5 ms·
What Is Ruliology?
- deepsun 8mo agoAmount of "I" and "me" is astonishing. Didn't find anything on falsifiable criteria -- any new theory should be able, at least in theory, to be tested for being not true.
- ForceBru 8mo agoIsn't this his personal blog? The domain name is "stephenwolfram.com", this is his personal website. Of course there will be "I"'s and "me"'s — this website is about him and what he does. As for falsifiability: > You have some particular kind of rule. And it looks as if it’s only going to behave in some particular way. But no, eventually you find a case where it does something completely different, and unexpected. So I guess to falsify a theory about some rule you just have to run the rule long enough to see something the theory doesn't predict.
- SanjayMehta 8mo agoThat's his style. It's not just his blog style, it's the same in his book. https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200207/stephen_wolframs_unfortunate_ego https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200207/stephen_wolframs_unfor...
- deepsun 8mo ago> My thoughts keep running to two other geniuses: Isaac Newton (Wolfram’s predecessor in revolutionizing science) and Donald Knuth (another contemporary computer scientist). ... But both were also gracious and modest, something that Wolfram is not. Uhm, Knuth -- yes, but Newton was pretty arrogant, vindictive, obsessive about his reputation, and unable to tolerate criticism. Some even claim he stole ideas, like the inverse-square law.
- dist-epoch 8mo agoSome things, like the foundations of mathematics, are not falsifiable. You judge them by how useful they are. Ruliology is a bit like that.
- deepsun 8mo agoMakes sense, thanks. Waiting for a real-world prediction that was hard to calculate before, but ruliology could make it easier.
- andyjohnson0 8mo agoSure, but everyone always says that. What do you think of what he wrote about?
- deepsun 8mo agoA lot of words and excitement, reminding me of the String Theory -- is very generic, able to explain anything (and be quickly adapted to any new stuff it was failing at before), but that makes it useless -- a useful theory should predict something that other theories cannot, something that can be tested. That's why I asked for the falsifiability. If there was a phrase like: "here is an experiment idea that can show which theory is correct" -- perfect. Or at least something like: "here's the real-world prediction that is very hard/impossible to calculate in other theories, but this theory makes it easy" -- at least it'd be useful for calculation.
- chvid 8mo agoI am struggling to understand what is new here - other than the word ruliad - which to me seems to similar to what we have in theoretical computer science when we talk about languages, sentences, and grammars.
- elric 8mo agoIt's just Wolfram explaining how he likes stuying things that can be describe by simple rules and how complexity can emerge in spite of (or because of?) the seeming simplicity of those rules. He came up with a word for it, and while I think "ruliology" sounds a bit silly, it does say what's on the tin.
- chvid 8mo agoTo me it sounds like this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy But maybe it is more like fractals and emerging complex systems?
- TuringTest 8mo agoThe word he's looking for is "formal system". For some reason he doesn't like doing mathematical demonstrations so he shuns the practice of doing them, and invented a new word to describe that way of using formal systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system
- meghanto 8mo agoThis looks very exciting but wolfram language being paywalled makes me super sad I can't play around with it
- ForceBru 8mo agoThe Wolfram Engine (essentially the Wolfram Language interpreter/execution environment) is free: https://www.wolfram.com/engine/ https://www.wolfram.com/engine/. You can download it and run Wolfram code. Wolfram Mathematica (the Jupyter Notebook-like development environment) is paid, but there are free and open source alternatives like https://github.com/WLJSTeam/wolfram-js-frontend https://github.com/WLJSTeam/wolfram-js-frontend. > WLJS Notebook ... [is] A lightweight, cross-platform alternative to Mathematica, built using open-source tools and the free Wolfram Engine.
- chvid 8mo agoYou can play around with this: https://www.wolframalpha.com/ https://www.wolframalpha.com/
- JadeNB 8mo agoIn my experience, Alpha works very hard to force you into a natural-language syntax that takes away much of the fun of the rule-based aspects of the Wolfram language.
- KnuthIsGod 8mo ago[flagged]
- uwagar 8mo agohe invented the term and so pleased its blowing up.
- chvid 8mo agoSomeone mentioned his apparently failed earlier work ANKOS. I had to look that up - it is 2002 book by Wolfram with seemingly similar ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science But exactly what is the problem here? Other than perhaps a very mechanical view of the universe (which he shares with many other authors) where it is hard to explain things like consciousness and other complex behaviors.
- jacquesm 8mo agoWith Wolfram it is usually the grandstanding and taking credit for other people's work. Inventing new words for old things is part and parcel of that. He has a lot in common with Schmidhuber, both are arguably very smart people but the fact that other people can be just as smart doesn't seem to fit their worldview.
- gritspants 8mo agoHe may be smarter than I am, but I'm smart enough to tell that he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
- psychoslave 8mo agoAnd you were smart enough to verbalize this in a neat short humble sentence, a remarkable feat, bravo!
- abetusk 8mo agoWolfram has failed to live up to his promise of providing tools to make progress on fundamental questions of science. From my understanding, there are two ideas that Wolfram has championed: Rule 110 is Turing machine equivalent (TME) and the principle of computational equivalence (PCE). Rule 110 was shown to be TME by Cook (hired by Wolfram) [0] and was used by Wolfram as, in my opinion, empirical evidence to support the claim that Turing machine equivalence is the norm, not the exception (PCE). At the time of writing of ANKOS, there was a popular idea that "complexity happens at the edge of chaos". PCE pushes back against that, effectively saying the opposite, that you need a conspiracy to prevent Turning machine equivalence. I don't want to overstate the idea but, in my opinion, PCE is important and provides some, potentially deep, insight. But, as far as I can tell, it stops there. What results has Wolfram proved, or paid others to prove? What physical phenomena has Wolfram explained? Entanglement still remains a mystery, the MOND vs. dark matter rages on, others have made progress on busy beaver, topology, Turing machine lower bounds and relations between run-time and space, etc. etc. The world of physics, computer science, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and most of the others, continues on using classical, and newly developed tools independent of Wolfram, that have absolutely nothing to do with cellular automata. Wolfram is building a "new kind of science" tool but has failed to provide any use cases of when the tool would actually help advance science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110
- PaulRobinson 8mo agoI actually think this is just computer science. Why? Because the first "computer scientist" - Alan Turing - was interested in this exact same set of ideas. The first programs he wrote for the Atlas and the Mark II ("the Baby"), seem to have been focused on a theory he had around how animals got their markings. They look a little to me (as a non-expert in these areas, and reading them in a museum over about 15 minutes, not doing a deep analysis), like a primitive form of cellular automata algorithm. From the scrawls on the print outs, it's possible that he was playing with the space of algorithms not just the algorithms themselves. It might be worth going back and looking at that early work he did and seeing it through this lens.
- gilleain 8mo agoI think this is 'Reaction-diffusion models' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_sys... The idea iiuc, is that pattern formation in animals depends on molecules diffusing through the growing system (the body) and reacting where the waves of molecules overlap.
- Kim_Bruning 8mo agoTo me , the 1952 paper is very important, since it shows up in theoretical biology a lot. Seeing generality at all these different emergence levels is really exciting to me. (and it makes me sad when others don't see it). Can you imagine? Set up a few gradients, and now you have coordinates. Put all the bits where they're supposed to go like uhhh... GLSL sort of loosly fits. How cool is THAT? More recently I've gotten into all sorts of debates on HN by people who like Searle. Often the argument goes "Turing is all wrong, he knows nothing about biology." Turns out towards the end of his life he was applying his knowledge to biology. Most of which experimentally verified, besides! (ps. just to be sure: Never wondered how DNA encodes the trick? You started out as a clump of cells, all the same. How did one part decide to become the tip of your nose, and the other the tips of your toes? Segmentation controlled by Turing patterns all the way down!)
- 8mo ago
- happa 8mo agoIt's starting to sound an awful lot like a Ruligion.
- throwaway132448 8mo agoSurprised it’s not called Wolfrology. This man is ego personified - not reading.
- api 8mo ago[dead]
- ahartmetz 8mo agoIf you want other people to name something after you, you have to give it a name they have reason to replace.
- JadeNB 8mo agoI believe that Banach called the spaces now named after him "spaces of type B," presumably to make a stab at modesty.
- andyjohnson0 8mo ago> not reading Respectfully, I think that is a mistake. Yes, he frequently exhibits an ego the size of Jupiter. But he is very smart†, and he writes well, and this stuff that theyre doing is at least interesting. I don't know if its physics or metaphysics or something else entirely, and it may be just empty tail-chasing, but I reckon its at least worth paying some attention to. † and he's also built a long-term business making and selling extremely capable maths tooling, of all things, which I think is worth some respect
- throwaway132448 8mo agoFair enough. However I feel that there are plenty of others we could give our finite attention to, from who we would derive as much or more benefit from. So that’s what I’ll do, with no net loss for me.
- inimino 8mo agoAnd you thought your decision to not1 read the article was worth sharing why? At least Wolfram's ego led him to contribute something interesting.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- old8man 8mo agoRuliology provides a powerful descriptive framework - a taxonomy of computational behavior. However, it operates at the level of external dynamics without grounding in a primitive ontology. It tells us that rules behave, not why they exist or what they fundamentally are. This makes ruliology an invaluable cartography of the computational landscape, but not a foundation. It maps the territory without explaining what the territory is made of.
- voxleone 8mo agoI don't get the down voting. Yes, it lacks primitive ontology, exactly.
- mvr123456 8mo agoSure, it's typical Wolfram, inviting the typical criticism. If you can understand what he's talking about at all then you won't be very convinced it's new. If you can't understand what he's talking about, then you also won't be interested in the puffery and priority dispute. The rest of his stuff tagged ruliology is more interesting though. Here's one connecting ML and cellular automata: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/whats-really-going-on-in-machine-learning-some-minimal-models/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/whats-really-goi...
- meindnoch 8mo agoWolfram's eulogy will be titled: "A life wasted on cellular automata"
- psychoslave 8mo agoThanks for the laugh. :D
- stabbles 8mo agoWhenever Wolfram brings up cellular automata again, I think of John Conway who got tired of being known for Conway's Game of Life.
- libertine 8mo agoThat seems quite a bold eulogy, no? Isn't he well accomplished, and prolific throughout his life?
- ajb 8mo agoHe is. But he's also convinced that cellular automata will replace the standard model as the foundation of physics, and that he will therefore be known to history as the third founder of physics after Newton and Einstein. /s
- TimorousBestie 8mo agoGiven that he’s known for priority disputes and legal action over who did what and when, that “well-accomplished” bit should have an asterisk next to it. http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ is still a classic.
- meindnoch 8mo agoIs he? His last 30 years can be summarized as: "Look at these pictures of cellular automata! I predict that the world can be described with cellular automata like these!"
- Suppafly 8mo agoEvery HN post the mentions Wolfram eventually just turns into a hate on Wolfram session. I don't really get it.
- psychoslave 8mo agoAlways found this term sounded like a half-backed one. I get that going full greek roots with nomology was a dead end due to prior art. But "regularology" was probably free, or even at the time "regulogy" or "regology" though by now they are attached to different notions. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regula#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regula#Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomology https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/ro/properties/http%253A%252F%252Fpurl.obolibrary.org%252Fobo%252FRO_HOM0000075?lang=en https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/ro/properties/http%253... https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/regology https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/regology
- KnuthIsGod 8mo agoClassic psychoceramicology. http://bactra.org/notebooks/psychoceramics.html http://bactra.org/notebooks/psychoceramics.html
- voxleone 8mo agoI’m involved in the development of the Functional Universe (FU) framework [0], and I see some interesting intersections with Wolfram’s ruliology. Both start from the idea that simple rules / functions can generate complex structure. Where FU adds a twist is by making a sharp distinction between possibility and history. In FU, we separate aggregation (the space of all admissible transitions - superpositions, virtual processes, rule applications) from composition (the irreversible commitment of one transition that actually enters history). You can think of ruliology as exploring the space of possible rule evolutions, while FU focuses on how one path gets selected and becomes real, advancing proper time and building causal structure. Rules generate possibilities; commitment creates facts. So they’re not the same thing, but I think they’re complementary: ruliology studies the landscape of rules, FU studies the boundary where possibility turns into irreversible history. [0]https://github.com/VoxleOne/FunctionalUniverse/blob/main/docs/index.md https://github.com/VoxleOne/FunctionalUniverse/blob/main/doc...
- findthewords 8mo agoRuliology is the nerdiest word ever invented, kudos to Stephen Wolfram.
- seeg 8mo agoOne thing I can say about the Wolfram language is that is actually Lisp with syntax that looks weird at first sight. However when you look at rule processing, it's like pattern matching on steroids that I haven't seen in lisp world. It looks quite powerful and applies throughout the language (eg the "Query" book). Too bad the whole language is closed and so heavily licensed .
- jacquesm 8mo ago> it's like pattern matching on steroids that I haven't seen in lisp world But it does exist in the FP world: Prolog, Erlang.
- krackers 8mo agoIt's a great blend of Lisp and APL, wrapped up in a notebook interface with first-class interactivity. Mostly I just use it as an overpowered calculator though.
- akkartik 8mo agoThis is some pompous shit. I kinda liked some of his previous articles, but come on. A picture of a plaque for a department is pretty much a guarantee it won't happen. Not to mention: departments?! Anybody still desiring to create new departments in the bureaucracy of our modern educational institutions has a stunted imagination. The appropriate attitude with which to approach creating a new department is while holding one's nose.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- aeve890 8mo ago>Since I invented the term, I decided I should write something to explain it. But then I realized: I actually already wrote something back in 2021 when I first invented the term. I've read all Wolfram's books and I really really want he to be successful with a completely computational theory of everything because it would be no doubt an incredible feat and complete paradigm shift in science like no other in the last 400 years maybe.... but holy shit he's insufferable. I hope he finishes his theory before collapsing into the blackhole caused by his massive ego.