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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."
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.
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
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Sad thing is, I posted anonymously 'cause I figured the mods would think that was a troll. And now, I'm posting anonymously because this is off topic. Just my luck, this will get modded up as "funny" again, just for the irony.
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.
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?
And the person that made the proof of what is claimed in the summary was Matthew Cook, not Wolfram himself, Wolfram sued him because he presented his proof in another conference (can you believe what a jerk?).
Of course the person that makes this proof will have to concede every right to Wolfram and therefore in some way the 25K are just a payment for such intellectual property.
And the name removing has been mostly due to his book A new kind of science, where he "comes up" with several ideas that have been created by other authors. I would like to *believe* he makes the typical Master or junior PhD error of not looking hard for the current work but other people believe he just wanted to plagiarize other's people ideas.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
There are some severe flaws with NKS.
You bet!
The fundamental philosophical claims are highly doubtful
Check.
Check
the egomaniacal tone
Also "Check"
the passing off of other people's hard work as Wolfram's own, the revisionist history
One more big "Check". -- This is what did it for me. I wish he made the appendix section the main part of the book. That's where he actually mentioned who did what before him and I found the examples there more interesting than Wolfram's prose + pictures. Yes, as scientist I am very sensitive and biased when it comes to passing someone's work as your own, that is very much a "no-no" in the scientific community. The only time the rest of the world hears about the scientists is when they discover something really amazing or plagiarize.
Overall, was the reading insteresting?, -- it was alright for me. I learned some new things as well (but mostly things others did that W. re-did in Mathematica) about CA, tag systems, fractals and such. But it was anything but a "New Kind Of Science". It wasn't "New" (just re-packaged) and it wasn't a "Science" it was just prose. Apart from few examples, W.'s "proofs" consist of phrases like "I strongly believe X", "I am quite confident that Y" and "Look at the pretty picture I generated!".
Trust me I tried to like it: I paid money for the book and spent time reading it, I didn't want o believe that I somehow 'wasted' it, but in the end I have to be honest to myself and say 'no' it isn't what it claims to be and 'yes' I wish I hadn't spent the time and money buying it.