At www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/notebooks/ cellular-automata.html
Wolfram's book is reviewed as "a rare blend of monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity" ... (a phrase I would like to have emblazoned on my gravestone, except that I don't plan on dying, and if I do die I plan on being frozen rather than buried) The context is: " * Dis-recommended: Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science [This is almost, but not quite, a case for the immortal ``What is true is not new, and what is new is not true''. The one new, true thing is a proof that the elementary CA rule 110 can support universal, Turing-complete computation. (One of Wolfram's earlier books states that such a thing is obviously impossible.) This however was shown not by Wolfram but by Matthew Cook (this is the ``technical content and proofs'' for which Wolfram acknowledges Cook, in six point type, in his frontmatter). In any case it cannot bear the weight Wolfram places on it. Watch This Space for a detailed critique of this book, a rare blend of monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity.] " -- Ben ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
