A New Kind of Science
Just about everyone in the scientific community has been bustling about Stephen Wolfram and his recently self-published book A New Kind of Science. Some opinions are wildly positive. A vocal minority is strongly negative. A bunch of other people are sitting on the fence, not really sure what to think! After listening to the author speak on Thursday, February 13, 2003, I find that I still belong to the last group.
Summarizing briefly, Wolfram discusses the concept of cellular automata. He asserts that very small patterns or rule sets, when applied repeatedly, lead to very interesting results. In fact, in his experiments with 3 bit systems, two scenarios arise. Those which lead to repeating patterns, that continue infinitely, and those which reach a threshold of randomness, from which they cannot recover.
Wolfram eventually makes the giant leap that everything that we know is governed by these rules. For instance, the way in which the world has unfolded from the big bang, has followed the rules of a particular cellular automata.
Two main principles that were mentioned frequently in his talk at Xerox Parc in Palo Alto are computational equivalence and computational irreducibility. Computational equivalence states that any autonoma that are not clearly simple (showing consistent, repeating patterns), should all be viewed as equally complex. Computational irreducibility claims that in these un-simple autonoma, the only way to know the real outcome, is to follow it step by step. Meaning, no formulaic short cut exists to show the solution.
Wolfram displays great energy and confidence when he speaks. He was clearly unfazed by any questions posed by the intellectual audience. Each answer was more than complete. Often times, the answers would probe minute details, only to quickly be summarized in a complete, satisfying answer. Ideas were all stated with remarkable clarity, to give the audience the illusion, that they too understood with the same level of comprehension that Wolfram did.
I am still unsure what to make of the information I gathered from today's talk. In my company, I deal with immense complexity every day. Writing software, overseeing collaborations between people thousands of miles apart, negotiating complicated outsourcing contracts within a corporate environment. In Wolfram's new science, there are no easy solutions for these problems. Only an admission, that the world is immensely complex. What he has proposed is that we now have a way to model this world. A new way, to compute, that covers anything and everything.
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