Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#11

Post by DeepYogurt » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 4:18 AM UTC

concreteblock wrote: post #10

DeepYogurt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I understand; some tile on row n in column m would depend on three tiles in row n-1 where those three would be in columns m-1, m, and m+1? How does that work for edges and for the first tile? Also is the pattern just implicitly started with a single tile? Thanks for the explanation :)

Yes, that's correct. There are no edges, it's an infinite grid. You start with 1 black cell and all the other cells are white. Because the triple-white configuration does not produce a black cell, you can compute up the any finite time step with finite computational power. (Actually, later in the article he talks about finite grids with periodic boundary conditions. That means that, if you're on the edge, you 'wrap a…

Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time :)

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#12

Post by Taniwha » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 4:25 AM UTC

oh, rule 30, I assumed rule 34 ..... I guess somewhere there's rule 34 of rule 30

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#13

Post by schoen » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

Though, to be fair, Wolfram did run a previous prize contest about a conjecture that he had thought about but not solved, and someone else successfully solved it:

https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#14

Post by schoen » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

concreteblock wrote: post #9

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

The problem seems to have the same flavor as the Collatz conjecture. Simple dynamical system - very difficult to tell what happens in the long run. Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I wonder if anyone has proved any theorems that make this precise. E.g. "Most cellular automata rules cannot be analyzed efficiently". I don't know enough complexity theory/set theory to formulate this precisely.

> Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics.

I'm guessing this thought is partly inspired by Erdős's remark about the Collatz conjecture?

https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quot...

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#15

Post by ChrisArchitect » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

Plenty of old discussion on the main site

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21130098

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#16

Post by 0-_-0 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

Intelligence is not the only relevant factor. You probably know a lot of things that the most intelligent person on the planet doesn't. Some of those things might help you solve a problem that nobody can.

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#17

Post by lifthrasiir » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 11:48 AM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

It's probably the other way around: Wolfram wants to make more people obsessed over Rule 30.

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#18

Post by sblom » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #13

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

Though, to be fair, Wolfram did run a previous prize contest about a conjecture that he had thought about but not solved, and someone else successfully solved it: https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/

And that was all about proving that Rule 110 was capable of universal computation. (They first found a way to map Rule 110 to the tag system put forth in that prize.)

This zoo of 3-predecessor cellular automata is an impressive lot.

Re: Announcing the Rule 30 Prizes (2019)

#19

Post by sblom » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #17

kolbe wrote: post #5

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

It's probably the other way around: Wolfram wants to make more people obsessed over Rule 30.

It's not really about Rule 30 specifically. It's more about Rule 30 being a particularly simple example, probably, of Wolfram's Principle of Computational Irreducibility.

From what I can tell, he'd love to drop that "probably", or move on from Rule 30 to the next simplest system that could possibly work.