
类智能的情况。但也是一种复杂的计算模式，也是无处不在的。因此，说 "天气有自己的思想 "是完全合理的，只是它的细节和 "目的 "与我们当前
的理解的不一样。

Yes, its implementation involves computational sophistication. But its essence is not so much
about what can happen as about having ways to integrate what’s happening to make it somehow
coherent and to allow what we might see as “definite thoughts” to be formed about it.

我一直以为，意识也是相同的道理：如果从总体上概括来讲，它只是这个复杂计算机器的一个特征，这也是它为何如此的普遍的原因。但从物理上，
特别在量子力学基础的影响下，我感到，意识的核心和前二者是非常的不同的。意识的确是需要复杂的计算程序来实现的。但其本质并不在于能发生
什么，而在于我们是否可以整合所有的信息，并最在一定程度上达成一致，并形成我们所谓的 "明确的想法"。

And rather than consciousness being somehow beyond “generalized intelligence” or general
computational sophistication, I now instead see it as a kind of “step down”—as something
associated with simplified descriptions of the universe based on using only bounded amounts of
computation. At the outset, it’s not obvious that a notion of consciousness defined in this way
could consistently exist in our universe. And indeed the possibility of it seems to be related to
deep features of the formal system that underlies physics.

与其说意识在某种程度上高出于“广义智能”或复杂计算机器，事实上它是低于二者的一种“降级”——与基于仅使用有限计算量的宇宙简化描述相
关的东西。首先，以这种方式定义的意识的概念能否持续被认可还是未知数。的确，它似乎是有很大可能性与构成物理学基础的形式系统的特征有关

In the end, there’s a lot going on in the universe that’s in a sense “beyond consciousness”. But the
core notion of consciousness is crucial to our whole way of seeing and describing the universe—
and at a very fundamental level it’s what makes the universe seem to us to have the kinds of laws
and behavior it does.

归根结底，宇宙中有很多事情在某种意义上是 "超越意识 "的。但是，意识的核心概念对于我们观察和描述宇宙的整个方式至关重要 --在一个非常基

本的层面上，正是它让我们觉得宇宙具有它自己的规律和规则。

Consciousness is a topic that’s been discussed and debated for centuries. But the surprise to me
is that with what we’ve learned from exploring the computational universe and especially from
our recent Physics Project it seems there may be new perspectives to be had, which most
significantly seem to have the potential to connect questions about consciousness to concrete,
formal scientific ideas.

有关意识的讨论已经持续了几个世纪。但是，随着我们对计算宇宙的探索，尤其是近些年在物理项目上的探索，给我们带来了新的视角，重点是，我
们有很大的可能可以将意识问题与具体、正式的科学理念联系起来。

Inevitably the discussion of consciousness—and especially its connection to our new foundations
of physics—is quite conceptually complex, and all I’ll try to do here is sketch some preliminary
ideas. No doubt quite a bit of what I say can be connected to [existing
philosophical](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/notes-12-12--philosophical-implications/)
and other thinking, but so far I’ve only had a chance to explore the ideas themselves, and haven’t
yet tried to study their historical context.

不可避免的是，关于意识的概念尤其是它与新物理学基础的联系是相当复杂的，我们只能勾勒出一个大概的轮廓。毫无疑问的是很多东西都可以与现
有的哲学和其他思想联系起来，但到目前为止，我们也只是在探索这些思想本身，还没有研究它的历史背景。

## Observers and Their Physics

观察者和他们的理论

The universe in our models is full of sophisticated computation, all the way down. At the lowest
level it’s just a [giant collection of “atoms of
space”](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#what-is-space), whose relationships are
continually being updated according to a computational rule. And inevitably much of that process
is [computationally irreducible](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p737--computational-
irreducibility/), in the sense that there’s no general way to “figure out what’s going to happen”
except, in effect, by just running each step.

在我们的模型中，宇宙是复杂的计算组成的。本质上，它只是一个巨大的 "空间原子 "集合，其计算的规则是不断更新的。然而，这个过程的大部分

都是不可还原的，也就是说，除了按部就班的运行外，我们还不能"算出将要发生什么"。

But given that, how come the universe doesn’t just seem to us arbitrarily complex and
unpredictable? How come there’s order and regularity that we can perceive in it? There’s still
plenty of computational irreducibility. But somehow there are also pockets of reducibility that we
manage to leverage to form a simpler description of the world, that we can successfully and
coherently make use of. And a fundamental discovery of our Physics Project is that the two great
pillars of twentieth-century physics—[general
relativity](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#general-relativity-and-gravity) and [quantum
mechanics](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#what-is-energy-what-is-mass)—correspond
precisely to two such pockets of reducibility.

既然如此，为什么宇宙并非无规则和不可预测的呢？为什么我们能感知到部分的秩序和规律呢？计算的不可还原性占据很大部分。但少部分是具备可
还原性的，我们设法利用这些可还原性来进行简单的概括，以此来连贯地利用这些概念帮助我们的认知。在物理项目中有一个基本发现，也就是二十
世纪物理学的两大支柱--广义相对论和量子力学--他们刚好都是具备可还原性的。

There’s an immediate analog—that actually ends up being an example of the same fundamental
computational phenomenon. Consider a gas, like air. Ultimately the gas consists of lots of
molecules bouncing around in a complicated way that’s full of computational irreducibility. But
it’s a central fact of statistical mechanics that if we look at the gas on a large scale, we can get a
useful description of what it does just in terms of properties like temperature and pressure. And
in effect this reflects a pocket of computational reducibility, that allows us to operate without
engaging with all the computational irreducibility underneath.

举一个更为直接的类比-也是基本计算的现象之一。就拿气体来说，比如空气。气体由大量分子组成，他们以一种复杂的方式四处跳动，在计算上是具
备不可还原性的。但统计力学的一个核心指出，如果我们从大的尺度来观察气体，我们可以仅从温度和压力等属性方面，对气体的作用进行概括性的
解读。实际上，这是计算可还原性的体现，它允许我们在不干预所有计算不可还原性的情况下进行实验。

How should we think about this? An idea that will generalize is that as “observers” of the gas,
we’re conflating lots of different microscopic configurations of molecules, and just paying
attention to overall aggregate properties. In the language of statistical mechanics, it’s effectively a
story of “coarse graining”. But within our computational approach, there’s now a clear,
computational way to characterize this. At the level of individual molecules there’s an irreducible
computation happening. And to “understand what’s going on” the observer is doing a
computation. But the crucial point is that if there’s a certain boundedness to that computation
then this has immediate consequences for the effective behavior the observer will perceive. And
in the case of something like a gas, it turns out to [directly imply the Second Law of
Thermodynamics](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p441--irreversibility-and-the-second-
law-of-thermodynamics/).

这又引发了我们什么样的思考呢？广泛来讲，作为气体的 "观察者"，我们忽略掉不同的分子微观构型，而只关注整体的集合特性。统计力学上，这是
一个 "粗粒化 "的过程。但在我们现在有一种清晰的计算方法来解读这个过程。单个分子是具有一种不可还原性。对于具体上"发生了什么改变"，观
察者还在研究中。关键是如果我们的计算是有一定的局限性的，那么就会对研究结果产生直接影响。就像对气体的研究，产生了热力学第二定律。

In the past there’s been a certain amount of mystery around the origin and validity of the Second
Law. But now we can see it as a consequence of the interplay between underlying computational
irreducibility and the computational boundedness of observers. If the observer kept track of all
the computationally irreducible motions of individual molecules, they wouldn’t see Second Law
behavior. The Second Law depends on a pocket of computational reducibility that in effect
emerges only when there’s a constraint on the observer that amounts to the requirement that
the observer has a “coherent view” of what’s going on.

"第二定律 "的起源和有效性一直是个谜。现在我们知道它是底层计算不可还原性与计算有界性之间相互作用的结果。如果我们只是记录所有不可还原
的单个分子的运动，第二定律可能就不会被发现。第二定律依赖于计算可还原性，实际上，只有当观察者必须对正在发生的事情有 "看法一致 "时，
第二定律的发现才成为可能。

So what about physical space? The traditional view had been that space was something that
could to a large extent just be described as a coherent mathematical object. But in our models of
physics, space is actually made of an immense number of discrete elements whose pattern of
interconnections evolves in a complex and computationally irreducible way. But it’s much like
with the gas molecules. If an observer is going to form a coherent view of what’s going on, and if
they have bounded computational capabilities, then this puts definite constraints on what
behavior they will perceive. And it turns out that those constraints [yield exactly relativity]
(https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-
theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#deriving-special-relativity).

那么物理空间又是什么呢？空间传统上被定义为一个连贯的数学对象。但在物理学模型中，空间实际上是由大量离散元素组成的，这些元素之间的相
互联系模式以一种复杂的、无法计算的方式演化。但这与气体分子很相似。如果观察者要对正在发生的事情形成一致的看法，如果他们的计算能力有
限，那么这就对他们的研究增加了明显的限制。而事实证明，这些限制恰恰帮助发现了相对论。

In other words, for the “atoms of space”, relativity is the result of the interplay between
underlying computational irreducibility and the requirement that the observer has a coherent
view of what’s going on.

换言之，对于 "空间原子 "来说，相对论是底层计算的不可还原性与观察者对现象产生一致看法这一限制下相互作用的结果。

It may be helpful to fill in a little more of the [technical

details](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/). Our underlying theory
basically says that each elementary element of space follows computational rules that will yield
computationally irreducible behavior. But if that was all there was to it, the universe would seem
like a completely incoherent place, with every part of it doing irreducibly unpredictable things.

再补充一些有帮助的技术方面的细节上的知识。在基础理论上，空间的每个基本元素都遵循计算规则，这些规则将产生计算上不可还原的行为。但仅
是如此，宇宙就会显得不连贯，它的每一部分都是不可还原的且不可预测。

But imagine there’s an observer who perceives coherence in the universe. And who, for example,
views there as being a definite coherent notion of “space”. What can we say about such an
observer? The first thing is that since our model is supposed to describe everything in the
universe, it must in particular include our observer. The observer must be an embedded part of
the system—made up of the same atoms of space, and following the same rules, as everything
else.

但试想一下，有观察者能够找到宇宙中的一致性。例如，这些观察研究人员看来"空间 "是一个确定的连贯概念，我们又如何反驳呢？首先，既然我们
的模型是用来描述宇宙万物的，那么它就必须涵盖研究人员。他们必须是系统嵌入的一部分，和其他的万物一样由相同的空间原子构成，遵循相同的
规则。
And there’s an [immediate consequence to this](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p486--
time-and-causal-networks/). From “inside” the system there are only certain things about the
system that the observer can perceive. Let’s say, for example, that in the whole universe there’s
only one point at which anything is updated at any given time, but that that [“update point” zips
around the universe](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p489--time-and-causal-networks/)
(in “Turing machine style”), sometimes updating a piece of the observer, and sometimes
updating something they were observing. If one traces through scenarios like this, one realizes
that from “inside the system” the only thing the observer can ever perceive is [causal
relationships between events](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-
have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#the-graph-of-causal-
relationships).

这就推导出。从系统的 "内部 "来看，观察者只能感知到系统的某些部分。比方说，在整个宇宙中，只有一个点会在任何时间更新任何东西，但这个

"更新点 "会在宇宙中穿梭（以 "图灵机风格"），有时更新观察者的一部分，有时更新他们正在观察的事物。如果我们以此类推，就会发现从 "系
统内部"，观察者唯一能感知到的就是事件之间的因果关系。

They can’t tell “specifically when” any given event happens; all they can tell is what event has to
happen before what other one, or in other words, what the causal relationships between events
are. And this is the beginning of what makes relativity inevitable in our models.

他们无法确定一个特定事件 "具体何时 "发生；他们所能确定的只是在其他事件发生之前必须以什么事件为前提，换句话说，事件之间的因果关系是

什么。这就是相对论的开端所讲的内容。

But there are two other pieces. If the observer is going to have a coherent description of “space”
they can’t in effect be tracking each atom separately; they’ll have to fit them into some overall
framework, say by assigning each of them particular “coordinates”, or, in the language of
relativity, defining a “reference frame” that conflates many different points in space. But if the
observer is computationally bounded, then this puts constraints on the structure of the reference
frame: it can’t for example be so wild that it separately traces the computationally irreducible
behavior of individual atoms of space.

但是，其他的两个部分。如果观察者要对 "空间 "进行描述，他们实际上就不能单独来看每个原子；他们必须把它们纳入某个整体框架，比如说，给

每个原子分配特定的 "坐标"，或者在相对论中，定义一个 "参考框架"，把空间中的许多不同点混在一起。但是，如果观察者在计算能力有限，那么
参考框架的结构具备局限性：比如说，它必须有一定的限制以至于我们可以分别追踪空间中单个原子的不可还原的行为。

But let’s say an observer has successfully picked some reference frame. What’s to say that as the
universe evolves it’s still possible to consistently maintain that reference frame? Well, this relies
on a fundamental property that we believe either directly or effectively defines the operation of
our universe: what we call “[causal
invariance](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#the-importance-of-causal-invariance)”. The
underlying rules just describe possible ways that the connections between atoms of space can be
updated. But causal invariance implies that whatever actual sequence of updatings is used, there
must always be the same graph of causal relationships.

但是，假设观察者成功地选择了某个参照系。怎么才能保证随着宇宙的变化，这个参照系不变呢？这取决于一个基本属性，它直接或有效地定义了宇
宙的运行：我们称之为 "因果不变性"。基本规则只是描述了空间原子之间的联系所有可能的方式。但是，因果不变性意味着，无论使用哪种实际的更
新序列，因果关系都必须是相同的。

And it’s this that gives observers the ability to pick different reference frames, and still have the
same consistent and coherent perception of the behavior of the universe. And in the end, we
have a definite result: that if there’s underlying computational irreducibility—plus causal
invariance—then any observer who forms their perception of the universe in a computationally
bounded way must inevitably perceive the universe to [follow the laws of general relativity]
(https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-
theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#general-relativity-and-gravity).

正是这一点赋予了观察者选择不同参照系的能力，而他们对宇宙行为产生的结论是一致的、连贯的。最后，我们有一个确定的答案：如果事物存在潜
在的不可还原性--再加上因果不变性--那么任何以计算受限的方式来进行宇宙观察的人，都必然会认为宇宙遵循广义相对论定律。

But—much like with the Second Law—this conclusion relies on having an observer who forms a
coherent perception of the universe. If the observer could separately track every atom of space
they won’t “see general relativity”; that only emerges for an observer who forms a coherent
perception of the universe.

但是--就像第二定律一样--这个结论依赖于一个对宇宙形成统一认知的观察者。如果观察者可以分别追踪空间的每一个原子，他们无法发现 "广义相
对论"；只有对宇宙形成连贯感知的观察者才会看到广义相对论。

## The Quantum Observer 量子观测器

OK, so what about quantum mechanics? How does that relate to observers? The story is actually
surprisingly similar to both the Second Law and general relativity: quantum mechanics is again
something that emerges as a result of trying to form a coherent perception of the universe.

那么量子力学呢？它与观察者有什么关系？实际上，量子力学与第二定律和广义相对论存在着惊人地相似性：量子力学也是人们在试图形成对宇宙的
连贯认知的过程中发现的。

In ordinary classical physics one considers everything that happens in the universe to happen in a
definite way, in effect defining a single thread of history. But the essence of quantum mechanics
is that actually there are many threads of history that are followed. And an important feature of
our models is that [this is inevitable](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-
may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#the-inevitability-of-
quantum-mechanics).

在经典物理学中，人们认为宇宙中发生的一切都以一种确定的方式发生，实际上是定义了一条单一的路线。但依量子力学的本质而言，路线并不是单
一的。而从我们模型的本质上，决定了这个问题是无法避免的。

The underlying rules define how local patterns of connections between atoms of space should be
updated. But in the hypergraph of connections that represents the universe there will in general
be many different places where the rules can be applied. And if we trace all the possibilities we
get a [multiway graph](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p204--multiway-systems/) that
includes many possible threads of history, sometimes branching and sometimes merging.

基本规则定义了空间原子之间的局部连接模式应如何更新。但是，在代表宇宙的超连接图中，通常会有许多不同的地方可以应用这些规则。如果我们
追溯所有的可能性，就会得到一个多向图，其中包括许多可能的历史线索，有时是分支，有时是合并。
So how will an observer perceive all this? The crucial point is that the observer is themselves part
of this multiway system. So in other words, if the universe is branching, so is the observer. And in
essence the question becomes how a “branching brain” will perceive a branching universe.

那么，观察者又是如何看待这些问题的呢？关键在于，观察者本身就是这个多向系统的一部分。换句话说，如果宇宙具备分支性，观察者也是具备分
支性的。本质上，问题就变成了 "分支性大脑 "如何感知一个分支性的宇宙。

It’s fairly easy to imagine how an observer who is “spatially large” compared to individual
molecules in a gas—or atoms of space—could conflate their view of these elements so as to
perceive only some aggregate property. Well, it seems like very much the same kind of thing is
going on with observers in quantum mechanics. It’s just that instead of being extended in
physical space, they’re extended in what we call [branchial
space](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#branchial-motion-and-the-entanglement-
horizon).

不难想象，与气体中的单个分子或空间中的原子相比，"空间大 "的观察者会如何将这些元素看为一个整体，从而只感知到一些集合属性。量子力学中
的观察者似乎也在做着同样的事情。只是它们不是在物理空间中延伸，而是在我们所说的分支空间中延伸。

Consider a multiway graph representing possible histories for a system. Now imagine slicing
through this graph at a particular level that in effect corresponds to a particular time. In that slice
there will be a certain set of nodes of the multiway graph, representing possible states of the
system. And the structure of the multiway graph then defines [relationships between these
states](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/the-updating-process-for-string-
substitution-systems/the-concept-of-branchial-graphs/) (say through common ancestry). And in a
large-scale limit we can say that the states are laid out in branchial space.

一个具备代表的系统的发明存在着多种可能，将他们想像为一个多向图。现在，将这个图分解到一个特定的层次，这个层次实际上对应于一个特定的
时间。在这个切片中，多向图会有一组节点，代表系统可能的状态。而多向图的结构则定义了这些状态之间的关系（比如是否有共同祖先）。在广泛
的限制下，这些状态是在分支空间中形成的。

In the language of quantum mechanics, the geometry of branchial space in effect defines a map
of entanglements between quantum states, and coordinates in branchial space are like [phases of
quantum amplitudes](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/potential-
relation-to-physics/quantum-formalism/). In the evolution of a quantum system, one might start
from a certain bundle of quantum states, then follow their threads of history, looking at where in
branchial space they go.

在量子力学上，支线空间的几何形状实际上反映了量子态之间的映射关系，而支线空间中的坐标就是量子振幅的相位。在量子系统的演化过程中，我
们可以从某个量子态束出发，然后沿着它们的线索，观察它们在支线空间中的位置。

But what would a quantum observer perceive about this? Even if they didn’t start that way, over
time a quantum observer will inevitably become spread out in branchial space. And so they’ll
always end up sampling a whole region in bronchial space, or a whole bundle of “threads of
history” in the multi-way graph.

但是，量子观测者对此有什么看法呢？即使一开始并没有分支，但是随着时间的推移，量子观察者也会不知不觉的进入分支空间。因此，他们最终总
会在分支空间中对整个区域进行采样，或者在多向图中对一整束 "历史线 "进行采样。
What will they make of them? If they considered each of them separately no coherent picture
would emerge, not least since the underlying evolution of individual threads of history can be
expected to be computationally irreducible. But what if the observer just defines their way of
viewing things to be one that systematically organizes different threads of history, say by
conflating “computationally nearby” ones? It’s similar to setting up a reference frame in relativity,
except that now the coherent representation that this “quantum frame” defines is of branchial
space rather than physical space.

他们将如何处理这些 "历史线 "呢？如果他们分别考虑每一条 "历史线"，就不会出现连贯的线路走向，更何况单条 "历史线 "的内在演化在算法上

是不可还原的。但是，他们若只是把这种处理看作系统地整理不同的历史线索，比如，把 "计算接近的 "现象看作是一个整体，又有什么差别呢？这
就类似于在相对论中建立参考框架，只不过现在这个 "量子框架 "所定义的连贯表征是分支空间而非物理空间。

But what will this coherent representation be like? Well, it seems to be exactly quantum
mechanics as it was developed over the past century. In other words, just like general relativity
emerges as an aggregate description of physical space formed by a computationally bounded
observer, so [quantum mechanics emerges as an aggregate description of branchial space]
(https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-
theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#general-relativity-and-quantum-mechanics-are-the-same-
idea).

但是，这种连贯表征是什么？其实就是上个世纪发展起来的量子力学。也就是说，就像广义相对论是由一个计算有限的观察者对物理空间的总体描述
一样，量子力学也是对分支空间的总体描述。

Does the observer “create” the quantum mechanics? In some sense, yes. Just as in the spacetime
case, the multiway graph has all sorts of computationally irreducible things going on. But if
there’s an observer with a coherent description of what’s going on, then their description must
follow the laws of quantum mechanics. Of course, there are lots of other things going on too—
but they don’t fit into this coherent description.

观察者 "创造 "了量子力学吗？从某种程度上来说是的。就像时间空间一样，多向图很多地方都是是不可还原的。但是，如果有一个观察者能够连贯

地解码当前的事件，他就必须遵循量子力学定律。当然，还有很多同时发生的但是不符合这种连贯的描述其他事件。

OK, but let’s say that we have an observer who’s set up a quantum frame that conflates different
threads of history to get a coherent description of what’s going on. How will their description
correlate with what another observer—with a different quantum frame—would perceive? In the
traditional formalism of quantum mechanics it’s always been difficult to explain why different
observers—making different measurements—still fundamentally perceive the universe to be
working the same.
假设有一个观察者，建立了一个量子框架，将不同的历史时间看作一个整体，来推断当下的事情。他与另一个拥有不同量子框架的观察者的之间会有
什么样的联系呢？在量子力学的传统形式主义中，一直很难解释为什么不同的观察者进行不同的测量，却仍然能从根本上最终得到宇宙的运行是相同
的。

In our model, there’s a clear answer: just like in the spacetime case, if the underlying rules show
causal invariance, then regardless of the frame one uses, the basic perceived behavior will always
be the same. Or, in other words, causal invariance guarantees the consistency of the behavior
deduced by different observers.

我们的模型明确的给出了问题的答案：就像在时空案例中一样，如果基本规则显示出因果不变性，那么无论使用哪种框架，基本的认知将始终是相同
的。或者换句话说，因果不变性保证了不同观察者推导出的行为的一致性。

There are many [technical details to

this](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-quantum-
mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf). The traditional formalism of quantum
mechanics has two separate parts. First, the time evolution of quantum amplitudes, and second,
the process of measurement. In our models, there’s a [very beautiful
correspondence](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-
the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#general-relativity-and-quantum-
mechanics-are-the-same-idea) between the phenomenon of motion in space and the evolution
of quantum amplitudes. In essence, both are associated with the deflection of (geodesic) paths
by the presence of energy-momentum. But in the case of motion this deflection (that we identify
as the effect of gravity) happens in physical space, while in the quantum case the deflection (that
we identify as the phase change specified by the path integral) happens in branchial space. (In
other words, the Feynman path integral is basically just the direct analog in branchial space of the
Einstein equations in physical space.)

这其中的许多技术细节不可忽视。量子力学的传统形式主义有两个独立的部分。首先是量子振幅的时间演化，其次是测量过程。在我们的模型中，空
间运动现象与量子振幅的演化之间有着一定的对应关系。从本质上讲，两者都与能量动量的存在导致的（大地）路径偏转有关。但在运动的情况下，
这种偏转（我们称之为引力效应）发生在物理空间，而在量子的情况下，这种偏转（我们称之为路径积分所指定的相变）发生在分支空间。 (换句话说，
费曼路径积分基本上就是爱因斯坦方程在物理空间中的分支空间直接模拟）。

OK, so what about quantum measurement? Doing a quantum measurement involves somehow
taking many threads of history (corresponding to a superposition of many quantum states) and
effectively reducing them to a single thread that coherently represents the “outcome”. A
quantum frame defines a way to do this—in effect specifying the pattern of threads of history
that should be conflated. In and of itself, a quantum frame—like a relativistic reference frame—
isn’t a physical thing; it just defines a way of describing what’s going on.

那么是否适用于量子测量呢？进行量子测量涉及到以某种方式将许多历史路径（对应于许多量子态的叠加）有效地还原为一条路径，并得到一样的
"结果"。量子框架定义了这样做的方法--实际上就是规范了哪些路线可以被定为一个整体的模式。就其本身而言，量子框架与相对论参考框架一样，
并不是一种物理事实；它只是定义了一种当下事件发生的方式。

But as a way of probing possible coherent representations that an observer can form, one can
consider what happens if one formally conflates things according to a particular quantum frame.
In an analogy where the multiway graph defines inferences between propositions in a formal
system, conflating things is like “performing certain completions”. And each completion is then
like an elementary step in the act of measurement. And by looking at the effect of all necessary
completions one gets the [“Completion Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” suggested by
Jonathan Gorard](https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-
quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf).

不过，作为探究观察者可能形成的结果一致，我们如果根据特定的量子框架正式将事物归类会发生什么。在形式系统中，多向图定义了命题之间的推
论，在这种类比中，归类的事物就像是 "执行某些补全"。而每个补全就像是测量行为中的一个基本步骤。通过观察所有必要补全的效果，我们可以得
到乔纳森-戈拉德提出的 "量子力学的补全解释"。

Assuming that the underlying rule for the universe ultimately shows causal invariance, doing
these completions is never fundamentally necessary, because different threads of history will
always eventually give the same results for what can be perceived within the system. But if we
want to get a “possible snapshot” of what the system is doing, we can pick a quantum frame and
formally do the completions it defines.

假设宇宙的底层规则是因果不变性，那么从根本上说，我们并不需要做这些补全，因为不同的历史线索最终总会在同类事物下带来相同的结果。但是
如果我们想获得系统当下 "可能的情形"，我们可以选择一个量子框架，并进行它所定义的补全。

Doing this doesn’t actually “change the system” in a way that we would “see from outside”. It’s
only that we’re in effect “doing a formal projection” to see how things would be perceived by an
observer who’s picked a particular quantum frame. And if the observer is going to have a
coherent perception of what’s going on, they in effect have to have picked some specific
quantum frame. But then from the “point of view of the observer” the completions associated
with that frame in some sense “seem real” because they’re the way the observer is accessing
what’s going on.

这样做实际上并不会 "改变系统"，我们也不会 "从外部看到"。只是我们实际上是在 "做形式上的投射"，看看选取了特定量子框架的观察者会如何

了解事物。如果观察者要对正在发生的事情有一个相同持续的认知，他们实际上就必须选择某个特定的量子框架。但从 "观察者的角度 "来看，与该
框架相关的补全在某种意义上 "似乎是真实的"，因为它们是观察者获取当下事物可能性的方式。

Or, in other words, the way a computationally bounded “branching brain” can have a coherent
perception of a “branching universe” is by looking at things in terms of quantum frames and
completions, and effectively picking off a computationally reducible slice of the whole
computationally irreducible evolution of the universe—where it then turns out that the slice
must necessarily follow the laws of quantum mechanics.

换句话说，在计算约束下的 "分支大脑 "对 "分支宇宙 "产生持续性认知，其实就是通过量子框架和完备性来看待事物，并有效地从整个不可还原的

宇宙演化中挑选出一个具备可还原性的事情--那么所得到的结果必然遵循量子力学定律。

So, once again, for a computationally bounded observer to get a coherent perception of the
universe—with all its underlying computational irreducibility—there’s a strong constraint on what
that perception can be. And what we’ve discovered is that it turns out to basically have to follow
the two great core theories of twentieth-century physics: general relativity and quantum
mechanics.

因此，对于一个在有计算约束条件下的观察者来说，要想获得连续性认知 --包括对不可还原性的事情的认知是会受到很强约束的。因为它原则上必须
遵循二十世纪物理学的两大核心理论：广义相对论和量子力学。

It’s not immediately obvious that there has to be any way to get a coherent perception of the
universe. But what we now know is that if there is, it essentially forces specific major results
about physics. And, of course, if there wasn’t any way to get a coherent perception of the
universe there wouldn’t really be systematic overall laws, or, for that matter, anything like physics,
or science as we know it.

要想获得对宇宙的持续一致的认知并非易事。因为它会迫使物理学产生特定的主要结果。当然，如果无法实现这种持续性认知，也就不会有系统的总
体规律，或者说，也就不会有我们所知道的物理学或科学。

## So, What Is Consciousness?

那么，什么是意识？

What’s special about the way we humans experience the world? At some level, the very fact that
we even have a notion of “experiencing” it at all is special. The world is doing what it does, with
all sorts of computational irreducibility. But somehow even with the computationally bounded
resources of our brains (or minds) we’re able to form some kind of coherent model of what’s
going on, so that, in a sense, we’re able to meaningfully “form coherent thoughts” about the
universe. And just as we can form coherent thoughts about the universe, so also we can form
coherent thoughts about that small part of the universe that corresponds to our brains—or to
the computations that represent the operation of our minds.

我们人类体验世界的方式和其他动物相比又有什么特别之处？在某种程度上，我们甚至有 "体验 "世界的概念，这本身就是特别的。世界在正常的自

我运行，具有不可重复性。但不知何故，即使我们的大脑（或思维）资源在推论受到限制条件下，仍能对发生的事情形成某种持续性的认知模型，因
此，从某种意义上说，我们能够对宇宙进行有意义的 "连贯思考"。正如我们能够对宇宙形成持续性思考外，我们也能够对宇宙中与我们大脑相对应的
那一小部分形成连贯的思维--或者说，与代表我们思维运作的那一小部分形成连贯的思想。

But what does it mean to say that we “form coherent thoughts”? There’s a general notion of
computation, which the [Principle of Computational
Equivalence](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/chap-12--the-principle-of-computational-
equivalence/) tells us is quite ubiquitous. But it seems that what it means to “form coherent
thoughts” is that computations are being “concentrated down” to the point where a coherent
stream of “definite thoughts” can be identified in them.

但是，我们 "形成连贯的思维 "是什么意思呢？计算中一个普遍的概念叫做计算等价原理，它证明计算无处不在。但是，"形成连贯的思想 "的含义

是当计算被 "浓缩 "到一定程度，能够被识别出连贯的 "明确思想 "流的程度。

At the outset it’s certainly not obvious that our brains—with their billions of neurons operating in
parallel—should achieve anything like this. But in fact it seems that our brains have a quite
specific neural architecture—presumably produced by biological evolution—that in effect
attempts to “integrate and sequentialize” everything. In our cortex we bring together sensory
data we collect, then process it with a definite thread of attention. And indeed in medical settings
observed deficits in this are what are normally used to identify absence of levels of
consciousness. There may still be neurons firing but without integration and sequentialization
there doesn’t really seem to be what we normally consider consciousness.

首先，我们的大脑拥有数十亿个并行运作的神经元，想要达到这样的效果不是很理想。但事实上，我们的大脑似乎有一个相当特殊的神经结构 --可能
是生物进化产生的--试图 "整合和序列化 "一切。在我们的大脑皮层中，我们将收集到的感官数据汇集在一起，然后沿着一条明确的注意力线索对其
进行处理。事实上，在医学界，如果无法进行这种处理缺陷的人通常被诊断为意识水平缺失。神经元虽然在发射，但如果没有整合和序列化，也就不
存在所谓的意识。

These are biological details. But they seem to point to a fundamental feature of consciousness.
Consciousness is not about the general computation that brains—or, for that matter, many other
things—can do. It’s about the particular feature of our brains that causes us to have a coherent
thread of experience.

这些都是从生物学角度讲的。但却反应出了关于意识的一个基本特征。意识与大脑 --或者许多其他事物--所能进行的一般计算无关。它是我们大脑特
殊的功能，使我们的体验具备连贯性。

But what we have now realized is that the notion of having a coherent thread of experience has
deep consequences that far transcend the details of brains or biology. Because in particular what
we’ve seen is that it defines the laws of physics, or at least what we consider the laws of physics
to be.

我们现在发现，拥有连贯性的经验是很重要的，远比了解大脑或生物学的细节更为重要。因为它定义了我们所谓的物理定律。
Consciousness—like intelligence—is something of which we only have a clear sense in the single
case of humans. But just as we’ve seen that the notion of intelligence can be [generalized to the
notion of arbitrary sophisticated computation](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p822--
intelligence-in-the-universe/), so now it seems that the notion of consciousness can be
generalized to the notion of forming a coherent thread of representation for computations.

意识与智能一样，只有人类才能清晰地感受到它的存在。但是，智能的概念可概括为任意复杂的计算，而意识的概念也可以概括为大脑通过对信息的
计算所形成的一条连贯的表征线。

Operationally, there’s potentially a rather straightforward way to think about this, though it
depends on our [recent understanding of the concept of
time](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-
fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#time). In the past, time in fundamental physics
was usually viewed as being another dimension, much like space. But in our models of
fundamental physics, time is something quite different from space. Space corresponds to the
hypergraph of connections between the elements that we can consider as “atoms of space”. But
time is instead associated with the inexorable and irreducible computational process of
repeatedly updating these connections in all possible ways.

现实中，我们可以用一种相当直接来看待这个问题，就是我们对时间概念的理解。过去，基础物理学中的时间就像空间一样通常被视为另一个维度。
但在我们的基础物理学模型中，时间与空间截然不同。空间被视为 "空间原子 "元素之间的超图连接。而时间则被认为是以各种可能的方式反复更新
这些联系的不可阻挡和不可还原的计算过程。

There are definite causal relationships between these updating events (ultimately defined by the
multiway causal graph), but one can think of many of the events as happening “in parallel” in
different parts of space or on different threads of history. But this kind of parallelism is in a sense
antithetical to the concept of a coherent thread of experience.

这些更新事件之间存在明确的因果关系（最终由多向因果图定义），但我们可以把许多事件看作是在空间的不同部分或不同线索上 "平行 "发生的。

但从某种意义上说，这种并行性与连贯的经验线索概念是对立的。

And as we’ve discussed above, the formalism of physics—whether reference frames in relativity
or quantum mechanics—is specifically set up to conflate things to the point where there is a
single thread of evolution in time.

正如我们在上文提到的，物理学的形式主义--无论是相对论中的参照系还是量子力学--都是专门为混乱不清的事情而设置的，因此在时间上只有一条
发展线。

So one way to think about this is that we’re setting things up so we only have to do sequential
computation, like a [Turing machine](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p78--turing-
machines/). We don’t have multiple elements getting updated in parallel like in a [cellular
automaton](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p23--how-do-simple-programs-behave/), and
we don’t have multiple threads of history like in a [multiway (or nondeterministic) Turing
machine](https://www.wolframphysics.org/bulletins/2021/02/multiway-turing-machines/).

因而我们可以把事情排列为像机器一样只需要进行顺序计算。虽然不会有多个元素并行更新，也不会有多向（或非确定）多条的演变路径。

The operation of the universe may be fundamentally parallel, but our “parsing” and “experience”
of it is somehow sequential. As we’ve discussed above, it’s not obvious that such a
“sequentialization” would be consistent. But if it’s done with frames and so on, the interplay
between causal invariance and underlying computational irreducibility ensures that it will be—
and that the behavior of the universe that we’ll perceive will follow the core features of
twentieth-century physics, namely general relativity and quantum mechanics.

宇宙的运行从根本上说可能是并行的，但我们对它的 "解析 "和 "体验 "在某种程度上却是有顺序的。正如我们上文所讨论的，这种 "顺序化 "是

否能正确的对应我们还不能确定。但是，如果用框架等来看的话，因果不变性与底层计算不可还原性之间的相互作用将可以保证它的一致性，而且宇
宙的运转也将遵循二十世纪物理学的核心特征，即广义相对论和量子力学。

But do we really “sequentialize” everything? [Experience with artificial neural

networks](https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/NeuralNetworks.html) seems to give
us a fairly good sense of the basic operation of brains. And, yes, something like initial processing
of visual scenes is definitely handled in parallel. But the closer we get to things we might
realistically describe as “thoughts” the more sequential things seem to get. And a notable feature
is that what seems to be our richest way to communicate thoughts, namely language, is
decidedly sequential.

但是，我们真的做到 "顺序化 "了吗？从人工神经网络的经验上来说我们对大脑的基本运作有了很好的认知。视觉场景的初始处理是并行处理的。但

是，当我们解释 "思想 "的东西时，事情似乎就变得越有顺序。需要注意的是，我们用于交流思想最好的方式--语言--是具备顺序性的。

When people talk about consciousness, something often mentioned is “self-awareness” or the
ability to “think about one’s own processes of thinking”. Without the conceptual framework of
computation, this might seem quite mysterious. But the idea of [universal computation]
(https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p642--the-phenomenon-of-universality/) instead makes
it seem almost inevitable. The whole point of a universal computer is that it can be made to
emulate any computational system—even itself. And that is why, for example, we can write the
evaluator for [Wolfram Language](https://www.wolfram.com/language/) in Wolfram Language
itself.

当人们谈论意识时，经常提到的是 "自我意识 "或 "思考自我意识 "的能力。如果没有计算的概念框架，这可能会比较困难。但通用计算的概念反而

让它显得几乎不可避免。通用计算机的意义在于，它可以模拟任何计算系统，甚至是它自己。这就是为什么我们可以用 Wolfram 语言本身编写
Wolfram 语言的评估器。

The Principle of Computational Equivalence implies that universal computation is ubiquitous, and
that both brains and minds, as well as the universe at large, have it. Yes, the emulated version of
something will usually take more time to execute than the original. But the point is that the
emulation is possible.

计算等价性原则证明通用计算无处不在，大脑和思维以及整个宇宙都有用通用计算的方式。仿版的计算通常会比原版更费时。即便如此也是会有仿版
也的。

But consider a mind in effect thinking about itself. When a mind thinks about the world at large,
its process of perception involves essentially making a model of what’s out there (and, as we’ve
discussed, typically a sequentialized one). So when the mind thinks about itself, it will again make
a model. Our experiences may start by making models of the “outside world”. But then we’ll
recursively make models of the models we make, perhaps barely distinguishing between “raw
material” that comes from “inside” and “outside”.

但是，大脑实际上是在自我思考。当大脑面对外界时，它实质上是在为外面的世界建立一个模型（正如我们所讨论的，通常是一个顺序化的模型）。
因此当大脑自我思考时，它也会建立一个模型。从经验上说大脑可能会基于建立 "外部世界 "的模型开始建立内部模型。但随后会逐步地建立我们所
建立的模型的模型，针对于来自于"内部 "还是 "外部 "的 "原材料"信息不太加以区分。

The connection between sequentialization and consciousness gives one a way to understand why
there can be different consciousnesses, say associated with different people, that have different
“experiences”. Essentially it’s just that one can pick different frames and so on that lead to
different “sequentialized” accounts of what’s going on.
序列化与意识之间的联系解释了为什么会有不同的意识，比如说，与不同的人相关联的意识，会有不同的 "体验"。从本质上讲，这只是因为人们可以
选择不同的框架等，从而对发生的事情做出不同的 "序列化 "描述。

Why should they end up eventually being consistent, and eventually agreeing on an objective
reality? Essentially for the same reason that relativity works, namely that causal invariance
implies that whatever frame one picks, the causal graph that’s eventually traced out is always the
same.

为什么意识需要保持一定的一致性，最终以客观现实达成一致呢？从根本上说，这与相对论的原理是一样的，即因果不变性意味着无论人们选择何种
框架，最终描绘出的因果图总是相同的。

If it wasn’t for all the interactions continually going on in the universe, there’d be no reason for
the experience of different consciousnesses to get aligned. But the interactions—with their
underlying computational irreducibility and overall causal invariance—lead to the consistency
that’s needed, and, as we’ve discussed, something else too: particular effective laws of physics,
that turn out to be just the relativity and quantum mechanics we know.

如果没有持续不断的相互作用，不同意识就没有保持一致性的必要。但是相互作用 --其背后的不可还原性和整体因果不变性--进而保证了意识的一致
性，而且，正如我们已经讨论过的，需要我们特别注意的是：特定的有效物理定律，即相对论和量子力学。

## Other Consciousnesses 其他意识

The view of consciousness that we’ve discussed is in a sense focused on the primacy of time: it’s
about reducing the “parallelism” associated with space—and branchial space—to allow the
formation of a coherent thread of experience, that in effect occurs sequentially in time.

意识观在某种意义上侧重于以时间为首：减少与空间和分支空间相关的 "平行性"，以形成一条连贯的体验，按照时间顺序依次体验的。

And it’s undoubtedly no coincidence that we humans are in effect well placed in the universe to
be able to do this. In large part this has to do with the physical sizes of things—and with the
(undoubtedly not coincidental) fact that human scales are intermediate between those at which
the effects of either relativity or quantum mechanics become extreme.

毫无疑问，人类可以统治地球，这也绝非偶然。很大程度上这与事物的物理尺寸有关，也与人类的尺度介于相对论或量子力学效应之间（非巧合性）
有关。

Why can we “ignore space” to the point where we can just discuss things happening “wherever”
at a sequence of moments in time? Basically it’s because the speed of light is large compared to
human scales. In our everyday lives the important parts of our visual environment tend to be at
most tens of meters away—so it takes light only tens of nanoseconds to reach us. Yet our brains
process information on timescales measured in milliseconds. And this means that as far as our
experience is concerned, we can just “combine together” things at different places in space, and
consider a sequence of instantaneous states in time.
为什么我们可以 "忽略空间"概念，而只讨论一连串按照时间顺序上发生的事情？从根本上说，这是因为光速对人们来讲是很快的。在日常生活中，我
们可以看到的事物往往离我们最多只有几十米远，因此光到达我们这里只需要几十纳秒。然而，我们的大脑处理信息的时间却以毫秒为单位。这就意
味着，就我们的经验而言，我们可以将空间中不同位置的事物 "组合 "在一起，并关注于多个事物的状态随时间的改变。

If we were the size of planets, though, this would no longer work. Because—assuming our brains
still ran at the same speed—we’d inevitably end up with a fragmented visual experience, that we
wouldn’t be able to think about as a single thread about which we can say “this happened, then
that happened”.

不过，如果我们和行星一样大，这就行不通了。因为--假设我们的大脑仍以相同的速度运转--我们最终得到的是零散的视觉体验，而我们无法形成一
个完整的体验线，描述出 "先发生了这个，然后又发生了那个"。

Even at standard human scale, we’d have somewhat the same experience if we used for example
smell as our source of information about the world (as, say, dogs to a large extent do). Because in
effect the “speed of smell” is quite slow compared to brain processing. And this would make it
much less useful to identify our usual notion of “space” as a coherent concept. So instead we
might invent some “other physics”, perhaps labeling things in terms of the paths of air currents
that deliver smells to us, then inventing some elaborate gauge-field-like construct to talk about
the relations between different paths.

即使是以人类的衡量标准来讲，如果我们把嗅觉作为了解世界的信息来源（比如说狗），我们也会有相同的体验。因为，"嗅觉的速度 "与大脑的处理
速度相比是相当慢的。这样一来，我们通常所说的 "空间 "概念就不那么有用了。因此，我们可能会发明一些 "另一种物理学"，用气流的路径来标
记事物，将气味传递给我们，然后发明一些精心设计的类似量规场的结构来讨论不同路径之间的关系。

In thinking about our “place in the universe” there’s also another important effect: our brains are
small and slow enough that they’re not limited by the speed of light, which is why it’s possible for
them to “form coherent thoughts” in the first place. If our brains were the size of planets, it
would necessarily take far longer than milliseconds to “come to equilibrium”, so if we insisted on
operating on those timescales there’d be no way—at least “from the outside”—to ensure a
consistent thread of experience.

在讲我们在"宇宙中的位置 "时，还有另一个重要的影响：我们的大脑比较小、慢，因此不受光速的限制，这也是我们能够 "形成连贯思想 "的原因。

如果我们的大脑有行星那么大，那么 "达到平衡 "所需的时间必然远远超过几毫秒，因此，如果我们就没有办法这样的时间尺度工作，至少 "从外部
"来说可以确保经验的连贯性。

From “inside”, though, a planet-size brain might simply assume that it has a consistent thread of
experience. And in doing this it would in a sense try to force a different physics on the universe.
Would it work? Based on what we currently know, not without at least significantly changing the
notions of space and time that we use.

但从 "内部 "来看，一个星球大小的大脑可能会有一条连贯的经验线。因为它在某种意义上宇宙必须遵循其他的物理规律。这样做作用大吗？根据我
们的了解，如果不对我们所使用的空间和时间概念进行彻底的推翻，很显然是行不通的。
By the way, the situation would be even more extreme if different parts of a brain were separated
by permanent event horizons. And it seems as if the only way to maintain a consistent thread of
experience in this case would be in effect to “freeze experience” before the event horizons
formed.

如果大脑的不同部分被永久的事件视界分隔开来这种极端情况下，要保持经验的连贯性，唯一的办法就是在事件视界形成之前 "冻结经验"。

What if we and our brains were much smaller than they actually are? As it is, our brains may
contain perhaps [10300 atoms of space](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-
introduction/potential-relation-to-physics/units-and-scales/). But what if they contained, say,
only a few hundred? Probably it would be hard to avoid computational irreducibility—and we’d
never even be able to imagine that there were overall laws, or generally predictable features of
the universe, and we’d never be able to build up the kind of coherent experience needed for our
view of consciousness.

如果我们和我们的大脑比小得多呢？现在，我们的大脑可能包含 10 300 个原子的空间。但如果它们只包含几百个原子呢？我们无法解读宇宙中存

在着总体规律或普遍可预测的特征，我们也永远无法建立自我意识观所需的连贯的经验体系。

What about our extent in branchial space? In effect, our perception that “definite things happen
even despite quantum mechanics” implies a conflation of the different threads of history that
exist in the region of branchial space that we occupy. But how much effect does this have on the
rest of the universe? It’s much like the story with the speed of light, except now what’s relevant is
a new quantity that appears in our models: the [maximum entanglement
speed](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/potential-relation-to-physics/
correspondence-between-relativity-and-quantum-mechanics/#p-456). And somehow this is large
enough that over “everyday scales” in branchial space it’s adequate for us just to pick a quantum
frame and treat it as something that can be considered to have a definite state at any given
instant in time—so that we can indeed consistently maintain a “single thread of experience”.

那么把我们放在分支空间中会怎样呢？实际上，我们认为 "尽管有量子力学，还是可以确定推测某些事情的发生"，这意味着我们所处的分支空间区域
中存在的多线经验被混淆在一起。会不会对宇宙产生很大的影响呢？就好比光速，它也是出现在我们模型中的一个新量：最大纠缠速度。但是这个量
已经很大，分支空间的 "日常尺度 "上，我们只需选择一个量子框架，并将其视为在任意给定时间瞬间具有确定状态的东西就足够了 --这样，我们就
能始终如一地保持 "单线经验"。

OK, so now we have a sense of why with our particular human scale and characteristics our view
of consciousness might be possible. But where else might consciousness be possible?

我们人类在特殊规模和特征下的意识观是存在的。但是还有什么地方可能存在意识呢？

It’s a tricky and challenging thing to ask. To achieve our view of consciousness we need to be able
to build up something that “viewed from the inside” represents a coherent thread of experience.
But the issue is that we’re in effect “on the outside”. We know about our human thread of
experience. And we know about the physics that effectively follows from it. And we can ask how
we might experience that if, for example, our sensory systems were different. But to truly “get
inside” we have to be able to imagine something very alien. Not only different sensory data and
different “patterns of thinking”, but also different implied physics.

这个问题既棘手又具有挑战性。为了建立我们的意识观，我们必须能够建立起一些 "从内部看 "代表连贯经验的东西。而事实是我们 "在外部"而非

内部。我们知道我们人类的经验线。及相对应的物理学。那么如果我们的感官系统不同，又会是怎样的体验呢？要想真正 "深入其中"，我们必须能够
想象我们不熟悉的东西。不仅是不同的感官数据和不同的 "思维模式"，还运用着不同的隐含物理学。

An obvious place to start in thinking about “other consciousnesses” is with animals and other
organisms. But immediately we have the [issue of
communication](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-
beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/). And it’s a fundamental one. Perhaps one day
there’ll be ways for various animals to fluidly express themselves through something like human-
relatable videogames. But as of now we have surprisingly little idea how animals “think about
things”, and, for example, what their experience of the world is.

"其他意识 "可能存在于动物和其他生物。但是由于语言障碍我们没办法知道动物在想什么，这也是最主要的问题。也许有一天，各种动物会借助电子
产品能够流畅地表达自己的想法。但现在，我们对动物是如何 "思考问题 "的，比如说，它们对世界的体验是什么，还知之甚少。

We can guess that there will be many differences from ours. At the simplest level, there are
organisms that use different sensory modalities to probe the world, whether those be smell,
sound, electrical, thermal, pressure, or other. There are “hive mind” organisms, where whatever
integrated experience of the world there may be is built up through slow communication
between different individuals. There are organisms like plants, which are (quite literally) rooted to
one place in space. There are also things like viruses where anything akin to an “integrated
thread of experience” can presumably only emerge at the level of something like the progress of
an epidemic.

但我们可以确定的是它们与我们会有许多不同之处。简而言之，一些生物利用不同的感官模式来探测世界，无论是嗅觉、听觉、电觉、热觉、压力还
是其他感官模式。还有 "蜂巢 "，它们对世界的综合体验是通过不同个体之间的缓慢交流建立起来的。像植物，它们（从字面上看）扎根于空间中的
一个地方。像病毒，只有在类似于流行病进展的层面上，才可能出现类似于 "综合经验线 "的东西。

Meanwhile, even in us, there are things like the immune system, which in effect have some kind
of “thread of experience” though with rather different input and output than our brains. Even if it
seems bizarre to attribute something like consciousness to the immune system, it is interesting to
try to imagine what its “implied physics” would be.

即使我们体内的免疫系统，实际上也有某种 "经验线"，尽管其输入和输出与我们的大脑运作不同。把意识归因于免疫系统似乎不太讲的通，但它的
"隐含物理学 "会是怎样的，这是很有意思的研究方向。

One can go even further afield, and think about things like the complete tree of life on Earth, or,
for that matter, the geological history of the Earth, or the weather. But how can these have
anything like consciousness? The Principle of Computational Equivalence implies that all of them
have just the same fundamental computational sophistication as our brains. But, as we have
discussed, consciousness seems to require something else as well: a kind of coherent integration
and sequentialization.

从长远来讲，比如地球上的树，或者地球的地质和天气。它们怎么可能会有意识呢？计算等价原理推断证明，它们都具有与我们大脑相同的基本计算
复杂性。但是，仅仅是这一点是不够的，意识还要有具备：一种连贯的整合和序列化。

Take the weather as an example. Yes, there is lots of computational sophistication in the patterns
of fluid flow in the atmosphere. But—like fundamental processes in physics—it seems to be
happening all over the place, with nothing, it seems, to define anything like a coherent thread of
experience.

以天气为例，大气中的流体流动模式有很多复杂的计算方法。但是这些过程一直在持续进行，却没有任何东西可以定义类似于连贯的经验线。

Coming a little closer to home, we can consider software and AI systems. One might expect that
to “achieve consciousness” one would have to go further than ever before and inject some
special “human-like spark”. But I suspect that the true story is rather different. If one wants the
systems to make the richest use of what the computational universe has to offer, then they
should behave a bit like fundamental physics (or nature in general), with all sorts of components
and all sorts of computationally irreducible behavior.

进一步讲，看看软件和人工智能系统。我们认为要 "实现意识"，就必须比以往更进一步，注入一些特殊的 "类人火花"。但真实情况并非如此。如果

我们想让人工智能系统最充分地利用计算宇宙所能提供的一切，那么它们的行为就应该有点像基础物理学（或一般的自然界），具有各种成分和各种
计算上不具备可还原性的行为。

But to have something like our view of consciousness requires taking a step down, and effectively
forcing simpler behavior in which things are integrated to produce a “sequentialized” experience.
And in the end, it may not be that different from picking out of the computational universe of
possibilities just what can be expressed in a definite [computational language of the kind the
Wolfram Language provides](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/05/what-weve-built-is-
a-computational-language-and-thats-very-important/).

但是，要了解我们对意识的看法，就需要再往下一步，有效地重复更简单的行为，在这种行为中，事物被整合在一起，从而产生一种 "序列化 "的体

验。到头来，这可能与从计算的可能性宇宙中挑选出能用沃尔夫拉姆语言所提供的那种明确的计算语言表达的东西是类似的。
Again we can ask about the “implied physics” of such a setup. But since the Wolfram Language is
modeled on picking out the computational essence of human thinking it’s basically inevitable
that its implied physics will be largely the same as the ordinary physics that is derived from
ordinary human thinking.

这种设置的 "隐含物理学"，由于沃尔夫拉姆语言是以剔除人类思维的计算本质为模型的，因此它的隐含物理学基本上与从普通人类思维中衍生出来的
普通物理学大致相同。

One feature of having a fundamental model for physics is that it “reduces physics to
mathematics”, in the sense that it provides a purely formal system that describes the universe. So
this raises the question of whether one can think about consciousness in a formal system, like
mathematics.
物理学基本模型的一个特点是，它 "将物理学还原为数学"，也就是说，它提供了一个描述宇宙的纯形式系统。因此，随之产生的问题是：我们是否可
以像数学一样，在形式系统中思考意识？

For example, imagine a formal analog of the universe constructed by [applying axioms of
mathematics](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p775--implications-for-mathematics-and-
its-foundations/). One would build up an elaborate network of theorems, that in effect populate
“metamathematical space”. This setup leads to some fascinating analogies between physics and
metamathematics. The notion of time effectively remains as always, but here represents the
progressive proving of new mathematical theorems.

例如，通过应用数学公理构建的宇宙形式化模拟。我们可以建立一个精心设计的定理网络，里面填充了 "元数学空间"。这种设置在物理学和元数学之
间产生了高度类比。虽然时间的概念相同，这却是新数学定理逐步形成的证明。

The analog of our spatial hypergraph is a structure that represents all theorems proved up to a
given time. (And there’s also an analog of the multiway graph that yields quantum mechanics,
but in which different paths now in effect represent different possible proofs of a theorem.) So
what about things like reference frames?

与我们的空间超图类似的是一种结构，它在给定时间内被证明的所有定理。 (量子力学的多路图也有类似之处，但其中不同的路径定理的不同）。那么 ，
它的参照系又是怎样的？

Well, just as in physics, a reference frame is something associated with an observer. But here the
observer is observing not physical space, but [metamathematical
space](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/09/the-empirical-metamathematics-of-
euclid-and-beyond/). And in a sense any given observer is “discovering mathematics in a
particular order”. It could be that all the different “points in metamathematical space” (i.e.
theorems) are behaving in completely incoherent—and computationally irreducible—ways. But
just as in physics, it seems that there’s a certain computational reducibility: causal invariance
implies that different reference frames will in a sense ultimately always “see the same
mathematics”.

参照系是与观察者相关联的东西。但是观察者观察的不是物理空间，而是元数学空间。从某种意义上说，任何特定的观察者都是在 "以特定的顺序发
现数学"。可能所有不同的 "元数学空间中的点"（即定理）的行为方式不同，而且具备不可还原性。但是它也似乎在某种计算上具备可还原性：因果
不变性意味着不同的参照系在某种意义上最终总是 "看到相同的数学"。

There’s an analog of the speed of light: the speed at which a new theorem can affect theorems
that are progressively further away in metamathematical space. And relativistic invariance then
becomes the statement that “there’s only one mathematics”—but it can just be explored in
different ways.

这与光速有异曲同工之妙：一个新定理影响元数学空间中渐行渐远的定理的速度。相对论不变性就变成了 "数学只有一种"--只不过可以用不同的方式
来探索而已。
How does this relate to “mathematical consciousness”? The whole idea of setting up reference
frames in effect relies on the notion that one can “sequentialize metamathematical space”. And
this in turn relies on a notion of “mathematical perception”. The situation is a bit like in physics.
But now one has a formalized mathematician whose mind stretches over a certain region of
metamathematical space.

这与 "数学意识 "关联是什么？建立参照系的依赖于一个概念，即人们可以 "将元数学空间序列化"，因此又依赖于 "数学感知 "的概念。像物理学

一样，但目前有了一个形式化的数学家，他的思维延伸到元数学空间的某个区域。

In current formalized approaches to mathematics, a [typical “human-scale mathematical

theorem”](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/09/the-empirical-metamathematics-of-
euclid-and-beyond/#math-beyond-euclid) might correspond to perhaps 105 lowest-level
mathematical propositions. Meanwhile, the “mathematician” might “integrate into their
experience” some small fraction of the metamathematical universe (which, for human
mathematics, is currently perhaps 3 × 106 theorems). And it’s this setup—which amounts to
defining a “sequentialized mathematical consciousness”—that means it makes sense to do
analysis using reference frames, etc.

在当前形式化的数学方法中，一个典型的 "人类尺度数学定理 "可能对应于 10 个 5 最低层次的数学命题。与此同时，"数学家 "可能会将元数学

宇宙的一小部分（对于人类数学而言，目前可能是 3 × 10 6 个定理）"融入他们的经验"。正是这种设置--定义了一种 "序列化的数学意识"--意
味着使用参照系等进行分析是有意义的。

So, just as in physics, it’s ultimately the characteristics of our consciousness that lead to the
physics we attribute to the universe, so something similar seems to happen in mathematics.

因此，最终是我们意识的特征导致了我们赋予宇宙的物理学和数学中。

Clearly we’ve now reached a quite high level of abstraction, so perhaps it’s worth mentioning one
more wrinkle that involves an even higher level of abstraction.

显然，我们现在已经达到了一个相当高的抽象水平，所以也许值得一提的还有一个涉及到更高抽象水平的问题。

We’ve talked about applying a rule to update the abstract structure that represents the universe.
And we’ve discussed the fact that the rule can be applied at different places, and on different
threads of history. But there’s another freedom: we don’t have to consider a specific rule; we can
[consider all possible rules](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-
a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/#why-this-universe-the-relativity-
of-rules).

我们已经讨论过应用规则来更新代表宇宙的抽象结构。我们还讨论了规则可以应用于不同的地方和不同的历史线索。而与此同时我们能够考虑所有可
能的规则而非限制于特定的规则，。

The result is a [rulial multiway

graph](https://www.wolframphysics.org/bulletins/2020/06/exploring-rulial-space-the-case-of-
turing-machines/) of possible states of the universe. On different paths, different specific rules
are followed. And if you slice across the graph you can get a map of states laid out in rulial space,
with different positions corresponding to the outcomes of applying different rules to the
universe.

因此得出宇宙可能状态的多路图在不同的路径上会遵循不同的特定规则。如果横切该图，就能得到一张尺度空间中的状态图，不同的位置对应着对宇
宙应用不同规则的结果。

An important fact is then that at the level of the rulial multiway graph there is always causal
invariance. So this means that different “rulial reference frames” must always ultimately give
equivalent results. Or, in other words, even if one attributes the evolution of the universe to
different rules, there is always fundamental equivalence in the results.

重要的是，在规则多向图的层面上，始终存在因果不变性。不同的 "尺度参照系 "最终一定会得到等效的结果。换言之，即使人们将宇宙的演化归因

于不同的规则，结果也总是基本等价的。

In a sense, this can be viewed as a reflection of the Principle of Computational Equivalence and
the fundamental idea that the universe is computational. In essence it is saying that since
whatever rules one uses to “construct the universe” are almost inevitably computation universal,
one can always use them to emulate any other rules.

从某种意义上这是计算等价原理和宇宙是计算的这一基本思想的反映。从本质上讲，由于人们用来 "构建宇宙 "的任何规则几乎都不可避免地具有计

算的普遍性，因此人们总是可以用它们来模拟任何其他规则。

How does this relate to consciousness? Well, one feature of different rulial reference frames is
that they can lead to utterly and incoherently different basic descriptions of the universe.

这与意识有什么关系呢？不同规则参照系的一个特点是，它们会导致对宇宙的基本描述完全不同，而且不连贯。

One of them could be our hypergraph-rewriting-based setup, with a representation of space that
corresponds well with what emerged in twentieth-century physics. But another could be a Turing
machine, in which one views the updating of the universe as being done by a single head zipping
around to different places.

其一由于我们基于超图重写的设置，其空间表征与二十世纪物理学中出现的表征十分吻合。但另一种可能是图灵机中的人们把宇宙的更新看作是由一
个头飞快地跑到不同的地方来完成的。

We’ve talked about some possible systems in which consciousness could occur. But one we
haven’t yet mentioned—but which has often been considered—is “[extraterrestrial intelligences]
(https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p822--intelligence-in-the-universe/)”. Before our Physics
Project one might reasonably have assumed that even if there was little else in common with
such “alien intelligences”, at least they would be “experiencing the same physics”.

我们已经谈到了一些可能产生意识的系统。但还有一个经常被考虑的系统，那就是 "外星智能体"。在我们的 "物理项目 "之前，人们可能会认为与

这些 "外星智能体 "没有什么共同之处，但可以肯定的是他们 "经历相同的物理学"。

But it’s now clear that this absolutely does not need to be the case. An alien intelligence could
perfectly well be experiencing the universe in a different rulial reference frame, utterly
incoherent with the one we use.

但现在外星智能体完全可以在不同的尺度参照系中体验宇宙，与我们使用的参照系完全不同。

Is there anything “sequentializable” in a different rulial reference frame? Presumably it’s possible
to find at least something sequentializable in any rulial reference frame. But the question of
whether the alien intelligence can be thought of as sampling it is a quite different one.

在不同的尺度参照系中，有什么 "可序列化 "的东西吗？据推测，至少有可能在任何标尺参照系中找到一些可序列化的东西。但是，外星智能体是否

可以被认为是样本还没有定论。
Does there need to be a “sequentializable consciousness” to imply “meaningful laws of physics”?
Presumably meaningful laws have to somehow be associated with computational reducibility;
certainly that would be true if they were going to be useful to a “computationally bounded” alien
intelligence.

是否必须有 "可序列化的意识 "才能意味着 "有意义的物理定律"？据推测，有意义的定律必须以某种方式与计算的可还原性相关联；当然，如果这

些定律对 "计算受限 "的外星智能体有用的话，那么它也将需要以某种方式与计算的可还原性相关联。
But it’s undoubtedly the case that “sequentializability” is not the only way to access
computational reducibility. In a mathematical analogy, using sequentializability is a bit like using
ordinary mathematical induction. But there are other axiomatic setups (like [transfinite
induction](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/notes-12-9--examples-of-unprovable-
statements/)) that define other ways to do things like prove theorems.

但毋庸置疑的是，"可顺序性 "并不是获得计算可还原性的唯一途径。在数学类比中，使用可连续性有点像使用普通的数学归纳法。但还有其他公理设
置（如无限归纳法）定义了其他方法来做证明定理。

Yes, human-like consciousness might involve sequentializability. But if the general idea of
consciousness is to have a way of “experiencing the universe” that accesses computational
reducibility then there are no doubt other ways. It’s a kind of “second-order alienness”: in
addition to using a different rulial reference frame, it’s using a different scheme for accessing
reducibility. And the implied physics of such a setup is likely to be very different from anything we
currently think of as physics.

类似于人类的意识，则需要一定的可连续性。但如果意识的一般概念是拥有一种 "体验宇宙 "的方式，而这种方式又能获得计算的可还原性，那么无

疑还有其他方式。即"二阶异化"：除了使用不同的尺度参照系，它还使用不同的方案来获取可还原性。而这种设置所隐含的物理学很可能与我们目前
认为的物理学大相径庭。

Could we ever expect to identify what some of these “alien possibilities” are? The Principle of
Computational Equivalence at least implies that we can in principle expect to be able to set up
any possible computational rule. But if we start doing experiments we can’t have an expectation
that scientific induction will work, and it is potentially arbitrarily difficult to identify
computational reducibility. Yes, we might recognize some form of prediction or regularity that we
are familiar with. But to recognize an [arbitrary form of computational
reducibility](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p632--higher-forms-of-perception-and-
analysis/) in effect relies on some analog of a definition of consciousness, which is what we were
looking for in the first place.

我们还有"外来可能性 "吗？计算等价性原则上可以期望建立起任何可能的计算规则。但是，如果通过做实验，科学归纳法可能不会起作用，而且要确
定计算的可还原性可能会非常困难。我们可能会认识到我们所熟悉的某种形式的预测或规律性，但要识别任意形式的计算可还原性则依赖于意识定义
的某种类似物，而这正是我们起初要寻找的东西。

## What Now?现在怎么办？

Consciousness is a difficult topic, that has vexed philosophers and others for centuries. But with
what we know now from our Physics Project it at least seems possible to cast it in a new light
much more closely connected to the traditions of formal science. And although I haven’t done it
here, I fully anticipate that it’ll be possible to take the ideas I’ve discussed and use them to create
formal models that can answer questions about consciousness and capture its connections,
particularly to physics.

意识是一个困扰几个世纪的哲学家的难题。但从物理学的知识中，我们可从一个与形式科学传统更紧密相连的新角度来看待这个问题。我完全可以预
见所讨论的观点将有可能被用来创建形式模型，回答有关意识的问题，并捕捉尤其是与物理学的联系。

It’s not clear how much realistic physics there will need to be in models to make them useful.
Perhaps one will already be able to get worthwhile information about how branching brains
perceive a branching universe by looking at some simple case of a [multiway Turing machine]
(https://www.wolframphysics.org/bulletins/2021/02/multiway-turing-machines/). Perhaps some
[combinator system](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-a-centennial-
view/) will already reveal something about how different versions of physics could be set up.

目前还不清楚模型中需要有多少物理学知识才能使它们发挥作用。也许人们已经能够通过观察多路图灵机的某些简单情况，获得关于分支大脑如何感
知分支宇宙的有价值的信息。某些组合系统可能已经解释了不同版本的物理学是如何建立起来的。

In a sense what’s important is that it seems we may have a realistic way to formalize issues about
consciousness, and to turn questions about consciousness into what amount to concrete
questions about mathematics, computation, logic or whatever that can be formally and
rigorously explored.

从某种意义上说我们可以把有关意识的问题形式化，并把有关意识的问题转化为数学、计算、逻辑或其他方面的具体问题，从而可以对这些问题进行
正式而严格的探索。

But ultimately the way to tether the discussion—and to have it not for example devolve into
debates about the meaning of words—is to connect it to actionable issues and applications.
但是，要将其与可操作的问题和应用联系起来，并避免言语上的争论，我们的努力是至关重要的。

As a first example, let’s discuss distributed computing. How should we think about computations
that—like those in our model of physics—take place in parallel across many different elements?
Well—except in very simple or structured cases—it’s hard, at least for us humans. And from what
we’ve discussed about consciousness, perhaps we can now understand why.

我们来讨论下应该如何看待类似于我们的物理模型中那些在许多不同元素间并行进行的计算？除了在非常简单或结构化的情况下这是很困难的，这从
我们对意识的讨论中就能体现出来。
The basic issue is that consciousness seems to be all about forming a definite “sequentialized”
thread of experience of the world, which is directly at odds with the idea of parallelism.

问题是意识似乎就是要形成对世界的一种确定的 "序列化 "体验，这与平行性的概念直接相悖。

But so how can we proceed if we need to do distributed computing? Following what we believe
about consciousness, I suspect a good approach will be to essentially mirror what we do in
parsing the physical universe—and for example to pick reference frames in which to view and
integrate the computation.

那么，如果我们需要进行分布式计算，该如何着手呢？根据我们对意识的理解，我认为一个好的方法应该是基本上照搬我们在解析物理宇宙时的做
法--例如，选择参照系来查看和整合计算。

Distributed computing is difficult enough for us humans to “wrap our brains around”. Multiway or
nondeterministic computing tends to be even harder. And once again I suspect this is because of
the “limitations imposed by consciousness”. And that the way to handle it will be to use ideas
that come from physics, and from the interaction of consciousness with quantum mechanics.

对于我们人类来说，分布式计算已经很难让我们 "脑洞大开 "了。多路计算或非确定性计算往往更加困难。这是因为 "意识施加的限制"，因而处理

这个问题的方法将是利用物理学的思想，以及意识与量子力学的相互作用。

A few years ago at an AI ethics conference I raised the question of what would make us think AIs
should have rights and responsibilities. “When they have consciousness!” said an enthusiastic
philosopher. Of course, that begs the question of what it would mean for AIs to have
consciousness. But the point is that attributing consciousness to something has potential
consequences, say for ethics.

几年前，在一次人工智能伦理会议上我提出了一个问题：是什么让我们认为人工智能应该拥有权利和责任？一位的哲学家说："当它们拥有意识时！"。
当然，这也引出了一个问题：人工智能拥有意识意味着什么？但问题是赋予某种事物意识产生潜在的后果，比如对伦理道德的影响是未知的。
And it’s interesting to see how the connection might work. Consider a system that’s doing all
sorts of sophisticated and irreducible computation. Already we might reasonably say that the
system is showing a generalization of intelligence. But to achieve what we’re viewing as
consciousness the system also has to integrate this computation into some kind of single thread
of experience.
那么一个正在进行各种复杂的、不可还原的计算的系统这种联系是如何发挥作用的。这个系统正在展示智能的一般化。但是为了实现我们所认为的意
识，这个系统还必须把这些计算整合到某种单一的经验线中。

And somehow it seems much more appropriate to attribute “responsibility” to that single thread
that we can somehow “point to” than to a whole incoherent distributed computation. In
addition, it seems much “more wrong” to imagine “killing” a single thread, probably because it
feels much more unique and special. In a generic computational system there are many ways to
“move forward”. But if there’s a single thread of experience it’s more like there’s only one.

然而把 "责任 "归咎于我们能以某种方式 "指向 "的那条单线，似乎比归咎于整个不连贯的分布式计算要好得多。而且"杀死 "单个线程似乎 "更不

对"，这可能是由于单个线程更独特、更特别的原因。在一个通用的计算系统中， "前进 "的方式有很多种的，但如果只有一条经验线程，那么前进的
方式可能就变得非多种反而只有一种可能。
And perhaps it’s like the death of a human consciousness. Inevitably the history around that
consciousness has affected all sorts of things in the physical universe that will survive its
disappearance. But it’s the thread of consciousness that ties it all together that seems significant
to us, particularly as we try to make a “summary” of the universe to create our own coherent
thread of experience.

就像人类意识的死亡一样，围绕着这一意识的历史不可避免地影响了物理宇宙中的各种事物，而这些事物将在意识消失后继续存在。但对我们而言，
将这一切联系在一起的意识线才是最重要的，尤其是当我们试图对宇宙进行 "总结"，以创造我们自己的连贯经验线时。

And, by the way, when we talk about “[explaining

AI](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2018/11/logic-explainability-and-the-future-of-
understanding/)” what it tends to come down to is being able not just to say “that’s the
computation that ran”, but being able to “tell a story” about what happened, which typically
begins with making it “sequential enough” that we can relate to it like “another consciousness”.

当我们谈论 "解释人工智能 "时，我们往往不能仅仅说 "这就是运行的计算"，而是要能够 "讲述 "所发生的一切，而这通常始于让计算 "足够有

序"，从而让我们能够像 "另一种意识 "一样与之产生联系。

I’ve often noted that the Principle of Computational Equivalence has [important implications for
understanding our “place in the universe”](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p844--
historical-perspectives/). We might have thought that with our life and intelligence there must be
something fundamentally special about us. But what we’ve realized is that the essence of these is
just computational sophistication—and the Principle of Computational Equivalence implies that
that’s actually quite ubiquitous and generic. So in a sense this promotes the importance of our
human details—because that’s ultimately all that’s special about us.

计算等价性原则对于理解我们 "在宇宙中的位置 "具有重要意义。以我们的生命和智慧，我们一定是有特别之处的。然而这些东西的本质只是计算的

复杂性--而计算等价性原理意味着，这其实是无处不在的、通用的。因此，从某种意义上说，这提升了我们人类细节的重要性 --这才是我们的最终特
殊之处。

So what about consciousness? In full generality it too has a certain genericity. Because it can
potentially “plug into” any pocket of reducibility of which there are inevitably infinitely many—
even though we humans would not yet recognize most of them. But for our particular version of
consciousness the idea of sequentialization seems to be central.

那意识呢？在完全的一般性中，意识也具有一定的一般性。因为它可以 "插入 "任何可还原性的口袋，而可还原性的口袋必然是无限多的 --尽管我们

人类还认识不到其中的大多数。但对于我们这个特殊版本的意识来说，顺序化的概念似乎是核心。

And, yes, we might have hoped that our consciousness would be something that even at an
abstract level would put us “above” other parts of the physical universe. So the idea that this
vaunted feature of ours is ultimately associated with what amounts to a restriction on
computation might seem disappointing. But I view this as just part of the story that what’s special
about us are not big, abstract things, but specific things that reflect all that specific irreducible
computation that has gone into creating our biology, our civilization and our lives.

我们可能曾希望我们的意识在抽象层面上能让我们 "凌驾于 "物理宇宙的其他部分之上。因此，我们这种被吹捧的特性最终却与对计算的限制联系在

一起。但是我们的特别之处并不在于抽象大的事物，而是反映了所有不可还原的具体计算的具体事物，这些计算创造了人类生物学、人类文明和生活。

In a sense the story of science is a story of struggle between computational irreducibility and
computational reducibility. The richness of what we see is a reflection of computational
irreducibility, but if we are to understand it we must find computational reducibility in it. And
from what we have discussed here we now see how consciousness—which seems so core to our
existence—might fundamentally relate to the computational reducibility we need for science,
and might ultimately drive our actual scientific laws.

从某种意义上说，科学的故事就是计算不可还原性与计算可还原性之间斗争的故事。我们所看到的丰富多彩正是计算不可还原性的反映，但如果我们
要理解它，就必须从中找到计算可还原性。而意识--它似乎是我们存在的核心--是如何从根本上与我们的科学所需的计算可还原性相关联，并可能最
终驱动我们的实际科学定律的。

## Notes 说明

How does this all relate to what philosophers (and others) have said before? It will take
significant work to figure that out, and I haven’t done it. But it’ll surely be valuable. Of course it’ll
be fun to know if [Leibniz](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2013/05/dropping-in-on-
gottfried-leibniz/) or [Kant](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/index/k.php?search=Kant) or
[Plato](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/index/pi-po.php?search=Plato) already figured out
—or guessed—this or that, even centuries or millennia before we discovered some feature of
computation or physics. But what’s more important is that if there’s overlap with some existing
body of work then this provides the potential to make a connection with other aspects of that
work, and to show, for example, how what I discuss might relate, say, to other areas of
philosophy or other questions in philosophy.

这一切与哲学家（和其他人）的关系是什么？这个答案虽然会耗费大量的精力但一定是有价值的。如果能知道莱布尼茨、康德或柏拉图是否在我们发
现计算或物理的某些特征之前几百年或几千年，就已经弄明白或猜到了这个或那个，是不是很有意思。而且如果与现有的某些研究有重叠，也就可能
与这些研究的其他方面建立联系，例如，我所讨论的内容也可能与哲学的其他领域或哲学中讨论的其他问题产生未知的联系。
My mother, [Sybil Wolfram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Wolfram), was a longtime
philosophy professor at Oxford University, and I was introduced to philosophical discourse at a
very young age. I always said, though, that if there was one thing I’d never do when I was grown
up, it’s philosophy; it just seemed too crazy to still be arguing about the same issues after two
thousand years. But after more than half a century of “detour” in science, here I am, arguably,
doing philosophy after all….

我的母亲西比尔-沃尔夫拉姆长期在牛津大学担任哲学教授，我在很小的时候就开始接触哲学术语。我想我长大后永远不会从事哲学；他们两千年后还
在争论同样的问题简直是不理智的行为。然而在科学领域却 "迂回 "了半个多世纪。
*Some of the early development of the ideas here were captured in the livestream: [A Discussion
about Physics Built by Alien
Intelligences](https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/video/687309671) (June 25, 2020).
Thanks particularly to Jeff Arle, Jonathan Gorard and Alexander Wolfram for discussions.
一些想法的早期发展被记录下来：关于由外星智慧生物构建的物理学的讨论（2020 年 6 月 25 日）。特别感谢杰夫-阿勒、乔纳森-戈拉德和亚
历山大-沃尔夫拉姆的研究。*