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:Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolfram has previously sued his own employees to keep them from publishing results, and there are many stories about him removing peoples' names from credits.

Perhaps this is the only way he can now get creative people to work on problems like this.

No Halting State

[sugarmotor]

The description states that the machine has no halting-state.

I couldn't make out what is to be interpreted as the result of a particular computation of this machine.

Seems like a pretty important detail.

Anyone know?

Stephan

Re:No Halting State

[drgonzo59]

If it can emulate a known tag system proven to be a UTM then it is also a UTM. But of course, if you show that it can emulate your typical basic CPU you can also claim it's a UTM. The tag system is easier... I think.

But the larger question is "so what?". So what if it is? When he found the (2,5) system to be, I don't recall the scientific comunity awarding him a Nobel Prize. No matter how much he can run his rule 110 he will not come up with animals, humans or planets. But the whole implication is that that's how "it" happened.

I'll admit, I was one of the suckers who bought NKS before it was put online for free. I read it all -- it reads like bedtime story book. Wolframs "proofs" are mostly just statements like I strongly believe..., I am quite convinced... and look at the pretty pattern I just made! and so on. The most interesting thing was the appendix where he lists some the results and publications of actual scientists (you know the ones that don't define their own "new science" and then by definition become "scientists"...). I whish he would have made the appendix the main part of his book and added his "beliefs" as an appendix.

Of course, he has loads of cash to just sit around and create "cool" patterns and then have a bunch of followers cheering each other on as they play with CA -- it's like they have their own little world, their contests, conferences, classes and so on. Can you say the word "cult" ?

Cult of NKS

[drgonzo59]

Let's see what Wolfram's NKS and Scientology have in common.

1. Both closed self-contained, self-referencial systems. ... "This is the new kind of science, old science is obsolete"

2. Both venerate a person: Wolfram and L. Ron Hubbard.

3. Both have this "us" versus "them" mentality.

4. Both have their beliefs and ideas disregarded and ridiculed by the most sane individuals (this just reinforces the cult group cohesion).

5. Both have exclusive facilities & training (NKS Summer School), special meetings and conferences for the members. I don't know...looks like a cult to me... ;-)

Arrow of time is reversed in CA

[hajus]

The problem I have with CA being proposed as a model of a reality is that the arrow of time in CA seems to be backwards. In our reality, we know the past, but the future is uncertain. In cellular automata, the future can be predicted perfectly, but the states which were used to get to the current state are ambiguous. Large grids of such give the illusion of life (such as behaviour of predator/prey) but only a macroscopic scale even though time goes backward. But the arrow of time becomes very visible when the cells are focussed in on. If you decide to look at it in reverse time to satisfy the microscopic view, you don't get that feeling of life at the macroscopic scale.