4 ms·
The idea of small rules leading to large patterns is not something Wolfram invented, but he seems to think he did. I think Conway's game of life predates it, as
by vertline3 7y ago
The idea of small rules leading to large patterns is not something Wolfram invented, but he seems to think he did. I think Conway's game of life predates it, as does Mandelbrot, then there is the Durer pentagon.
Maybe there is a something I am missing though?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoFrom what I have heard, what you're missing is Wolfram's ego. That's why he magnifies the importance of what he has done.
- OneWordSoln 7y agoI mean, Mathematica is a truly great, great piece of software, but his "New Kind of Science" was both utterly worthless and a fantastic treatise on how a person's grandiose religion of self leads to utter delusion.
- zach_garwood 7y agoI started to read it when I college, and read hundreds of pages into it before I started to realize that there was nothing there. The entire book can be summed up as "complexity arises from multiple iterations on simplicity" and, like, you can teach that to a middle schooler in a day, no need for a thousands of pages-long tome.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoIt was not worthless. It made a great doorstop.
- ncmncm 7y agoOn that note... Is he really claiming to have invented the Church-Turing Thesis years after their deaths?