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44 Conjectures of Stephen Wolfram Disproved

Posted by kdawson on from the new-kind-of-error dept.

Richard Pritches writes in to let us know that MIT errata expert Evangelos Georgiadis has disproved 44 conjectures set by Dr. Stephen Wolfram (founder of Mathematica) in A New Kind of Science. The paper was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Cellular Automata and can be read in PDF form at Prof Edwin Clark's collection of reviews of Wolfram's ANKS. "The formulas provided by Wolfram for these [44] rules are not minimal. Moreover for 8 of these cannot be minimal even by simple inspection since minimal formula sizes for 3-input Boolean functions over this basis never exceeds 5."

5 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. I think I speak for a lot of people here ... by mortonda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    when I say...

    Huh?

  2. Re:!Clearly the lack of posts by hung_himself · · Score: 4, Insightful

    is directly proportional to the perceived knowledge required to post.

    You must be new around here. When it comes to biology, everyone seems to think they are experts. Because there are so many computer people here, at least when it comes to math, more of them know that they know nothing...

  3. Re:Humm... by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whose name is he supposed to hype? Yours?

    Nobody's.

    And no hype either.

    That is because the supposed subject of all this is Science. And hype and personality cults are to science as money is to politics: corrupting, destructive, counter-prodctive forces.

    Reason, peer review, rigourous analysis, unassailable demonstration of proof, etc are the ways of science, not ascension to prominence via grooming oneself for mass-media "stardom" by boggling the "minds" of the rather feebly-minded general public.

  4. The paper is not as hostile as the citation by mcg1969 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The author of the article, Evangelos Georgiadis, has participated in two of the "New Kind of Science" summer schools (2003, 2005; the link above is from 2003). I must suspect, then, that he is somewhat sympathetic to Wolfram's work, and his papers are not intended to be hostile attacks. Indeed, his paper really doesn't read that way, from my perspective as an academic; it is simply a correction of errors. Indeed, if anything, this work tends to buttress Stephen Wolfram's basic point (whether it is true or not) because it further reduces the complexity of CA implementations.

  5. Simple title correction. by ksw2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    s/Disproved/Improved/