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0 pointsTichy17y ago0 comments

OK, let's forget about NKS, I just thought that is what you have your grudge about. I am not very concerned about NKS specifically).

But I am also not sure exactly what you want. For example, would it be strange to you if I found ants fascinating? Even though there is no scientific idea at first. Maybe if you look at ants for a while, you'll generate all sorts of ideas (and even in Goedel-Escher-Bach, which I guess is very classic AI, they make an appearance).

So I am not sure that I accept your complaint that you can see no scientifical idea. Actually I am not sure, what is a "scientifical idea"? (Honest question)

Looking at cellular automata I get all sorts of ideas. So I find them fascinating. And why is it not a "scientifical idea" for you to build complex things from simple rules? I don't think it is such an obvious idea.

I am willing to try to answer your question, but first please explain to me what aspect exactly you want to hear about ("scientifical idea").

As for McCarthy, I don't really worry much about what he thinks, especially since LISP is actually from the "classic AI" side of things (I don't mean that as disrespectful - but he is a specialist for LISP and computation, not for complex systems). I think finding the smallest Turing machine was just something to be done for fun - I don't think Wolfram thought much more about it either. So that finding it did not blow McCarthy's mind hardly disqualifies the whole subject in my opinion.

Also, could you link to the No Hidden Variables vs Wolframs suggestion please? It was only a wildly speculative thing, even in NKS, though - not the cornerstone of his world view.

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slackenerny17y ago· 2 in thread

Examples of similarly interesting ideas:

1/ Aristotle's classification of forces and the idea of quintessence;

2/ Plato's idea that planets move necessarily in circles, because it's the most beautiful and simplest shape. That one witheld progress in astronomy for 2000 years;

3/ Beautiful idea that the market is a statistical system, and thus can be modeled by tools of mathematical physics. That the assumptions of these models are not met in economy, no one bothered much till just recently.

So you take some guiding rule first, and then force world around to accept it.

TichyOP17y ago

Um, cellular automata can by definition not be wrong, because they are only what you define them to be. So your assumptions about them can not be wrong.

I think I get an idea where you are coming from, though, and I lost all interest in discussing with you.

slackenerny17y ago

[I know who you are] and I lost all interest in discussing with you

Oh, so sorry.

PS. I got that as consciously and purposely insulting.

What I wanted to say, and probably failed, is that beautiful patterns do not form any interesting science, that is they lead to no knowledge. This is a classical dichotomy between intuitionist/inductive and deductive philosophies of science.

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