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Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Is Universal!
Rik702 writes "Wolframscience.com have announced that an undergraduate from Birmingham, UK has proved Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine is universal." You can read a pdf of the proof as well as some related coverage.
Clarification:
Wolfram's claim in NKS that he had discovered some fundamentally new way to approach science that couldn't be handled by existing peer review processes was hogwash. Others had done that kind of thing long before, and little in NKS helped advance the state of the art.
Wolfram's proof in NKS that his Rule 110 cellular automaton was a Universal Turing Machine, was not hogwash. (That UTM was different from the one described in the story, obviously.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Very true. He is a clever guy, but not as clever as he thinks he is, and the book was just regurgitated from other sources. There was very little new or really much science in it. Basically he enumerates a lot of possible combinations of rules and says "some of these will turn out to be slightly interesting, you mark my words.". Well, some of them did. I'm SO impressed.
Look at a map of the world. Some of those countries are going to end up going to war, you mark my words. See? I'm a visionary too.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I recall that to, and was curious enough to see if the criticism was summarized well in Wikipedia. (It is.) Personally, I loved the book, and read it knowing that it was standing on the shoulders of other's work. I remember first reading about the idea of modeling the world as cellular automata in a 1988 issue of The Atlantic, in an article called Did the Universe Just Happen? (search for "Wolfram" in that page) and I thought his book was a terrific work on the subject.
I can understand how people's nerves got a little tender by having their contributions not been properly attributed, footnoted, etc. It didn't ruin my enjoyment though.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Have you seen the exchange rate lately? He better spend it soon, or that $25k isn't going to buy him much in the way of hookers.
Sometimes the changes in Science come from just thinking about things differently. Whether Stephen is arrogant or not is irrelevant to the ideas or claims being evaluated. I doubt anything is invented in a vacuum, but rather a product of all the little discoveries and thoughts finally coalescing into something tangible.
The main point here is that we are reaching limits in machine technology, and jumping to a different scale will require a new way of thinking about what we've already learned.
Let me recommend three books: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn, "Bionics" by Salsburg, and "How Inventions Begin" by Leinhard. Three different thinkers; three different descriptions of the progress of technology.
I have heard a number of criticisms on NKS, but most of the critics I've met have not actually read the book. (OK, it's a big book... I've found the same problems with people criticizing "Science and Sanity" by Korzybski, "Synergetics" by Fuller, and "Democracy in America" by de Tocqueville.) If you are going to criticize a book, please read it and understand it first.
Recently William Gibson mentioned the problems with writing Science Fiction due to the unpredictability of the future and rapid technological change. As our technology becomes more abstract, more materials will be "intelligent" in new ways. For instance, imagine concrete with the intelligence to repair itself when a pothole is in imminent probability of forming. This type of "Turing Machine" computational ability at the molecular level may be the key to inventing this product.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Could anyone take a stab at explaining what this discovery actually means, in layman's terms? What is the significance of a univeral turing machine? What if the turing machine wasn't universal?
What's the significance of 2,3? (Bit states, color?)
What did this discovery actually teach us? How is it useful?
Or P=0. My solution is more complete :)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Boy you're telling me. I remember when Wolfram was the wunderkind of the 1980s and 1990s, who was going to Change The World(TM) with his brilliance. Ha. Jeff Bezos or Linus Torvalds have done far more with computers to Change The World in interesting and useful ways.
Lots of nitpicking of the solution and Wolfram and such have been posted. Let the nitpickers contribute!
It takes a push from various people, and communication and conflicts of opinions to wind up exciting someone to sit down and solve some excruciating problem.
I don't care whether it is math, mechanics, biology or physics, someone has to do the HARD work, and Wolfram contributed in his own promotional way, and Alex Smith solved the SOB of the smallest Turing problem, with a significant set of input from the judging panel requesting addtional work.
A community of interested people wound up involved in getting an advanced solution. Then others said "but what good is it in requiring an infinite memory/tape". Similar things were said about past inventions, until other inventors figured out how to make the prior/first invention practical.
I love math, but am not a mathemetician, so I have to contribute with the mundane discoveries and designs I do in my arena of medical product design, and they too will live on beyond me.
The complainers should leave something that outlives them. That is what makes for a great society.
It's probably more common that criticism comes from people who have NOT read the source material than from people who have. And, for reasons I do not completely understand, such criticism tends to be believed.
Case in point? In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky admitted to writing his famous criticism of B. F. Skinner's book "Verbal Behavior" BEFORE it had been published and, in fact, based his review on much older material including notes taken by students of lectures presented YEARS before the final version was published. This is evident to anyone who has read both Chomsky's review and Skinner's verbal behavior (further reading: McCorquodale, 1970).
And the impact of Chomsky's admission? Zero... Although, at the time, Chomsky's unfounded review effectively reduced the credibility of an entire field of psychology.