6 ms·

Please help me understand this. If I understand this correctly, the Wikipedia snippet is saying that Mr. Cook developed this theory while under a related NDA w

Please help me understand this. If I understand this correctly, the Wikipedia snippet is saying that Mr. Cook developed this theory while under a related NDA with Wolfram Research; and that by publishing a paper, Mr. Cook violated that NDA. The paper in question, the conference, and the injunction blocking publication all happened in 2015. If I understand that correctly, then should this post be marked "(2015)"? Also, this seems to me to be a rather run-of-the-mill NDA violation case. The only things making it more more noteable is it being an NDA related to math, and how one of the parties involved is Wolfram Research. Otherwise, this seems to me to be like any NDA involving a technology company, and HN has seen discussions on over-broad NDAs recently. Finally, I'm not liking the quality of the Wikipedia article: I'd appreciate more information, and maybe links to court documents!

alain94040 10y ago
The docket for the court case seems to be this one: https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/20370j96/illinois-central-district-court/wolfram-research-v-cook/ https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/20370j96/illinois-central-...
pmiller2 10y ago
Cook's proof was presented at a conference in 1998 and published in 2000. NKS came out in 2002.
pthreads 10y ago
>Finally, I'm not liking the quality of the Wikipedia article: I'd appreciate more information, and maybe links to court documents! It's Wikipedia! If you are not liking the quality then feel free to edit it and make it better.
- CaliforniaKarl 10y ago
  That's true! But I didn't have any additional information to add, so my edits would likely reduce the quality of the article. I don't have any experience in looking up court records.
  - gunnihinn 10y ago
    How kindly would you look at someone who said they didn't have experience looking up documentation?
    - jakobegger 10y ago
      Have you ever tried looking up documentation from a field that you aren't familiar with? It's not trivial. When I did some initial dabbling with microprocessor programming, reading the docs made absolutely no sense to me. (My field is desktop software) Most things are still a mystery to me. Most docs expect that you are familiar with the field, and in most cases you won't even find them if you aren't.
    - dogecoinbase 10y ago
      I would say that anyone who would make this analogy actually doesn't have experience looking up documentation in any field they're unfamiliar with.
    - AlexCoventry 10y ago
      I would LOVE a primer on how to look up court documents! Please hold forth!
deleted 10y ago
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united893 10y ago
Let's say Apple hires you to work on Siri, and you discover that a certain construction of a deep neural network allows you to construct a smooth (differentiable) Turing machine which can do wonderful new things. Then, without asking for permission, you go on to publish the details of your research. What do you think Apple might do in this case?
jamesblonde 10y ago
This all went down in the late 90s. Basically, Wolfram had been employing a lot of people to continue the basic research he did in the early 1980s on cellular automata. Wolfram's claim-to-fame is that he discovered 4 classes of cellular automata (random, stable, periodic, complex). I claim he took these straight off nobel-prize winner Ilya Prigogine who identified these 4 classes for far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems - see Nicolis paper (figure 1): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC388547/pdf/pnas00060-0162.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC388547/pdf/pnas.... (Nicolis was Prigogine's student). Anyway, Wolfram thought he was on to something really big (meaning-of-life type big). But he also founded Mathematica, thought - "hey, i'll just get rich first". And like Jeff Hawkins who put his Palm Pilot money into his first love of brain research, Wolfram funded basic research on cellular automata. And Wolfram wanted the scientific credit for that basic research - hence the NDAs. Now artists (like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst) have been doing this successfully for years - taking credit for their employees art. Wolfram reckoned he could do the same. But Mr Cook thought otherwise. Fair play to Cook, I say. It's a very interesting exercise, because there's nothing Wolfram can do now. Cook was the one who made the discovery and he told us so. Wolfram wants to undo that, but with the Internet, he can't. Regarding the actual discovery. It's significance is that it shows us how very simple rules and interactions can produce something complex and regular (a universal Turing machine) upon which intelligent systems can be built. Given that the brain is almost certainly not a universal Turing machine, I believe that Wolfram over-estimated the long-term historical significance of the discovery.
- CaliforniaKarl 10y ago
  Awesome, thank you very much for the description!
- unlikelymordant 10y ago
  How is the brain not a universal turing machine? Is there a task that turing machines can do that brains can't? It has been shown that rnns are turing complete [1] so it is certainly believable that brains are [1] http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/220907/meaning-of-and-proof-of-rnn-can-approximate-any-algorithm http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/220907/meaning-of-a...

alain94040 10y ago

The docket for the court case seems to be this one: https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/20370j96/illinois-central-district-court/wolfram-research-v-cook/ https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/20370j96/illinois-central-...

pmiller2 10y ago

Cook's proof was presented at a conference in 1998 and published in 2000. NKS came out in 2002.

pthreads 10y ago

>Finally, I'm not liking the quality of the Wikipedia article: I'd appreciate more information, and maybe links to court documents! It's Wikipedia! If you are not liking the quality then feel free to edit it and make it better.

CaliforniaKarl 10y ago
That's true! But I didn't have any additional information to add, so my edits would likely reduce the quality of the article. I don't have any experience in looking up court records.
- gunnihinn 10y ago
  How kindly would you look at someone who said they didn't have experience looking up documentation?
  - jakobegger 10y ago
    Have you ever tried looking up documentation from a field that you aren't familiar with? It's not trivial. When I did some initial dabbling with microprocessor programming, reading the docs made absolutely no sense to me. (My field is desktop software) Most things are still a mystery to me. Most docs expect that you are familiar with the field, and in most cases you won't even find them if you aren't.
  - dogecoinbase 10y ago
    I would say that anyone who would make this analogy actually doesn't have experience looking up documentation in any field they're unfamiliar with.
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    I would LOVE a primer on how to look up court documents! Please hold forth!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

united893 10y ago

Let's say Apple hires you to work on Siri, and you discover that a certain construction of a deep neural network allows you to construct a smooth (differentiable) Turing machine which can do wonderful new things. Then, without asking for permission, you go on to publish the details of your research. What do you think Apple might do in this case?

jamesblonde 10y ago

This all went down in the late 90s. Basically, Wolfram had been employing a lot of people to continue the basic research he did in the early 1980s on cellular automata. Wolfram's claim-to-fame is that he discovered 4 classes of cellular automata (random, stable, periodic, complex). I claim he took these straight off nobel-prize winner Ilya Prigogine who identified these 4 classes for far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems - see Nicolis paper (figure 1): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC388547/pdf/pnas00060-0162.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC388547/pdf/pnas.... (Nicolis was Prigogine's student). Anyway, Wolfram thought he was on to something really big (meaning-of-life type big). But he also founded Mathematica, thought - "hey, i'll just get rich first". And like Jeff Hawkins who put his Palm Pilot money into his first love of brain research, Wolfram funded basic research on cellular automata. And Wolfram wanted the scientific credit for that basic research - hence the NDAs. Now artists (like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst) have been doing this successfully for years - taking credit for their employees art. Wolfram reckoned he could do the same. But Mr Cook thought otherwise. Fair play to Cook, I say. It's a very interesting exercise, because there's nothing Wolfram can do now. Cook was the one who made the discovery and he told us so. Wolfram wants to undo that, but with the Internet, he can't. Regarding the actual discovery. It's significance is that it shows us how very simple rules and interactions can produce something complex and regular (a universal Turing machine) upon which intelligent systems can be built. Given that the brain is almost certainly not a universal Turing machine, I believe that Wolfram over-estimated the long-term historical significance of the discovery.

CaliforniaKarl 10y ago
Awesome, thank you very much for the description!
unlikelymordant 10y ago
How is the brain not a universal turing machine? Is there a task that turing machines can do that brains can't? It has been shown that rnns are turing complete [1] so it is certainly believable that brains are [1] http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/220907/meaning-of-and-proof-of-rnn-can-approximate-any-algorithm http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/220907/meaning-of-a...