On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 07:42:11PM -0400, [email protected] wrote: > > In a way, professor, Marchal, you seem to be on the side of Stephen > Wolfram, who once wrote about there being no need to ever do SETI, > because, if we wanted to know advanced Extra Terrestrial > technologies, it would be far, simpler to generate algorythems (sp) > that contain these unknown civilizations. I tried to search and see > if Dr. Wolfram eloborated on this strange, proposal, but seemingly, > he did not. I am clueless, over what bit-stream one would run, and > on what type of computer, we'd require to accomplish what Wolfram, > once proposed. Perhaps Wolfram was just hand-waving, and merely > exercising his imagination? > > Mitch >
That was pretty much the gist of his weighty tome "A New Kind of Science". I must confess to not having read it - there's plenty to criticise in it, but also some valuable gems too, from accounts of people who have. I would disagree with Wolfram on this point. To search the space of computational algorithms (or cellular automata, being Wolfram's favourite computational multiverse) would have to be at least as hard, if not harder, than searching the physical space we live in. That is why I wouldn't abandon the Large Hadron Collider in favour of a Supercomputer costing the same amount of money. Anyway - check it out if you're interested. There's also plenty written about NKS - it was a rather controversial book, largely due to the lack of citations, and the somewhat megalomaniacal way that SW promoted it. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
