Section 3
Religion represents humanity’s longest-running research program—a multi-millennial investigation into the nature of reality, causation, consciousness, and meaning
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Far from being mere superstition or social control mechanisms, religious traditions constitute sophisticated proto-scientific attempts to understand the deepest structures of existence
yessss
The convergence of diverse traditions on similar ultimate concepts—whether called Ein Sof, Brahman, Dao, or Allah—suggests not cultural accident but the discovery of genuine features of reality’s deep structure
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- Animistic Foundations (50,000+ BCE): The Discovery of Causation
This was not primitive confusion but a reasonable inference from observed patterns: effects seemed to have causes, and the most familiar causes were intentional agents like humans themselves
From a computational perspective, animism resembles a cellular automaton where each cell follows local rules without global coordination
The shaman’s role parallels that of a systems administrator—someone who understands the local rules well enough to intervene
this phase established the crucial insight that would drive all subsequent religious development: the intuition that invisible forces with agency shape visible reality
- Shamanic Complexification (30,000 BCE): The Discovery of Alternative Realities
Section 2
Understanding these underlying frameworks is essential, for they reveal why brilliant minds across centuries have reached diametrically opposed conclusions while examining the same universe
important point - I think something a lot of people get stuck on here is “ok, so it’s arbitrary, you can setup whatever axioms you want, and reach whatever conclusion you want”
but I think there’s a way to concisely explain why that isn’t the case. And it’s why I have in the ORI onboarding a note for “what is real? what is true” (I think we can actually “test” these different worldviews. This is the key)
The God Conjecture that follows will demonstrate how classical theological concepts map onto computational structures in surprising and illuminating ways. The emanation of reality from divine unity finds a precise analogue in the observer’s parsing of the Ruliad. The divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and necessity emerge naturally from the Ruliad’s properties. The problem of evil transforms into a question about computational irreducibility and observer limitations. The hiddenness of God becomes a necessary feature of the observer-Ruliad relationship.
This is not a proof of God’s existence in the classical sense, nor is it a reduction of God to computation. Rather, it shows that the computational framework provides a space where scientific and theological insights can meet and enrich each other
what is the nature of the necessary, omniscient, omnipotent foundation of reality that computation reveals? Is it personal or impersonal? Conscious or unconscious? Loving or indifferent?
Section 1
all possible initial conditions evolved through all possible histories
this is the most concise, accessible description I’ve heard of the Ruliad 👍
the Observer carves out a particular slice of the computational substrate that becomes their experienced reality
not clear at this stage why the observer is “special”. Like, the Ruliad is a “possibility space” but the Observer is a “concrete reality”?
complexity measured by the minimal history required to produce that structure
I like this a lot ^
The Scientific Revolution started with Descartes’ dream of a Universal Theory that could answer all questions that could be asked, including and especially those concerning human purpose, moral truth, and ultimate meaning.
This part in particular is the same goal Michael Smith has/is advocating for.
The Enlightenment’s great bargain was a narrowing of scope of investigation in exchange for certainty within that scope. This tactical retreat became, over centuries, an unbridgeable chasm.
⭐️ This is a GREAT pull quote
It establishes faith—understood here as the selection of foundational axioms—not as an intellectual weakness or a stopgap for missing knowledge, but as the necessary basis for any system of understanding
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This paper provides the first systematic mapping between the Ruliad computational metaphysics and Kabbalistic emanation theory
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this is maybe the most exciting part. If I were trying to market this paper this is maybe one of the lines I’d use (especially to attract if anyone else has done this, or is trying to do it)
(I threw this line into Exa’s semantic search just to see if there’s anyone else writing about this. After Wolfram’s own writing, I found (June 2025) The Transiad and the Transputational Function (Φ): Universal Actualization Dynamics and the Emergence of Physical Reality- can’t tell at first glance if there’s any useful overlap here)
Every attempt to derive “ought” from “is,” to extract meaning from mechanism, fails. This is not a temporary limitation that future science will overcome but appears to be a structural feature of the empirical method itself.
This is a bold claim, and I think one of the most important pieces of this. I think this splits the readers: some will 100% agree with this and say they’ve believed in this for a long time now, and are excited to find the others. And those who think this is crazy, that this is “abandoning the scientific method” and is a regression to a dark age.
I think the latter group would point to this following sentence to say “see! even you admit you are describing a futile effort”
This is not an attempt to prove God’s existence through physics—such a proof would violate the very epistemic boundaries we are describing.
There’s probably a metaphor here to explain it, but it’s like, one model is “bigger” than the other? You can see how physics fits in a world where God exists, but you can’t “see” God from inside the physics world. Like a piece of software that cannot “see” the hardware it is running on?
This paper advances what we call the God Conjecture: that the Ruliad-Observer framework emerging from computational physics is structurally isomorphic to classical theological accounts of divine creation and sustenance of reality.
⭐️
the same phenomenon from different vantage points—one from within the system looking outward, the other from a transcendent position looking inward
Been thinking about this a lot recently! I drew the bottom one, and Poser drew the top ones.
In this explanatory gap, theology thrives. Not the literal rules, but the deep frameworks
maybe worth explaining what you mean by “literal rules” vs “deep frameworks”? I think “literal rules” = “surface level rules” (like the rituals).
I think the most helpful concept I’ve found here is thinking of theology has having a “frontend” and a “backend” (as a software metaphor)
The concept of tzimtzum
The Tree of Life, with its ten sefirot
these are great pointers, can see each of these being a whole essay (or a series). Feels like a good “exercise left to the reader” to find/elaborate on this connection
Questions
- What does it mean that reality has a “linguistic component”?
- “The choice between naturalistic and theistic axioms” → i don’t think I understand this paragraph. But I think maybe this hints at the question I had earlier about what makes the “Observer special” - like the naturalistic view would be that the observer is itself just part of the infinite paths of the Ruliad, like any other object?