From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Tue May 14 2002 - 04:22:53 MDT
On Tue, 14 May 2002, Amara D. Angelica wrote:
> May 14 -- In "A New Kind of Science," published today by Wolfram
> Media, Stephen Wolfram asserts that cellular automata -- simple
> programs repetitively run -- underlie much of the real world. He even
> says the entire Universe itself is a big cellular-automaton computer.
That's largely Fredkin's religion: http://digitalphilosophy.org/
> But these ideas can't fully explain the complexities of life,
> intelligence, and physical phenomena, says Ray Kurzweil. "He
> over-generalizes the limited power of complexity resulting from simple
> computational processes. One could run these automata for trillions or
> even trillions of trillions of iterations, and the image would remain
> at the same limited level of complexity. They do not evolve into, say,
> insects, or humans, or Chopin preludes."
Nor do molecules, as every chemist knows. Tee hee.
If you pick one random automaton of trivial size and observe it for a
trivial duration you won't see anything interesting, sure. Deriving
sweeping generalisations from that one observed instance is of course
rather foolish.
> There is a "missing link here in how one gets from the interesting,
> but ultimately routine patterns of a cellular automaton to the
> complexity of persisting structures that demonstrate higher levels of
> intelligence."
I must admit I've so far missed the name of Kurzweil as key contributor in
the field of cellular automata and complexity science. Whereas many
fields, including theoretical physics, are lousy with Wolfram's name:
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/
Kurzweil is an enterpreneur and inventor, Wolfram is an enterpreneur and
scientist. There's a difference.
> However, Kurzweil concludes, "Wolfram has added to our knowledge of
> how patterns of information create the world we experience. I believe
> the book to be an important work of ontology."
I hope that book is a lot more important that that. For one, I'm looking
for any headway into the hard problem of engineering emergent behaviour in
artificial systems.
I notice the book is really out of the door (3 years late, at least?), and
I hope to soon receive my copy. http://wolframscience.com/ has received a
major update, by the way.
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