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I’ve had more downvotes sharing my opinions about cellular automata on HN than on any other topic, so I won’t make any here. Rather, I’d like to point out that
by aj7 5y ago
I’ve had more downvotes sharing my opinions about cellular automata on HN than on any other topic, so I won’t make any here. Rather, I’d like to point out that I personally have not seen a single theory, not a single piece of a theory, known to be productive in explaining experimental data, recast with underlying cellular automata theory. If I am simply showing my ignorance, please enlighten me. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
- aero-glide2 5y agoI think it's a good thing to have a small percentage of scientists working on whacky theories, one of them might turn out to be true.
- ALittleLight 5y agoPlus it's not like Wolfram is taking resources away from other scientists as he is funded from his company. If Wolfram wasn't doing this he'd be CEO'ing his company, there's no cost to the public for Wolfram exploring this and potentially huge gains - though unlikely.
- a_bonobo 5y agoThere could be an opportunity costs, researchers working on this could be working on a different problem. Unlikely, but not impossible.
- taylorius 5y agoI'm fairly sure Wolfram's researchers are working on it because they are interested, and want to do it.
- abdullahkhalids 5y agoMoney is not the only resource. Scientist time is another resource, and probably a lot more important when it comes to Physics. Any private venture such as this necessarily (a) takes up scientist time, (b) provides training to scientists that can be applied to other problems later on, (c) as a second order effect, molds the public's perception of science in a certain way. (a), (b) or (c) could individually be positive or negative to society. And their net could be positive or negative. I don't know what these values are for Wolfram's work, but we can definitely make this sort of nuanced analysis.
- nlitened 5y agoThere’s no such thing as a limited supply of scientists, whose precious time is to be carefully allocated. For all I know, Wolfram might be creating new scientists from people who otherwise might not choose to pursue corrupt academia route.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoHe is taking resources by not properly attributing work, actually. One of the big criticisms of NKS was the lack of a real bibliography and there was the whole Wolfram v. Cook debacle on top. As I recall, the book still doesn't credit cook for the proof.
- tsimionescu 5y agoThat was true about the Wolfram Physics Project. But now, the Wolfram Institute will compete for research funding, as he explains in the blog post. In fact, this is the whole point of creating the Institute: WPP couldn't scale up as it was eating too much of his own money, and he believes he needs to scale this up to actually bring the work to fruition. > So far we’ve basically been incubating the Wolfram Institute within our existing organization, with me effectively footing the bill. But as we launch the full Wolfram Institute we need a larger scale of support, and we’re counting on having a network of people and organizations to provide that.
- vmception 5y agomRNA reporting for duty
- dudeinjapan 5y agoKirov reporting
- privatdozent 5y agoScientists, yes.
- aj7 5y agoNote that at various times, Feynman and Ed Fredkin became enchanted with cellular automata. We’ve had some significant tries apart from Wolfram.
- aj7 5y agoWe should also note when high credibility scientists work on something for a while and then drop it altogether.
- postingposts 5y agoHey, I do really weird math for unspecified reasons. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/28da/6507acf40f892b95ee61a798e861f058da53.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/28da/6507acf40f892b95ee61a7... Cellular Automata are, in essence, a type of mathematical function called a “Chaos Map”, aside from the cool name it’s also a WYSIWYG name, a chaos map is a mapping of how a fractal expands or changes across space time. A great example very germane to this site is the Hacker Glider from Conway’s game of life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(Conway%27s_Life) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(Conway%27s_Life) The Glider is a pattern which we can observe within the game, and we can see that it represents a function related to the overall chaotic map of the game itself. In English, Doc! All the patterns the game can make are the chaos map. Studying the individual patterns shows both how they are created and interact with other patterns. Here’s an overlapping example: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200318143635.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200318143635.h... Within the Chaotic map of slime mold evolution, it’s the loner pattern which informs the other parts of the map. Let’s bring it all together now. By studying cellular automata, we can observe patterns which correspond to a chaotic map of those patterns. By looking at that, we are able to make deeper inferences about the overall total pattern by knowing that what we observe in a small scale will also exist at n+1 scale. Meaning, when we see the loner slime mold evolve the other parts, it’s reasonable to infer through scale that loner humans may also contribute evolutionary information. We can test that theory, and then either continue to investigate from a positive or negative delta. The benefit of learning about and using CA isn’t that it’s abstract but rather it creates meaning from the raw chaos of life which we deal with every day. Practically it can lead to better encryption like I linked above, superior understanding and prediction of weather, and for those who are able to view the patterns of the small as a whole: it can reveal truths which I would call mathematically spiritual. Thanks for reading I hope I changed your mind!