This is the second time I'd seen Wolfram in a month. The first was just a couple of weeks ago at
Startup School. The first time I didn't quite "get it" partly because he jammed a 2 hour talk into about 40 minutes and second because it was my first introduction to
cellular automation. This time around it made a lot more sense. In fact, now that I know more about it, I'm really interested in Wolfram's Science. I don't have the time at the moment to take on his
book, but I will continue to read up on it on the web.
Stephen Wolfram's bioNotes: He became interested in how structure emerges from the galaxy on down; how complex stuff gets created
Traditional view is that everything in nature should be represented by mathematics
He spent some fraction of his life designing software systems and programming languages
He spent a lot of time showing diagrams that represent rules of cellular automata
Rule 30 has been used as the random number generator in Mathematic for the last 17 yrs
Created Mathematica to help him look into the computation universe
Simple programs plucked from the computation universe can generate seemingly random complexity
Cellular automata in nature: Mollusks and leaf shapes
His Science could lead to "Predictive Biology"
It could be that a simple set of rules generate everything in the universe
If our universe is one of the simpler ones in the universe of universes, which we don't know a priori, but if it is then we should be able to find our rules
To do so we have to automate the work of a physicist, which is still a very difficult thing to do because of all of the theorem proving, etc.
He thinks there are signs to suggest our universe is made of simple rules
Rule 110 is simple but can do very sophisticated computation
Can find all sorts of things when mining the computational universe: e.g., optimal algorithms, architectural forms, etc.
Gave a demo of Wolfram Tones which is based on rules pulled from the computational universe
1 Comments:
He is a fantastic speaker and a brilliant guy. I've heard him speak several times, once at MIT. I'm always impressed and always want to look more into his automata and rules. The idea that everything comes from simple rules, from simple behaviors biologically, and complex stuff emerges, is just fascinating and so powerful.
Post a Comment
<< Home