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A New Kind of Science is the strangest book I've ever partially read. Stephen is definitely a genius but the book makes me think he may have crossed the border
by Flankk 5y ago
A New Kind of Science is the strangest book I've ever partially read. Stephen is definitely a genius but the book makes me think he may have crossed the border into insanity. I mean, cellular automata are cool and all, but 1200 pages?
- errcorrectcode 5y agoYep. It reminded me of GEB: magical mental fapping lost in the clouds.
- PaulHoule 5y agoI took a class in logic for my Math BA (dual major w/ Physics) and the content of the class was close to one of the major themes in GEB. The stuff with classical music (e.g. "themes"), Achilles and the Turtle and quite a bit of it is something that I think somebody could appreciate or not appreciate.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoIt's nice to think interdisciplinary, but it's also easy to succumb to connecting dots that aren't really there and make up new dots when diverging from concrete data, experiments, and the real world.
- PaulHoule 5y agoOne thing I find sad about it is that Stephen has looked for something to top Rule 30 for years in cellular automata and every other kind of iterated system. He's found many things that are more complicated but he hasn't found anything more complex. He's found something like Rule 30 in every system family but it's never quite as beautiful or simple. I was talking with somebody the other day who told me "God created you so he knows you better than anyone else" and I pointed to Rule 30 as a counterexample. You can create something like Rule 30 and understand the parts but its behavior is a fascinating mixture of order and disorder that can only be understood partially.
- Flankk 5y agoIt can be understood fully as recursion. It's essentially a pseudo-random pattern generator. God is usually thought to exist outside of time. Hypothetically this means He transcends the P versus NP problem.