This link has been bookmarked by 20 people . It was first bookmarked on 11 Sep 2006, by Chris.
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07 Nov 10
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He goes on to explain that by applying a single key observation - that the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules - one can view and understand the universe with previously unattainable clarity and insight.
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He goes on to explain that by applying a single key observation - that the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules - one can view and understand the universe with previously unattainable clarity and insight.
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"What's basically happened is that I had this idea of how to use simple programs to understand things about nature, the universe, other stuff," he says. "And you can start looking at questions that have been around forever, and you really get somewhere."
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the biggest problems will quickly be resolved
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insists that Darwinian natural selection is an overrated component in evolution
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03 Sep 10
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04 Jan 10
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19 Jun 09
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16 May 09
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12 May 09
Felipe LavínWord had been out that Stephen Wolfram, the onetime enfant terrible of the science world, was working on a book that would Say It All, a paradigm-busting tome that would not only be the definitive account on complexity theory but also the opening gambit i
science wolfram article academic articulos internet wired math from-delicious
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02 Apr 09
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21 Mar 09
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04 Sep 08
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Of course, the very nature of his approach - laying his theory out in one Brobdingnagian salvo - is by nature immodest.
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02 Sep 08
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01 Sep 08
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The climax of the book is the principle of computational equivalence, which may as well be called "Wolfram's law." After hundreds of pages of laying groundwork, presenting case after case of visual examples where simple rules generate counterintuitively complex results, Wolfram concludes that this phenomenon is overwhelmingly commonplace - it's at the base of everything from morphology to traffic jams. Then he goes further, stating that once a system achieves a certain, easily attainable degree of complexity, it's reached the point of maximum complexity, as measured by the computation required to crank out the end result. Everything at that level of complexity - and that means almost everything you can think of, from human thought to rain hitting pavement - is exactly as complex as anything else.
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To list only a few examples: Wolfram finds an exception to the second law of thermodynamics; conjectures why extraterrestrials might be communicating with us in messages we can't perceive; explains seeming randomness in financial markets; defines randomness; elaborates on why the "apparent freedom of human will" is so convincing; reconstructs the foundations of mathematics; devises a new way to perform encryption; insists that Darwinian natural selection is an overrated component in evolution; and, oh, theorizes that there's a "definite ultimate model for the universe." What might this be? The mother of all rules; a single, simple "ultimate rule" that computes everything from quantum physics to reality television.
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By rejecting the standard protocols of scientific publication - the release of findings in a series of refereed, jargon-laden papers with rigorous mathematical proofs - Wolfram is consciously bypassing the establishment, engaging in a form of retail science that aims straight for the people. Wolfram insists that "doing a small piece and telling the world about it" would have taken him three times longer, and besides, "if you give them little pieces, they're not going to come up with grand conclusions."
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As dessert is served, I bring up the secret-of-the-universe question. Wolfram's theory that there is a single rule at the heart of everything - a single simple algorithm that, in effect, generates all the rules of physics and everything else - is bound to be one of his most controversial claims, a theory that even some of his close friends in physics aren't buying. Furthermore, Wolfram rubs our faces in the dreary implications of his contention. Not only does a single measly rule account for everything, but if one day we actually see the rule, he predicts, we'll probably find it unimpressive. "One might expect," he writes, "that in the end there would be nothing special about the rule for our universe - just as there has turned out to be nothing special about our position in the solar system or the galaxy."
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Then he seemed to turn his back on that field. He started a software company to sell Mathematica, a computer language he'd written that did for higher math what the spreadsheet did for business.
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As best I could make out in my quick flip through the pages, he seemed to be saying that the key to the universe was computation: The entire cosmos, from quantum particles to the formation of galaxies, was a perpetual runtime flowing from simple rules.
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Wolfram's days would begin in mid-afternoon. He'd usually do an hour or two of official business, operating a multimillion-dollar company by email and conference call. Early evening hours offered an opportunity for some family time. Then, as the world retired and distractions fell away, he'd enter the professionally soundproofed, wood-lined office on the top floor of his house and immerse himself in the act of remaking science.
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For now, the skeptics aren't having it. "Worthless!" says renowned physicist Freeman Dyson, who received an early copy of A New Kind of Science and required only a glance before dismissing it. "It's a case of style over substance."
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In some ways, A New Kind of Science was run like a software project. The work was always to be delivered as a digitally typeset file with all the graphics included: one massive load of bits. So instead of drafts, there were frequent "builds," some of them buggier than others. There were alpha versions and beta versions. Some of the engineers are developing A New Kind of Science Explorer, a PC application with a mini-Mathematica program that allows people to run the experiments in the book and begin to do research projects of their own. Wolfram feels very strongly that "his" kind science is one through which amateurs will unearth major discoveries, and he has been thinking of various ways to assist them
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'Why am I really doing this? Is it really worth my while to spend 10 years of my life doing something to get other people to say positive things about it?' No, it's not. Absolutely not. And actually, from some very cynical point of view, my opinion of the world at large isn't high enough for me really to be interested in what they have to say."
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29 Aug 07
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The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ...
... But first it cracked him. The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.
By Steven Levy
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"Three centuries ago science was transformed by the dramatic new idea that rules based on mathematical equations could be used to describe the natural world. My purpose in this book is to initiate another such transformation, and to introduce a new kind of science that is based on the much more general types of rules that can be embodied in simple computer programs."
He goes on to explain that by applying a single key observation - that the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules - one can view and understand the universe with previously unattainable clarity and insight. The idea of complexity arising from simple rules - and that the universe can best be understood by way of the computation it requires to grind out results from those rules - is at the center of the book. The big idea is that the algorithm is mightier than the equation.
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there's a "definite ultimate model for the universe." What might this be? The mother of all rules; a single, simple "ultimate rule" that computes everything from quantum physics to reality television.
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If Wolfram's ideas ultimately are refuted, he will be remembered as one more brilliant guy who went overboard, verging on megalomania. But even if he is wrong, A New Kind of Science is an incredible achievement, one that will richly reward adventuresome readers. Of course, if he is right, his book indeed belongs to history. Either way, the world is about to reckon with a scientist who's making the biggest leap imaginable: remaking science itself, with only his computer and his brain.
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cellular automata
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CAs themselves are abstract systems that pose a spreadsheetlike universe in which individual cells move from one condition to another - for example, from dark to light - one click at a time, according to what rules have been set for this evolution. These rules determine the color of the cells in the next iteration, depending on the conditions of the current pattern. The word automata refers to the nature of the process, in which the patterns on the grid evolve depending not on human intervention but on the rules themselves: Once the initial condition and those rules are set, all a person can do is sit back and watch.
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The field was the brainchild of the legendary mathematician John von Neumann, at the suggestion of his friend Stanislaw Ulam. Von Neumann was interested in the idea of artificial life, particularly self-reproduction. His claim - which would be echoed by those who went on to study CAs - was that these systems should not be seen solely as mathematical abstractions but as stripped-down versions of the universe itself, wherein the pageant of cells turned on and off on a checkerboard (or computer screen) could actually stand for the mechanisms in the physical world. One computer scientist, Ed Fredkin, the former head of MIT's famous Project MAC, bent some minds by suggesting that the universe itself was a giant cellular automaton.
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When Wolfram studied the printouts on an airline flight from New York to London, he was thunderstruck. This experiment used the simplest of initial conditions - one darkened cell on the top row. And the process of generating future states was elementary. Yet Rule 30 yielded an eruption of the most complicated, seemingly random output imaginable. (See page 135.) In fact, there seemed no end to it. As Wolfram studied it, he began to realize that there was something profound about how such complexity would arise from a simple program and began to wonder about the implications. Eventually, he would conclude that Rule 30 was not an anomaly but a crucial window onto the way the world operated.
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At one point there was actually a debate about whether there should be notes to the notes.
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As the meal progresses, our talk turns to an enigma that is almost certainly a computational equivalent of the mysteries of the universe: Wolfram himself. I point out that in a strange way, this 1,200-page tome with pictures and diagrams of computer experiments and animal skins and seashells and axioms is an extremely personal book. Presented in the guise of science are passionate contentions about religion and free will and the nature of humanity. The discoveries track its author's obsessions. In a sense, A New Kind of Science is Stephen Wolfram's autobiography.
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As dessert is served, I bring up the secret-of-the-universe question. Wolfram's theory that there is a single rule at the heart of everything - a single simple algorithm that, in effect, generates all the rules of physics and everything else - is bound to be one of his most controversial claims, a theory that even some of his close friends in physics aren't buying. Furthermore, Wolfram rubs our faces in the dreary implications of his contention. Not only does a single measly rule account for everything, but if one day we actually see the rule, he predicts, we'll probably find it unimpressive. "One might expect," he writes, "that in the end there would be nothing special about the rule for our universe - just as there has turned out to be nothing special about our position in the solar system or the galaxy."
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11 Sep 06
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Some early readers are drawing analogies instead to Galileo - not in terms of scientific achievement, but heresy.
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These programs can do all the stuff that happens in nature." By that reasoning, no barriers exist to prevent machines from thinking as humans do.
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The principle of computational equivalence also puts limits on science itself, ruling many questions unanswerable because the only way to discover the consequences of many complex processes is to let things proceed naturally.
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Everything at that level of complexity - and that means almost everything you can think of, from human thought to rain hitting pavement - is exactly as complex as anything else.
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general types of rules that can be embodied in simple computer programs
-
insists that Darwinian natural selection is an overrated component in evolution; and, oh, theorizes that there's a "definite ultimate model for the universe."
-
the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules
-
Wolfram's theory that there is a single rule at the heart of everything - a single simple algorithm that, in effect, generates all the rules of physics and everything else - is bound to be one of his most controversial claims
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