[Am I getting this right] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

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Am I getting this right

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Posted by: Karl Smith

I've talked a bit with other people about NKS the book and the impact of what Wolfram is saying.

The response is almost always the same: Wolfram's a bright guy, Mathemtica is great, but the book just shows why the peer review process is so important.

It short they are not fans.

However, what I think is important about the book is that it suggests the value of studying the world of simple computational systems.

Not that we can necessarily use these particular systems as a model for the phenomena we are currently studying, but that these systems deserve consideration in there own right.

If for no other reason than because we understand so little about such an interesting thing. This may sound like a flight of fancy to those who argue we have to few scientist chasing to many problems already but nonetheless it proposes an interesting realm of research.

Is this the view of those who are currently working in NKS based research?


Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.

Trying to develop intuition about NKS seems difficult because it is a bit like learning some new kind of mathematics or language without the benefit of an already familiar context or grammar.

Wolfram has been trying to spread the message of NKS, but IMHO it would be better if he now heeds the old dictum of "show me, don't tell me".

For example, if NKS could be used in a non-trivial way to either solve the P/NP problem or demonstrate that this problem is unsolvable via traditional mathematics then the scientific community would start to take NKS seriously.

Wolfram probably has more intuition about NKS than anybody else albeit caveat [1] and so he might have a better chance of more firmly establishing NKS as a "science".


[1] Clandestine agencies such as the NSA, the DIA and their counterparts have more knowledge about subjects like math, physics, virology, cryptography etc. than anyone in academia or private industry, because these agencies have access to all the info that is already public plus the knowledge that is still classified. Whether such agencies use this extra knowledge wisely is an entirely different matter, but they might have more
insight than we do about the worthiness or importance of investigating the world of simple programs.




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