

Wolfram on Alan Turing's birthday. - skn
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2010/06/23/happy-birthday-alan-turing/

======
codeflo
After having read 2/3 of this, I began to entertain the idea that this might
indeed be an honest praise of Alan Turing's work, without the Wolfram ego spin
that we all expect. One can hope, right? Unfortunately, that was right before
Wolfram goes on to explain how much further Wolfram sees than Turing ever
could, how Turing would be impressed by all the significant results of
Wolfram, how enthusiastic Turing would have been about Wolfram Mathematica and
Wolfram Alpha, and finally, how Wolfram Wolfram Wolfram Wolfram.

In other words, this is exactly the article I expected.

~~~
arketyp
I wish you could give Wolfram a break and look at him with liberated eyes. I
don't think there's anything exceptionally egocentric about this article
unless you look for it - in fact I find it quite disturbing that you would
want to make this celebration of Turing into a piece about Wolfram's ego. Sure
Wolfram's glasses are no doubt tinted by his own ideas, but what
entrepreneur's isn't? If any, people at HN should be aware of this and I find
it sad the lack of sympathy for a man who, when it comes down to it, has
actually done good things and contributed to this world.

~~~
codeflo
It's interesting that you measure Wolfram's behavior by entrepreneurial
standards. Indeed, I have much respect for his commercial successes,
Mathematica is a great and useful program. And I have no real qualms about him
boasting that Mathematica and Alpha are the greatest inventions since sliced
bread, that's to be expected of anyone trying to sell a product.

But Wolfram is also a scientist, and the ideals in science are a bit
different. A scientist is supposed to be humble, admit the limitations of his
work, and acknowledge the contributions of others. This is expressed in the
famous quote by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is only by standing
on the shoulders of giants." Of course scientists are only human and don't
always hold up to that ideal (maybe Newton least of all), but it's still
important to recognize the difference between a scientific argument and a
sales pitch.

~~~
enneff
> This is expressed in the famous quote by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen
> further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Ironically, this was a quip at the expense of Robert Hooke, who was
particularly short in stature.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Fame>

~~~
codeflo
I've heard about that, and I'm not convinced. Here's the quote in context:

> What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and
> especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical
> consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the
> shoulders of Giants.

So if it's (also) meant as a quip, it's a friendly one. And in either case,
the saying goes back to the middle ages and was always meant metaphorically.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
A lecturer and mentor I had at university worked closely with Turing during
and after the war, and I never knew until recently. I've had no news of his
death, so I'm desperately hoping to be able to catch up with him next time I'm
back home, and perhaps get him to reminisce.

PS: Please fix the title. The article has it right - it's "Alan".

~~~
skn
It's now fixed. Thanks.

------
corruption
Question to those in the know: I've done a lot of data mining, statistics and
inverse problems, but I've never even _looked_ at cellular automata. Am I
missing anything?

What are they used for - what problems can they solve that other methods
can't?

~~~
enneff
"Am I missing anything?"

Not really. They're a fun diversion, and useful for some simulations, but
that's about it.

~~~
corruption
So what's the big deal - why does Wolfram seem to think they are the answer to
the world's problems? I'm confused - there must be something there, as he's
obviously a smart guy.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Wolfram has - correctly - noted that complexity can arise from simple systems
(think Conway's Game of Life, but even simpler - Wolfram is into one-
dimensional equivalents). This is, he says, akin to how many biological
systems work (e.g. individual cells/neurons are pretty simple, but a human is
very complex).

He also - correctly - observes that the explosion in computational power
afforded by modern computers make certain scientific investigations possible
that were previously infeasible (e.g. the proof of the four-colour theorem
relying on exhaustively testing some 1800 possible scenarios, or numerical
simulation of some very complex phenomena).

He then combines these two passions of his and asserts that therefore,
computation based on simple systems gives insight into the secrets of life,
the universe, and everything.

~~~
corruption
I can understand that position. If he's correct, it would seem like a small
task to search the computational landscape and find automata that predict
biological behavior or physics systems better than current models. Is this his
approach? I don't see many (any?) papers like this in any of the fields I'm
involved in - so has it been successful?

~~~
wwalker3
It's harder than you might think to model real physics with a cellular
automaton.

Cellular automata are simulated on regular grids of cells, which gives them
anisotropic (direction-dependent) behavior. For example, moving patterns in
most automata can only travel in certain preferred directions (like gliders in
Conway's game of life). And patterns that can move in multiple directions
usually travel with different speeds in each direction.

In the real world, we don't observe any anisotropy in space, so none of the
cellular automata I've seen proposed up to this point can model real physics,
even in principle.

Lattice gas automata use hexagonal grids instead of square grids to alleviate
this problem somewhat, but the anisotropy never really goes away, it's just
reduced.

~~~
maxharris
NKS covers a lot more than just 1D or 2D cellular automata. See
<http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/section-5.5> and beyond.

~~~
wwalker3
You're right, NKS does cover more than cellular automata, like network systems
(as your reference shows). But all the examples Wolfram gives of network
systems have the same anisotropy problem as a cellular automaton. He uses
mostly hexagonal grids for his network systems, which are better than square
grids, but still not isotropic.

Wolfram doesn't give even a simple example of how two particle-like structures
might repel or attract each other in an isotropic fashion in a network system
(or any other system in NKS). That doesn't prove it's impossible, but if it is
possible neither Wolfram nor anyone else seems to have any idea how to even
get started.

~~~
thisrod
Can't you get rid of the grid, and connect the cells randomly? I have an
notion that Feynman did that, but I don't remember where I heard about it.

~~~
wwalker3
That might very well fix the anisotropy problem (I haven't seen it done yet,
but it sounds reasonable). However, that leaves you with another problem --
how do you create a stable particle-like pattern that can travel over a
randomly-connected grid of connections without disintegrating :) Something
like a Game of Life glider will explode if it hits a differently-connected
area of the grid.

But say you solve that problem too -- there are many more problems after that.
How do you encode the other properties of a particle like mass, charge, spin
and momentum into this pattern? How can patterns attract and repel each other
at long distances like real particles do?

These problems are probably all solvable, but my point to the original poster
was that it's harder than it seems at first, and it's not something that's
amenable to a simple search of the state space of possible automata.

------
bhiggins
I can understand not bringing up that Alan committed suicide but I don't see
why Wolfram just passingly mentions that Alan was gay but doesn't mention at
all the UK's treatment of him because he was gay. Maybe Alan would still be
alive if the UK hadn't convicted him of, basically, being gay, and forced him
to take hormone injections...

