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Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

writings.stephenwolfram.com

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#41

'Ruliology' is an ignorant neologism, and whoever thought it up should be dropped down a well. Canonology is linguistically consistent without being obscure.

It's Wolfram-speak, so you'd want to drop Stephen if you're committed. It's part of his GUT. You will likely become committed to the well when you encounter ruliad : https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-t...

I didn't realize he'd coined it, but this is consistent. I don't want to drop him down a well because I think his ideas are very interesting, even if they're wrong. Nevertheless, [827 words deleted]!

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that also the point of your comment only much lazier?

Not sure how you get to "I think I am very smart" from "this guy thinks he is very smart, and his writing invariably highlights that belief to the detriment of whatever he's actually trying to communicate"... For all I know, maybe he actually is the world-class genius he believes himself to be, but it's difficult to tell underneath all the blatant self-promotion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41406645>

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#43
Every time something is posted from Wolfram I realize I am the only guy who likes him. Yes, he does not state, or prove, theorems. He is studying alien mathematics. Nobody has any idea of what is going on, neither does Wolfram, but he is trying! In the world of weird computability experiments he is the one with the least worst understanding of the matter. I think the fact that we have all these computational stuff laying around and we have no idea what's going on, and probably never will (by virtue of the halting theorem or something similar), contrasted with the incredible amount of understanding that normal mathematics has brought forth, is mind-boggling. You can create a turing machine from very simple rules, and nobody on earth will be able to tell what it's doing. And most machines will be like that! Most cellular automaton will be like that! Computational irreducibility is a fascinating philosophical idea. Even if it is kinda fruitless. To me it looks like there is this infinite world of meaningless computation, and then somewhere you have this happy path of actual mathematics which is full of meaning and absolutely makes sense. And somehow humans stumbled upon this happy path.

For me the ultimate proof that AI will have become super-intelligent is not that it will prove results that mathematicians can already deal with, it's that it will be able to look at a Turing machine and tell you "Yep, that's how it behaves, it follows these rules, and will never halt because this and that". I realize this is impossible in general, but if it's possible to some extent, where it is way better than the people over at busy beaver challenge, personally my mind will be blown.

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#44
post #4

Most of Wolfram's discussion of "bugs" is not about the following situation: You want a program that does X. So you think about what a program that does X should look like, and write a program that does what you think should produce result X, but maybe you made some mistakes. but about the following, to my mind completely different , situation: You want a program that does X. So you write a bunch of random short prog…

There are programs with proofs that they work - but that does not make them reducible.

I double checked it with ChatGPT if anyone is interested in more details: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a6883385ab481919126c7b631000815

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as related to the Church-Turing thesis which is also a bit fuzzy but I think comes down to the conjecture that there is no physical computer which exceeds the Turing machine in capabilities. (Quantum computers, as we know them, don't count because they can be simulated by classical computers with sufficient space and time) One thing I find tragic about Wolfram is that he found his holy grail, Rule 30, at the…

The Church-Turing hypothesis I agree could be crisper (ie the definition of effectively computable is a bit complicated/weasely), but it actually says something quite concrete that I can understand and potentially falsify ie that a universal turing machine, the lambda calculus and general recursion can all "effectively compute" the same things. That seems reasonable, and I can check that something I can write in lamb…

I'm of course hearing this second- or third-hand, but when I read 'evolution of weather systems' I substitute for 'cellular automata'/'Conway's game of life', vaguely recall them as being Turing-complete, then smile and nod and get back to ignoring the article.

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't prove a program completed successfully if you can't prove a program even completes at all. I don't know what properties you think people are trying to pragmatically prove about arbitrary programs but "did the program complete successfully" will always be an important, pragmatic property in software development. Especially in the pragmatic world where so much of our software is chaining smaller programs toge…

SolutionNotFound is a perfectly valid return case for my Algo. I start two threads, one searches for a solution, second one terminates the first after one second, if it is still running. How in the world does the halting problem enters into the picture if my program is bug free or not?

The argument is that 'the program returns' is strictly easier to prove than 'the program returns the correct answer'. If the first is impossible, then the second is too.

I'm all in favour of sidestepping the argument by having our languages more resemble System F or some polymorphic lambda calculus.

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#47
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Church-Turing hypothesis I agree could be crisper (ie the definition of effectively computable is a bit complicated/weasely), but it actually says something quite concrete that I can understand and potentially falsify ie that a universal turing machine, the lambda calculus and general recursion can all "effectively compute" the same things. That seems reasonable, and I can check that something I can write in lamb…

I'm of course hearing this second- or third-hand, but when I read 'evolution of weather systems' I substitute for 'cellular automata'/'Conway's game of life', vaguely recall them as being Turing-complete, then smile and nod and get back to ignoring the article.

It's handwavy but I can't help but think that because of the way symbolic dynamics works that you can't find families of approximating functions inside turbulence even though I can't see it being practical, like sensitive dependence on initial conditions will make noise overwhelm your ability to take measurements. See

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

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/cha/article-abstract/35/9/093112/33...

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#48
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SolutionNotFound is a perfectly valid return case for my Algo. I start two threads, one searches for a solution, second one terminates the first after one second, if it is still running. How in the world does the halting problem enters into the picture if my program is bug free or not?

The argument is that 'the program returns' is strictly easier to prove than 'the program returns the correct answer'. If the first is impossible, then the second is too. I'm all in favour of sidestepping the argument by having our languages more resemble System F or some polymorphic lambda calculus.

Though still useful to remember that some of the earliest mathematical write ups of the Halting Problem were also by Alonso Church and directly in the lambda calculus. The Church-Turing Theorem is a lasting reminder that the two worlds imperative and functional describe the same algorithms (form the set of Turing Completeness).

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#49
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? I don’t see how Gödel’s results imply that.

At least not automatically. From an algorithmic standpoint it seems likely to be undecidable. But let us not look too closely at what was really a throwaway remark.

It is true of course that there is no automatic procedure which takes in an arbitrary program and decides if it has a desired input/output behavior. (Whether an input program has a given “semantic property” is undecidable.)

But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible to have all our programs be formally verified. For that, if we have a formal specification for what each should do… Well, I suppose it’s possible that some program we would want is possible to implement with the desired properties, but not possible to prove that it has those properties? It is possible to enumerate (program, proof) pairs though.

Re: Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected

#50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that 'the program returns' is strictly easier to prove than 'the program returns the correct answer'. If the first is impossible, then the second is too. I'm all in favour of sidestepping the argument by having our languages more resemble System F or some polymorphic lambda calculus.

Though still useful to remember that some of the earliest mathematical write ups of the Halting Problem were also by Alonso Church and directly in the lambda calculus. The Church-Turing Theorem is a lasting reminder that the two worlds imperative and functional describe the same algorithms (form the set of Turing Completeness).

It depends on the type system you choose to apply to LC. Simply-typed LC terminates.

You have to include a construct that introduces general recursion to make it Turing complete.

There's a cool practical space within those constraints that needs more exploration.

Non-total functions can call total functions, but not vice-versa.

Imagine a web server whose main loop is non-total, because you want it to stay up. But each route is total, to guarantee termination.

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