4 ms·

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intel

by kolbe 6y ago

I don’t think anyone on Earth has obsessed over Rule 30 as much as Stephen Wolfram. And I think there are maybe single-digit number of people who are more intelligent than he is. So, if he can’t answer some Rule 30 related problem, I seriously doubt anyone else can.

concreteblock 6y ago
The problem seems to have the same flavor as the Collatz conjecture. Simple dynamical system - very difficult to tell what happens in the long run. Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I wonder if anyone has proved any theorems that make this precise. E.g. "Most cellular automata rules cannot be analyzed efficiently". I don't know enough complexity theory/set theory to formulate this precisely.
- schoen 6y ago
  > Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I'm guessing this thought is partly inspired by Erdős's remark about the Collatz conjecture? https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quote-mathematics-is-not-yet-ready-for-such-problems https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quot...
schoen 6y ago
Though, to be fair, Wolfram did run a previous prize contest about a conjecture that he had thought about but not solved, and someone else successfully solved it: https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/ https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/
- sblom 6y ago
  And that was all about proving that Rule 110 was capable of universal computation. (They first found a way to map Rule 110 to the tag system put forth in that prize.) This zoo of 3-predecessor cellular automata is an impressive lot.
0-_-0 6y ago
Intelligence is not the only relevant factor. You probably know a lot of things that the most intelligent person on the planet doesn't. Some of those things might help you solve a problem that nobody can.
lifthrasiir 6y ago
It's probably the other way around: Wolfram wants to make more people obsessed over Rule 30.
- sblom 6y ago
  It's not really about Rule 30 specifically. It's more about Rule 30 being a particularly simple example, probably, of Wolfram's Principle of Computational Irreducibility. From what I can tell, he'd love to drop that "probably", or move on from Rule 30 to the next simplest system that could possibly work.

by kolbe 6y ago

concreteblock 6y ago

The problem seems to have the same flavor as the Collatz conjecture. Simple dynamical system - very difficult to tell what happens in the long run. Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I wonder if anyone has proved any theorems that make this precise. E.g. "Most cellular automata rules cannot be analyzed efficiently". I don't know enough complexity theory/set theory to formulate this precisely.

schoen 6y ago
> Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I'm guessing this thought is partly inspired by Erdős's remark about the Collatz conjecture? https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quote-mathematics-is-not-yet-ready-for-such-problems https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quot...

schoen 6y ago

Though, to be fair, Wolfram did run a previous prize contest about a conjecture that he had thought about but not solved, and someone else successfully solved it: https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/ https://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/

sblom 6y ago
And that was all about proving that Rule 110 was capable of universal computation. (They first found a way to map Rule 110 to the tag system put forth in that prize.) This zoo of 3-predecessor cellular automata is an impressive lot.

0-_-0 6y ago

Intelligence is not the only relevant factor. You probably know a lot of things that the most intelligent person on the planet doesn't. Some of those things might help you solve a problem that nobody can.

lifthrasiir 6y ago

It's probably the other way around: Wolfram wants to make more people obsessed over Rule 30.

sblom 6y ago
It's not really about Rule 30 specifically. It's more about Rule 30 being a particularly simple example, probably, of Wolfram's Principle of Computational Irreducibility. From what I can tell, he'd love to drop that "probably", or move on from Rule 30 to the next simplest system that could possibly work.