Wolfram Offers Prize For (2,3) Turing Machine

An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and author of A New Kind of Science, is offering a prize of $25K to anyone who can prove or disprove his conjecture that a particular 2-state, 3-color Turing machine is universal. If true, it would be the simplest universal TM, and possibly the simplest universal computational system. The announcement comes on the 5-year anniversary of the publication of NKS, where among other things Wolfram introduced the current reigning TM champion — 'rule 110,' with 2 states and 5 colors."

Comments

Re:They have it all wrong.

[laejoh]

'rule 110'? Come on, that's so much less interesting than 'rule 265'.

'rule 110'? Come on, that's so much less interesting than 'rule 256'.

There is no rule 265, so, I fixed it for you...

Good for his book sales

[sifi]

Hmmm, I wonder whether he'll sell any more books as a result of this: From the website: There is a large amount of relevant material in A New Kind of Science.

Re:Cult of NKS

[ichigo 2.0]

Thankfully they don't threaten and attack their opponents like scientologists do.

Re:NKS online, step right up, get your nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

The nonsense is free online. Wow, now millions of people can read it, waste time ...and make fun it.. hopefully. Crazy NKS "goodness" for your reading "pleasure": here .

Trust me, even if it is free, after reading it, you'll want your "free" back.

You didn't actually read the damn thing, did you? I'm getting really tired of this mindless NKS bashing, no matter how fashionable it is. A book that was largely favorably reviewed in Notices of the American Mathematical Society cannot be 100% nonsense, can it really? I find it amusing that those who are most critical of NKS are almost never real scientists.

There are some severe flaws with NKS. The fundamental philosophical claims are highly doubtful, the "new science" mentioned in its title does not live to its name, the egomaniacal tone, the passing off of other people's hard work as Wolfram's own, the revisionist history, etc. But that said, there is a lot to enjoy in the book. The footnotes are worth the price of a copy on their own, as they are in many ways one of the best exposés of the history of the 20th century focusing on computer science, mathematics and physics I have ever read.

I knew a lot about CAs and discrete models before reading the book, most likely more than you know, or will ever know, and yet I really did learn a lot from it. You just have to be intelligent and well-versed enough to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe that's your real problem with the book?

Re:Come on Mr Wolfram!

[khallow]

I don't see your point. Mathematicians have offered prizes before for solving problems. Paul Erdos is the most famous of these and his prizes were very successful IMHO at inspiring young mathematicians to investigate the combinatorial and number theory problems that Erdos was interested in. Even if Dr. Wolfram is grandstanding, he offers good money in return. My take is that $25k is roughly six to nine months of postdoc. Not a bad return.

So, in summary, I see Wolfram here using a proven method for getting math results that he is interested in.

the use(fulness) of research

[N3wsByt3]

"For the benefit of society we should be funding research that can best serve society."

That would imply that one would know in front what research can best serve society.

This is rather contentious and doubtful; first of all, it is rather arbitrary as to define what is 'best' for society, and furthermore, it's impossible to know what may come from that research in terms of future possibilities - or while not useful themselves, may lead to advances (or in combination with other research) that would otherwise have been lost. The theorethical research of the laser, for instance, was made ages before anything useful could be done with it - but still it was necessary to have our practical applications today. I imagine, however, that in the early days where the research was academical, people would have considered the research worthless too. Much like the CERN is considered by some to be a complete waste of time and money which doesn't help society.

I've always thought it to be best (also for society ;-) to have a mixed bag of research/sponsoring. To me, the more variation you have in research (and fields), the more chance you have of cross-fertilisation between those fields and research, and THAT is best for society. If all things were just for commercial and profit gain, or all things were just academic research, I think society as a whole would be worse off.

But then again, as I said, the 'best' part is rather arbitrary and next to impossible to prove one way or another. (Not that I do not agree that sometimes, money IS being wasted on useless research (be it commercial or academic), but my viewpoint on when it's wasted will often differ with that of someone else).

Re:the use(fulness) of research

[N3wsByt3]

The problem I have with this kind of reasoning is, that it's applicable to almost everything, and yet it denies the fact that there is no society on the planetthat does not diversify its funding.

For instance, with the same token one can say:

"Schools [as in for kids], uni, hospitals, and the like are ALREADY underfunded TODAY. Why waste money on space-exploration when the billions spend up there could be used to help people down here?"

"Schools [as in for kids], uni, hospitals, and the like are ALREADY underfunded TODAY. Why waste money on creating/restoring/maintaining buildings, statues and art, when the millions spend on that could be used to help people?"

"Schools [as in for kids], uni, hospitals, and the like are ALREADY underfunded TODAY. Why waste money on military equipment and wars when the billions spend up there could be used to help people here?"

All those arguments are based on the same reasoning, but it's also based on emotional-appeal. It's nice in theory, but it just doesn't work that way - in fact, I don't think human nature is inclined to see things that black and white. I mean, sure, we *all* think that saving and helping people is the most important...yet how many of us offer up our comfort for more directly helping people in third and forth world-countries? Buying a less expensive car would have freed money to help maybe 10 families directly - but who does that, EVEN when they will agree that people are more important than a bigger car.

With the price of a computer and an internet connection, you could probably help the poorest people in another, or even your own, country. But aparently, you didn't. It's easy to claim the state should not spend money on other things, because people are more important than academic research, space-exploration, etc. - but we don't behave like it neither.

So, yes, if money spend elsewhere were to be used on education, medical research, etc., it could well be that society would help more people. However, this argument leaves no room for anything else, if the premise is accepted. I however, think that, while helping people is important, other things have some importance too, and thus funding should also reflect that and not flow to only a few area's where everyone agrees on is directly helping people. If people use the emo-appeal of 'everything to help the people' it should be reflected in their personal life too, IMHO, but I rarely see that, which indicates that that argument is not actually accepted in a pragmatic sense.

Re:Arrow of time is reversed in CA

[ssorc]

I don't think you understand reality (or at least the current scientific models of it) very well. In reality the future is completely fixed and the past is uncertain (just like in CAs).

Given a complete description of a scientific system, scientific models allow us to predict what the future state of the system will be. However, there is no guarantee that each starting state will reach a unique final one. So by observing the final state we cannot always uniquely determine the starting state.

A good example of this is any kind of equilibrium state. Once equilibrium is reached, there's no way of knowing which state the system started in.

So the "arrow of time" in CA's is the same as in reality.

That said, there are probably many other good reasons for rejecting cellular automata as the fundamental model of everything. :)

Re:Come on Mr Wolfram!

[zborro]

I don't see your point either. I am doing a postdoc right now and they
are paying me because they suppose I will do something good in this time.
Even if I do not produce incredible results I will get paid.
Wolfram instead, pays you only if you succeed in something that is very difficult
(if he has not solved it by himself)

No my dear, this is mass extortion: he gets all the advantages and no drawbacks:

- he seems to be generous!
- he sells more copies of his horrid science fiction book;
- he gets dozens of smart guys working on it;
- he pays only if someone succeeds;
- he just spends 25.000$ and also gets a lot of publicity.

I have to admit, he's really smart. Making money.