
A New Kind of Science: A 15-Year View - Cozumel
https://backchannel.com/a-new-kind-of-science-a-15-year-view-4f5668abe54f
======
leephillips
I haven't read the book, but I've dipped into it. Some of the ideas are
interesting; ideas that I was acquainted with through Wolfram's papers before
the book appeared. From critical examinations published by others, I've
gleaned two things: the book contains one new theorem, apparently discovered
by one of Wolfram's collaborators; and, there are no successful predictions in
the book. To the extent that it's supposed to be "science", 15 years later one
might hope to see the author saying something like, "Here is my NKS prediction
of <whatever>, and this experiment confirms it," or "this experiment
contradicts my prediction." Even the latter case would show an attempt to do
science. So I'm intensely interested in knowing, from people who have been
following this, are there any testable predictions from this NKS, have the
experiments been done, and what were the results? Because this new article (I
couldn't get through it, I confess) seems to be just more handwaving, and
Wolfram talking about how important his insights just have to be.

EDIT: I meant to add that it's very nice that the book is now free, in any
case.

~~~
cr0sh
Maybe the choice of title was a bad move on Wolfram's part? Your argument
makes sense; it doesn't predict anything, or show any hint of science. Based
on what I recall of the book (I did read it - everything except the
appendix/notes), and what I've read of this new article (I didn't finish it -
I will read it in full at a later point, though), it can't predict anything.

What I mean is that these simple rule programs can't be run any faster than
the universe in which they are running. So you can't say "I predict this
simple rule set will eventually draw a butterfly" (or whatever) - because you
couldn't run it long enough for that to occur.

In a way, it's a simulation (or emulation) problem; just as you need a more
powerful computer to run software to emulate a system in real time, provided
that system is less powerful - you would need to do the same in order to run
these simple programs. In essence, since the theory espoused in NKS (more or
less - at least, that is what I got out of it - and maybe I am wrong) is that
the universe at its base level (quarks? dunno) is composed and operates and
creates based on these simple rules, in order to go faster than our universe
(and catch up), you'd have to have a more powerful system than whatever the
universe is running on (conjecture, I know - and Wolfram noted this as well
IIRC).

So right now - just like if you were wanting to emulate a PS4 on a
contemporary PC - the only way you can do it is non-realtime; you have to be
satisfied at running the system at a slower rate. What is interesting about
this - and this is pure speculation - let's say you are running "rule 30" on a
computer, and unknown to you, it is actually computing a new universe (that
is, simulating it) - to you, it is happening much more slowly than realtime -
but to anyone "inside" that universe, they can't relatively know that they are
running slower - their sense of "time" is "normal"...

I'd like to encourage you to read the book in full and maybe this new article
as well. Yes - it's a real long slog. And maybe it is nothing more than a
giant ego stroke on the part of Wolfram; I don't really know what to think
about it anymore. But you might walk away (to get some aspirin for your
headache?) with something to think about and ponder - even if it is completely
wrong, or you think so, or whatever - simply reading it and understanding it
might lead you to your own discoveries and ideas.

~~~
leephillips
That's an interesting point of view. I've never heard this work described that
way before. If that's the correct interpretation, though, (and I think you've
implicitly acknowledged this), the NKS work is, perhaps, some kind of
metaphysical speculation, with some demonstrations to support it -- but not
any kind of science, since, as you say, it can't predict anything. Also, in
that case, it would be unfair to demand that it produce a prediction, of
course.

~~~
xrange
>I've never heard this work described that way before.

One way to summarize the thesis of book would be to say: Historically, we've
analyzed natural phenomena and tried to fit equations to the data. But Nature
may be doing something analagous to running simple programs instead of solving
equations. What are the implications of this? Complexity and "randomness"
comes about from the "programs", not from their initial inputs/conditions. And
predicting behavior of programs is harder than predicting behavior of systems
of equations, which sucks.

>but not any kind of science

I think many people who aren't familiar with the book are thinking that "a new
kind of science" means "a new branch of science" like we have physics,
chemistry, biology, and now this new "computery" science. But the book is
actually about looking at nature with the new perspective of "programs", that
previous generations of people didn't have a reference frame for. And some of
things that we think are "complex" might actually be following simple rules
(or can better be modeled as such).

------
cliffy
Can anyone who has actually read NKS comment on the value of its contents?

I've seen a lot of criticism[0], most concerning being the lack of
mathematical rigor in the work[1]. Seems damning considering the author's
background in math.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Receptio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Reception)
[1]: [http://crd-legacy.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/dhb-
wolfram.pd...](http://crd-legacy.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/dhb-wolfram.pdf)

~~~
xrange
I found it to be a very interesting book. The criticisms basically boil down
into three categories:

\- I don't like Stephen Wolfram and his personal style offends me.

\- This isn't new material because there were academic papers that covered
some of this material scattered throughout the literature.

\- Stephen should have been more generous in giving credit to previous work.

...If nothing else, get a copy to look at all the great pictures, and ignore
the text if it bothers you.

>most concerning being the lack of mathematical rigor in the work

This book is about how very very simple programs can end up producing complex
results. You can easily write the program for simulating the cellular automata
in any programming language and check that you get the same picture as shown
in the book. You don't have to accept anyone's philosophy of math and their
opinions on the Axiom of Choice when it comes to uncountable infinities. It is
completely formal. In fact, the best reason for getting the book is to
encourage you to write tiny little programs to see the results for yourself.

[http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Mathematical_rigor](http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Mathematical_rigor)

~~~
jerf
My primary criticism with the book is that it repeatedly unto belaboring the
point claims to be "a new kind of science", when in fact it turns out it's
merely a somewhat interesting tour of some corners of recreational mathematics
that has had zero impact on the world and will likely continue to have zero
impact on the world.

As a book of recreational mathematics it's pretty fun. As a "New Kind Of
Science" it's atrocious.

~~~
xrange
>As a "New Kind Of Science" it's atrocious.

Investigating nature starting with the premise that the "laws" may be
imperative procedures instead of pure functions doesn't seem orthodox (for
2002), so isn't that "new"?

~~~
jerf
It hasn't produced any fruit.

And especially from a retrospective perspective, the importance of that can't
be understated.

I'm not enough of a mathematician to be able to do this myself, but
intuitively I expect that there must be some way to measure the chaoticness of
a program-type mathematical system, the degree to which small perturbations in
the input produce large changes in the output. We are familiar with this in
practice in the programming world in the difference between languages like J
or a fluffier language like Java. Within the domain of legal programs,
perturbations in the original symbol stream are more likely to have larger
effects on programs in J than in Java. My personal feeling, after watching
people sort of screw around with CAs for the last many years (only recently
unsubscribed from /r/cellular_automata) is that CA are simply too chaotic to
be useful for any non-trivial purpose; the task of establishing correlation
between a real physical outcome and a CA is too difficult, and then even if
you do, the task of understanding the CA itself is still itself quite large!
It just isn't a useful way of modeling the world. Or, if you prefer, the
problem isn't that CAs are too _simple_ to model things with, the problem is
that in general they are too _complex_. Either a CA is degenerately simple or
impossibly chaotic and there just isn't enough in between. The same
characteristics that makes it fun to watch a CA explode from a very small seed
into a complex diagram that is still somehow obviously structured in strangely
complex ways makes it impossible to actually make them do anything you want to
do.

Go look at the Turing machine implemented in Life. Look at the sheer _size_ of
the thing. It's a bit of a cheat because it is simulating something else that
we already have models for, but... could you imagine trying to understand the
behavior of Turing Machines through the lens of that Life model?

Another interesting thing to look at is the way people sometimes try to
incorporate CAs into video games. It turns out they are very, very hard to
tame into anything useful, without a lot of work spent constraining them down
to something tractable. Or, in other words, by stripping out all their power
just so they might do something slightly predictable.

Turing machines are a much better model of computation than CAs are of very
many other real processes, and in practice, Turing machines are _still_
virtually useless, useful only for the theoretical pleasingness of the UTM and
the resulting mathematical theorems, but not something we use on a day-to-day
basis. Lambda calculus is way more useful, and even more useful than that is
just the adhoc models we tend to use day-by-day that may lack nice
mathematical properties but actually resemble the machines we work with. CAs
have an even larger gap between their sheer mathematical perversity on the one
hand, and any useful application on the other.

~~~
cr0sh
> It hasn't produced any fruit.

This as well is a good argument against the book. The fact that there doesn't
appear to be anything brought forth in other fields, or in the same field of
work as the book doesn't bode well for it.

Then again, there have been many time in history where something was written
or put down, which wasn't known or seen to be relevant, workable, or whatnot,
until many decades or centuries had passed. I'm not saying this book is a case
of that, only that it might be. We don't really know, and can't if or until it
happens, of course.

~~~
xrange
Re: Fruitfulness. For the general thesis of "computation" vs. "equations" as
the "new kind of science", it is not like Stephen is the lone practitioner...

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-
blowup...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for-
an-averaged-three-dimensional-navier-stokes-equation/)

...(skip down to the last paragraph).

------
cr0sh
Regarding criticisms of this book...

When this book came out, I purchased a copy, determined to read it; I was
successful in reading it, minus the appendix and notes section (which is
printed so small, that if expanded to the size of the font used in the book,
would probably create at least one or more books of the same length - this
thing is insanely dense - but at least it isn't a "House of Leaves").

I only ran into one issue - on the first copy of the book I purchased: So far
into the book (I don't recall how much offhand) the text repeated or did
something weird; basically I had purchased a copy of the book that was bound
improperly or something. I kept that copy, and purchased another.

Anyhow - what I constantly see in reviews of this book (then and now) is the
criticism that what Wolfram wrote wasn't original, or "new", and that it was
"egotistical" of the author to publish it.

What I've never understood though, is that the Wolfram constantly asserts that
what he is writing isn't anything original or new - that it all existed
before. I mean, I recall reading this kind of language seemingly on every
other page. But I don't think I've seen a critical review that has mentioned
this?

At this point, 15 years later (has it really been that long?) - I'm not sure
what to think of the work. Based on the first few comments here, it still
seems to be something that raises the hackles of people. Maybe it's deserving
of the criticism? Or maybe it's one of those texts that needs to age a bit
more before we see it for what it is?

Whatever - I enjoyed reading it, as difficult a read it was, I still found it
fascinating and curious.

------
edbaskerville
Every mention of Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book deserves a link to Cosma
Shalizi's epic take-down of a review ("A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania
and Utter Batshit Insanity"):

[http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/](http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/)

(EDIT) The gist: "As the saying goes, there is much here that is new and true,
but what is true is not new, and what is new is not true; and some of it is
even old and false, or at least utterly unsupported."

~~~
apo
_Let me try to sum up. On the one hand, we have a large number of true but
commonplace ideas, especially about how simple rules can lead to complex
outcomes, and about the virtues of toy models. On the other hand, we have a
large mass of dubious speculations (many of them also unoriginal). We have,
finally, a single new result of mathematical importance, which is not actually
the author 's. Everything is presented as the inspired fruit of a lonely
genius, delivering startling insights in isolation from a blinkered and
philistine scientific community. We have been this way before._

I had no idea this review existed, but it captures many of my reactions to the
book when I first tried to read it many years ago. I distinctly remember the
lack of discussion of previous work, lack of specific citations to the
academic literature, and the garbled way in which scientific fields I had some
knowledge of were explained. The book seemed to take pains to make it appear
as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had
never seen before.

~~~
coldtea
> _The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were
> inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before._

A "new kind of science", perhaps?

------
gozzoo
This reminds me of one of the most hilarious reviews I have read on Amazon.
For some reasone it has disappreared, but it found it's way in this
collection:

[http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html](http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html)

It's called "A New Kind of Review".

~~~
seibelj
For posterity:

A New Kind of Review by "a reader"

I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review. This
review is the product of my lifetime of experience in meeting important people
and thinking deep thoughts. This is a new kind of review, and will no doubt
influence the way you think about the world around you and the way you think
of yourself.

 _Bigger than infinity_ Although my review deserves thousands of pages to
articulate, I am limiting many of my deeper thoughts to only single
characters. I encourage readers of my review to dedicate the many years
required to fully absorb the significance of what I am writing here.
Fortunately, we live in exactly the time when my review can be widely
disseminated by "internet" technology and stored on "digital media", allowing
current and future scholars to delve more deeply into my original and
insightful use of commas, numbers, and letters.

 _My place in history_ My review allows, for the first time, a complete and
total understanding not only of this but _every single_ book ever written. I
call this "the principle of book equivalence." Future generations will decide
the relative merits of this review compared with, for example, the works of
Shakespeare. This effort will open new realms of scholarship.

 _More about me_ I first began writing reviews as a small child, where my
talent was clearly apparent to those around me, including my mother. She
preserved my early writings which, although simpler in structure, portend
elements of my current style. I include one of them below (which I call review
30) to indicate the scholarly pedigree of the document now in your hands or on
your screen or committed to your memory:

 _" The guy who wrote the book is also the publisher of the book. I guess he's
the only person smart enough to understand what's in it. When I'm older I too
will use a vanity press. Then I can write all the pages I want."..._

It is staggering to contemplate that all the great works of literature can be
derived from the letters I use in writing this review. I am pleased to have
shared them with you, and hereby grant you the liberty to use up to twenty
(20) of them consecutively without attribution. Any use of additional
characters in print must acknowledge this review as source material since it
contains, implicitly or explicitly, all future written documents.

