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A comment about Page 1185
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Posted by: Dan Ellwein
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1185
In the section 'Possible purposes' Stephen Wolfram talks about purpose in the context of when it is easier to do so than by just describing the behavior directly.
And that this depends on the framework in which one is operating.
He gives the example of the digits of pi: pi has a simple description in terms of mathematics, but outside of mathematics it does not.
And this means that if one saw a system that generated the digits of pi that this would unlikey be associated with a purpose unless one happened to be operating in mathematics.
And similarly, generating the center column of rule 30 would have no meaningful purpose unless one was operating in the framework of NKS.
Are what we are to get from this is that simple programs have just as much purpose as equations.
It just depends on what framework we are operating in whether NKS or mathematics.
Am I understanding ths correctly?
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