"Still not sure which will become self-aware first: Wolfram Alpha, or Stephen Wolfram"
We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
51–60 of 376 posts
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#52It's kind of sad for me. I read and read but could not get the gist of the institute. Can someone write a summary?
I thought it was just me! It reads like something Trump might write; lots of superlatives, little substance.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#53It's kind of sad for me. I read and read but could not get the gist of the institute. Can someone write a summary?
If you scroll down a bit, I think the 26th paragraph comes closest to lucidity: - "What will the Wolfram Institute be like? There’ll be a leadership core, which, yes, I’m signing up to head. But the main meat of the institute will be a collection of researchers and fellows, working on particular, managed projects—together with students at multiple levels from high school to graduate school. We’ll be doing open scienc…
Even people who don't care much for cellular automata must respect Mathematica. So seeing that they plan to develop a lot of "open tools" is interesting. Even if nothing comes of the research itself, the tools they develop could be valuable.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#54The more I hear about Stephen Wolfram's schemes to name things after Stephen Wolfram, the more admirative I grow of Nicolas Bourbaki and wished he were publishing amazing math software these days.
You've sent me down an interesting reading path, about a group of mathematicians working under the pseudonym "Nicolas Bourbaki" and lo and behold they do even have a web site these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://www.bourbaki.fr/ Now how does that relate to Stephen Wolfram?
The joke is that the discoveries attributed to “Stephen Wolfram” are actually the work of multiple people, none of whom are actually named that.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#55I used Wolfram Alpha a lot while I was in college and liked it a lot. So I am surprised to see the hatred toward this man in the comments. Can anyone enlighten me why he is delusional and why he has lost it?
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#56I’ve had more downvotes sharing my opinions about cellular automata on HN than on any other topic, so I won’t make any here. Rather, I’d like to point out that I personally have not seen a single theory, not a single piece of a theory, known to be productive in explaining experimental data, recast with underlying cellular automata theory. If I am simply showing my ignorance, please enlighten me. Meanwhile, the clock…
Hey, I do really weird math for unspecified reasons.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/28da/6507acf40f892b95ee61a7...
Cellular Automata are, in essence, a type of mathematical function called a “Chaos Map”, aside from the cool name it’s also a WYSIWYG name, a chaos map is a mapping of how a fractal expands or changes across space time.
A great example very germane to this site is the Hacker Glider from Conway’s game of life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(Conway%27s_Life) The Glider is a pattern which we can observe within the game, and we can see that it represents a function related to the overall chaotic map of the game itself. In English, Doc! All the patterns the game can make are the chaos map. Studying the individual patterns shows both how they are created and interact with other patterns. Here’s an overlapping example: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200318143635.h...
Within the Chaotic map of slime mold evolution, it’s the loner pattern which informs the other parts of the map.
Let’s bring it all together now. By studying cellular automata, we can observe patterns which correspond to a chaotic map of those patterns. By looking at that, we are able to make deeper inferences about the overall total pattern by knowing that what we observe in a small scale will also exist at n+1 scale. Meaning, when we see the loner slime mold evolve the other parts, it’s reasonable to infer through scale that loner humans may also contribute evolutionary information. We can test that theory, and then either continue to investigate from a positive or negative delta.
The benefit of learning about and using CA isn’t that it’s abstract but rather it creates meaning from the raw chaos of life which we deal with every day.
Practically it can lead to better encryption like I linked above, superior understanding and prediction of weather, and for those who are able to view the patterns of the small as a whole: it can reveal truths which I would call mathematically spiritual.
Thanks for reading I hope I changed your mind!
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#57The more I hear about Stephen Wolfram's schemes to name things after Stephen Wolfram, the more admirative I grow of Nicolas Bourbaki and wished he were publishing amazing math software these days.
Why didn't a group like this emerged in software? My opinion is that you obviously don't pay for free and/or open software with money but you do pay with the fatigue of bearing the creators ideological and personal whims. Software requires maintenance and support. It is not a do it once and do it perfectly. Also let's not forget about us the users who constantly attempt to dictate the path the software is heading. If…
Freax
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
What he is trying to do is that he is trying to create a computational theory to explain the world. As opposed to pure mathematics which isn't computational. Not really that crazy. He may be off putting at times but when he gets in to it he can be very interesting to listen to.
Pure math isn’t computational? o_O (Constructivist mathematics is a thing, and it is pretty easy to formulate physics in a constructivist framework. Many serious quantum theoreticians do.)
My current layman pseudo-insight into this: Why in mathematics do we want to approximate non-linear functions by linear functions? Why do we not have sufficient theory to understand complex non-linear phenomena? Perhaps a different paradigm is required.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let him do his thing, he supports many employees for a living, and does meaningful work occassionally. There are many people that are far more problematic for the society than Mr. Wolfram. He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Let him chill in peace.
> He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Reading posts from former employees and plagiarism accusations (look up Matthew Cook) suggests otherwise. I remember this being discussed on HN before as well, even though the search function is not bringing up anything.
I worked with Matthew Cook at ETH Zürich after he left wolfram for that reason. Cooks proof of the Turing completeness of the 110 rule [1] is in my opinion the only interesting piece in the new kind of science book. The dispute emerged from wolfram handling this not with science in mind, but capitalism. Putting an NDA on the publication of cook, to frame himself as the source.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#60Let us concede that in the last 20 years, the number of mentions of "I" in his writing has decreased, and there are more mentions of "We". As much as a cellular automata, and computation in general, fan as I am, and after having read a fair amount of his work... I am still not convinced that Wolfram is not just a rich crack pot.
He does have some genuinely good ideas. But they're not reinventing every field of science, technology, and knowledge every few months as his writing would have you believe.
So, smarter than the average crackpot. But not "not a crackpot".