From: Emil Gilliam (emil@emilgilliam.com)
Date: Sun Feb 03 2002 - 12:33:07 MST
On Friday, February 1, 2002, at 01:31 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
>
>> Either way, I am definitely awaiting Wolfram's new book (expected in
>> March) to see what he has to say about it! (Have you looked at
>> wolframscience.com yet?) Some of the publisher's claims about the book
>> sound rather grandiose to me, and the only reason I tolerate these is
>> because, heck, he's Stephen Wolfram. :>
>
> It is pretty clear to me what Wolfram has done here.... I can't be
> sure how well he's done it until I read the book of course.
>
> He's shown that *qualitatively*, a hell of a lot of complex-systems
> phenomena -- including ones that are generally reminiscent of particle
> physics, the origin of life, human memory, etc. etc. -- can be gotten
> to emerge from simple 1D cellular automata.
>
> He has not made detailed accurate models of real-world phenomena using
> these 1D CA's. Nor has he created a general abstract rigorous math
> theory of what kinds of 1D CA's will generate what kinds of complex
> phenomena. Nor has he created an AI or anything of practical value
> using these 1D CA's.
>
> Rather he has assembled an amazing panoply of fascinating examples.
>
Nonetheless, he does say in
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/qanda/science.html that
"A New Kind of Science certainly isn't all about cellular automata (they
probably
represent about 20 percent of the examples in the book), but A New Kind
of Science
does contain a fair amount of material that cellular automaton
enthusiasts will find
exciting." And later: "A New Kind of Science does include a summary of
most of what
I know about cellular automata -- though cellular automata aren't the
focus of the
book."
I guess it'll be interesting to find out what the remaining 80% is.
- Emil
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