

Alpha Geek - CaptainZapp
http://economist.com/node/18750658

======
jgershen
I came across Scott Aaronson's review of NKS a few days ago and loved it:
<http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089>.

I would recommend reading that to anyone who is also looking at Wolfram's
work.

~~~
taliesinb
My theory is that that review, and Shalizi's, are as popular as they are
because nothing is more convenient than learning one doesn't have to actually
do the work of considering a (set of) new ideas and perspectives.

~~~
jgershen
Well, I wrote my thesis about cellular automata, and I promise I've considered
Wolfram's set of ideas and perspectives. So while I can't prove anything about
the popularity of Aaronson's review in general, your hypothesis is
demonstrably false in at least n=1 instance.

That being said, I took a look at your website and GitHub (not to mention your
employer, Wolfram Research) and it's obvious you know what you're talking
about - I don't think you should be being downvoted as heavily in this thread
as you are. Plus you made a Futurama reference, so you're obviously a cool
dude.

My point is, let's all avoid implying that people who don't agree with us
aren't qualified to discuss this subject. I think both of us are, and Wolfram
is a pretty polarizing subject - one that all sides need to keep civil about
sometimes.

~~~
taliesinb
And you did Gazehawk! Pretty cool stuff, I was telling Stephen about that a
few weeks ago.

But, let me say, you're right. But I do think its _part_ of their popularity.
Also the fact that they're both very entertaining and erudite writers. And
sure, there _are_ plenty of valid criticisms, and they make them.

Off to read your thesis..

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bambax
It seems wrong to frame the problem as "mathematics vs. cellular automata".
The old kind of science (OKS?) is not as much about mathematics as it is about
the scientific method of verification by experimentation.

If you want to setup a new kind of science, you have to devise a new
verification method that is not experimentation-based. If you think you can go
without experimentation altogether then it's not science at all (cf. pre-
Copernic philosophical ramblings, _à la_ Descartes).

It seems what Wolfram does with "NKS" is build new things; it builds those
things by "finding them in the computational universe" (a universe that its
automata explore).

Creating new ringtones is fine, funny and (moderately) interesting, but it's
NOT science — not because ringtones are trivial, but because there is no
concept of right or wrong in the ringtone universe. You cannot invalidate a
melody.

Laws of nature expressed in mathematical formulas are verified everyday; if
you want to demonstrate that nature is in fact made of cellular automata gone
wild, you have to actually recreate nature (or parts of it) and show that it's
indistinguishable from the real thing.

Although I don't know much about anything and haven't read NKS, I don't see
any claims of this sort coming from Mr. Wolfram; I certainly didn't see it
mentioned in the article.

------
latch
The value of someone doing something different, from a different perspective,
is huge. They don't have to be right or successful to have a lasting impact on
society.

It doesn't matter the scale, challenging the establishment is difficult and
uncommon.

------
derekp7
In the article, Dr. Wolfram claims that computer programs, not mathematics, is
the best way to model the universe. However, hasn't Lambda Calculus (and
therefore functional programming) shown that the two are the same?

~~~
knowtheory
Well, Wolfram's thesis is that analytical representation is not the correct
frame for modeling the world, and algorithmic/procedural representation (e.g.
simulation) is the correct method.

This isn't particularly novel, but it is a key insight of computer science. I
just don't think that Wolfram deserves credit for it.

Edit for clarification: The key insight being that you can model things
algorithmically. Whether it's "correct" or not is a different matter. But this
type of modeling is different from analytical modeling.

~~~
taliesinb
No, this is a mischaracterization of what Wolfram is saying. Wolfram says: why
consider computer programs to be valuable as mere _approximations_ to the
underlying analytic models, when you can consider computer programs
_themselves_ to be an entirely new and unexplored land of complex and
interesting models.

Traditional computer science considers computer programs to be merely a means
to an end.

A quite delicious irony is given by the example of Naiver Stokes equations.
They are themselves an idealization of the flow of fluids composed of discrete
particles. Because of our obsession with continuous models, we mostly resort
to laboriously solving them numerically -- but it turns out that simple
lattice gas cellular automaton models are actually 1) fairly accurate 2) much
more computationally efficient, and 3) more suggestive of the underlying
microscale physics.

To step back a bit, a helpful analogy would be that simple computations are
the 21st century equivalent of differential equations, which were studied
rigorously in their own right starting in the 18th century, often prior to
their application to concrete problems.

Whether this intuition will turn out to be prescient, or whether it will
fizzle out, is another question.

~~~
knowtheory
That doesn't make sense in the context of my comment, and besides, i don't
think that's true.

If you take the Turing Test to it's logical conclusion, a program that is
indistinguishable from a human intelligence _is_ a human intelligence. There's
no means to some other end. The program _is_ the intelligence.

This is also something that Turing came up with in the 40s & 50s. Not exactly
novel.

~~~
taliesinb
Uh... well, I'm getting Wolfram's take right. So you don't think my _analogy_
is true? It's just an analogy.

But it's clear that it has methodological implications for how one does
science:

For example, if you think computers are just a way to simulate continuous
systems, it would not occur to you to sample random programs and see what they
do. It would not occur to you to enumerate simple programs. And you wouldn't
think that it is very interesting that such and such a simple program can do
such a such a computation.

If you did, it would. And if you were ambitious enough, you would actually try
_hunting_ for the program that computes the universe, as Wolfram has been
doing on a cluster in his basement (I love this tidbit) for some years now:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html)

~~~
knowtheory
No, you're making the assertion first, that everyone positively asserts that
the universe is continuous, and second that computer scientists see
algorithmic systems as being simulations of analytical systems.

The first i am agnostic to (although i do like the feynman quote at the top of
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0206089v2> which was linked to above), and the
second is most certainly false, as i have indicated above.

The evidence in NKS to support wolfram's assertion that the universe is a
simple program is circumstantial at _best_ , and so his windmill tilting
quests for the program that is the universe seems quixotic at best, and
arrogantly foolhardy at worst.

Analytical modeling, algorithmic modeling, or whatever other model someone
wants to use to represent reality are models until you can prove them to
actually be fundamentally connected with the manner in which reality
functions.

~~~
taliesinb
Re: NKS theory of physics. You're right, it's far from convincing. But it is
intriguing speculation, and I think he adequately hedges it as such. Some
fascinating partial results are that the natural restriction he introduces for
graph automata to be deterministic are enough to induce special and general
relativity. That's pretty eery!

Re models: now we're getting into epistemology. I don't think the aim you
ascribe to scientists to "prove them (models) to actually be fundamentally
connected with the manner in which reality functions" has much meaning when
one is talking about, say, quantum field theory. How do I connect the
mathematics of QFT with what is "really going on"? You can't. It just is.

~~~
pitchups
> "Some fascinating partial results are that the natural restriction he
> introduces for graph automata to be deterministic are enough to induce
> special and general relativity. That's pretty eery!"

That sounds remarkable indeed; can you point to an online reference that has
more info on this? thanks.

------
nvictor
always reminds me of the most rated comment his book got on amazon...

~~~
riffer
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1579550088&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=)

~~~
taliesinb
There seems to be a strong inverse correlation between claims of having read
the book and actually having read the book. I haven't read the whole thing,
but I've read enough to know that this particular Zuse-head is bullshitting.

I'll list just a couple of errors that would be impossible to make if one had
read even _most_ of the book. Wolfram often pedantically reiterates the same
points, so keep in mind that these things are hard to miss:

1) "The Principle of Computational Equivalence" does not state that all-is-
computation. It states that whatever 'objective' means we use to quantify
computational complexity, we will discover that all computations are either
trivial or of equal complexity. I.e. computational complexity (where this is
crucially left undefined) "saturates" very quickly in the world of natural
computations, no matter how you decide to measure complexity.

2) SW's discovery of universality among the simplest CAs is not a triviality,
because unlike what this guy says, the dovetailer is _not_ a simple program --
it is explicitly set up to be universal (in a manner). Its Turing machine rule
number is probably in the trillions or higher. Whereas the surprise is that
even amongst the very simplest programs, universality is easy to find.

To use an analogy, string theorists would _cry with joy_ if it turned out that
there was some small number of "simplest natural string theories" and one of
them gave us all the known particles of the Standard Model.

3) Asymptotically optimal program search, in practice, isn't the way you would
hunt for universes, and it is relatively easy to see why (TL;DR for now).
Schmidhuber's academic work is of no practical relevance to the chapter on
physics, although its cool from a math geek perspective. Same with maximally
rational agents.

And the main idea here is just Occam's razor, not some arcane formulation of
maximum predictive accuracy under a strange universal prior of symbol
sequences, as cool as that sounds.

4) Wolfram _doesn't_ propose the universe is a discrete CA, although everyone
seems to think this. He makes all the obvious points about why it is unlikely
to be so, and goes on to propose a graph automata model as being a suitable
generalization of space and time.

So yeah, don't trust every well written review you read on Amazon.

As for not referencing people enough, I have sympathy with this criticism. On
the other hand, as the book delves into a million and one different domains,
the inquisitive reader would get extremely bogged down if he were to descend
into the jargon of each individual field. And you _would_ need to descend into
jargon to say anything other than light summarizations of what has come
before.

But these light summarizations _do_ exist, in the extensive notes. In fact
they're often not so light -- for example there is quite an interesting
discussion of why the Pressburger arithmetic and the theory of intermediate
degrees isn't a contradiction of the principle of computational equivalence.

Many times when one first thinks that Wolfram is being simplistic or naive, it
turns out that he's gone into a lot more depth in the notes (I assume to avoid
getting bogged down in the main text).

He really does know his shit.

Disclosure: I work on Wolfram|Alpha. But I have a brain, and I can think for
myse.... ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD

~~~
sbierwagen
It would have been nice if you had listed that disclosure first, so I could
have skipped over your comment entirely.

~~~
programnature
ad hominem much?

------
mkramlich
I like the ideas he talks about in NKS. But much like the problem I have with
the US software patent system, most/all of what's in it thats good is not
novel, and what's novel is not necessarily good. I too, and I'm sure many
others, independently had notions about how nature works more like a process
of steps, with patterns, rather than a set of static equations, and that
therefore computer programs may be better at modeling them. And that organic
lifeforms, in particular, may in a sense just be computer programs, except
ones running on natural-made parts rather than man-made ones.

Wolfram just has an arrogant position that he somehow brought them down from
the mountain top for us mere mortals to consume. He didn't. He isn't. Smart
man? Yes. Good ideas? Yes. Novel? No.

------
winestock
Did Wolfram ever get around to giving credit to Zuse and Fredkin?

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

~~~
programnature
The claim that 1) the universe is a computer, and 2) the subclaim that it is a
cellular automaton are NOT the primary claims of the book. 2) is explicitly
argued against even.

------
coolgeek
"We live in a period when technology looks very organised. But that’s a fluke,
a feature of the history of engineering that reflects what we’ve learned to
build. When we start just going out into the computational universe and
finding stuff that works, it’s all going to look a lot more bizarrely random."

This parallels my understanding of how humans will perceive the post-
singularity world.

------
markkat
History isn't easily convinced.

