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Wolfram Offers Prize For (2,3) Turing Machine
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed May 16, 2007 02:53 AM
from the universal-or-not dept.
from the universal-or-not dept.
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."
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33% solved. (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps this is the only way he can now get creative people to work on problems like this.
Parent
I think Editors should give credit... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:I think Editors should give credit... (Score:5, Informative)
Submissions remain the sole property of submitter(s), but we reserve the right to publish summaries of any winning submission and the name of the submitter(s) on our website. It is also anticipated that any winning submission will be expanded into a scholarly paper that could be published in the Complex Systems journal.
It was far too easy to follow the link in the original post and investigate.
Parent
Cock & Balls (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cock & Balls (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
No Halting State (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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" ?
Parent
Re:No Halting State (Score:4, Funny)
being that I was both a computer programmer and a mathematician, I was in a unique position....
I remember 5 years ago walking around my comp sci lab proclaiming to people:
being that I am both a computer programmer and a master of Bubble Bobble, I am in a unique position....
being that I am both a computer programmer and holding a piece of chalk right now, I am in a unique position....
The implication being that I am going to lock myself in a cave for the next 10 years any minute now and come out to self publish a book about the lint I found in my navel.
Parent
NKS online, step right up, get your nonsense! (Score:5, Informative)
Crazy NKS "goodness" for your reading "pleasure": here [wolframscience.com].
Trust me, even if it is free, after reading it, you'll want your "free" back.
Parent
Re:NKS online, step right up, get your nonsense! (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [ams.org] 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?
Parent
Re:NKS online, step right up, get your nonsense! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
I have a proof (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Arrow of time is reversed in CA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Arrow of time is reversed in CA (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Arrow of time is reversed in CA (Score:5, Informative)
The future is absolutely not fixed, because randomness is deeply engrained into our universe.
Parent
batshit insanity (Score:4, Funny)
batshit insanity"
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi on S.Wolfram, A new kind of science
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/cellul
where's my $25K? (Score:4, Funny)
Betting on his leaps of faith (Score:4, Informative)
On a visit to Champaign-Urbana in the late 1980s, still before he officially started on NKS, Wolfram took me through where he felt his cellular automata research was headed which hinted at some of the inferences he would eventually draw from his mountains of research data. That was even before the Santa Fe Institute paper which was foolishly read as retreating [meme.com.au] from the edge of chaos-border of order which had briefly been the focus of the quest for the source of emergent complexity during the 1980s.
The resources Wolfram is bringing to the table are significant and have certainly helped put complex systems back in the spotlight after far too many of the first generation of researchers were seduced by the marginal returns they could get by applying their methods to the derivatives market, no matter whether their methods made a significant difference or not.
The downside of continuing to focus on the simplest possible mechanisms (Wolfram calls them 'programs') as the source of a critical threshold is that all those much sought after proofs of universality, from the early one for Conway's Life on, are vast feats of engineering and thus make no useful progress towards the implicit goal of helping to explain how we/anything got here in the first place.
So I'll keep playing with my own idiosyncratic program to explore a bit deeper in that narrow and difficult transition region between order and chaos, but might be tempted to have another look at Mathematica's increasing support for such research once it is available via CP6AN.
Cult of NKS (Score:5, Interesting)
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... ;-)
Parent
Re:Cult of NKS (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Cult of NKS (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Come on Mr Wolfram! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.Parent