Message Boards Message Boards

0
|
4202 Views
|
0 Replies
|
0 Total Likes
View groups...
Share
Share this post:

Simple rules with nested complexity: summary of a Stephen Wolfram talk

The "old" 2008 Stephen Wolfram talk referenced below is so rich that I am not going to be able to write an articulated summary of it. It echoes with different topics that I have been cognitively exploring:

A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram

enter image description here

  • What characterizes mankind is the ability to store its individual’s knowledge and experiences outside himself, in a symbolic way, using language. Every individual can contribute to enrich the Specie data warehouse. This knowledge is not only composed of raw data but elaborated knowledge. We are being experiencing every day our ability to think individually taking advantage of existing common foundation. Will we ever be able to think collectively like if we were able to “connect” our individual brains together and think about us as a meta-being instead of thinking about us as individuals?

  • Stephen is embodying the topic of his talk. How can a single human being with a so simple genetic code can generate so much complex and insightful thoughts. I can quote him “Computational equivalence tells us that all the wonders generated by his brain can be captured by simple rules it also says that it is ultimately no other ways to know the consequences of those rules except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold”.

  • Stephen talks inevitably of Gödel’s theorem, that leads me to M.C Escher graphic art, J.S Bach music in the fabulous D.R Hofstadter book: An eternal golden braid. A book that I read in the early 2000’s and that left me puzzled. One question arises: did Stephen and Douglas ever met?

Reply to this discussion
Community posts can be styled and formatted using the Markdown syntax.
Reply Preview
Attachments
Remove
or Discard

Group Abstract Group Abstract