History of Science & Technology Q&A: Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 5, 2025) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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What is the history of game theory? What are some successful and less successful applications of this theory? Can you speak about John Nash's work? Did that have any influence on your automata work? I wonder if that code by Nash exists anywhere? It would be interesting to read. Do you view the world as being governed by randomness or order? Would you ever write a book intended to explain the history of the ruliad/Physics Project? Have you studied the history of cognitive neurological abilities of scientists throughout the ages, things like long-term memory, imagination, creativity...? Do scientists invent tools first and then look for a problem to use them on, or do they find a problem first and then invent the tool to crack it? What is your favorite "age" of science? How did early mechanical computers like the Babbage Engine influence modern computing? Do you think Ada would have had more success in science and math today than she did when she was alive? Would you say you research more of the history of people or history of their projects/research? Which do you find more useful? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (February 19, 2025) »

1 hour 27 minutes

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Can you talk about the history of pi?"Pi day of the century." Is pi still being researched today? Or is it a solidified concept? Was there always a connection between "pi" and "pie"? Can pi be used for data compression? Is the only reason pi shows up more than tau because we USE pi more often? If we used tau, it would have been 24/tau^2 instead of 6/pi^2, right? How was your experience with slide rules? Did Leibniz or Newton use tools like a slide rule? My 8th-grade (1983-ish) teacher didn't allow calculators, but he let me use my slide rule. Would you rather be stuck with just a slide rule or just an abacus? What is your favorite "artifact from the past" that you own... any interesting stories? What's your favorite artifact from the future? Many key ideas in computer science existed before we had the hardware to implement them (Turing's computer, neural networks in the 1940s). What ideas today do you think are ahead of their time in the same way? Technology has progressed at an incredible rate during the last two centuries. That seems quite unusual relative to other periods in history. Are we bound to enter a new era of stagnation or regression? Or can we just keep going? How would you think about cellular automata if you were born in, say, ancient Greece/Rome or Egypt? Or even the 1800s? Is there a history of people discovering the concept of the ruliad and thinking about it from a different perspective (mathematical, scientific, religious or otherwise)? I would be interested in hearing about the bug of Alan Turing. It seems like our definitions of "science" and "technology" have evolved over the years. Are they historically the same thing? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (February 5, 2025) »

1 hour 33 minutes

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When was complexity science invented? Was there a further back history than digital? They always forget Aristarchus. What role did category and type theory play for mathematics? How would you think about approaching alchemical literature, knowing that it mostly employed coded language rather than being about literal transmutation into gold? Was Newton not an alchemist? The real secret is it's tungsten that can be turned into gold, hence the name "Wolfram Research." Dirac, Einstein, Turing and Feynman are sitting in a room. What is the single word they all immediately agree on? So... Dirac answered in Dirac delta function style? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 22, 2025) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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How would Stephen Wolfram think about "the new world"? Would you have been surprised by the "discovery" of North and South America, or is that something that would have been supported by science? How would you think about "Are we alone in the universe?" How has this been addressed in history? How would you think about speculating on the history of hitchhiking, going back to ancient Rome or even the earliest cities? I would assume it would be things like ox-drawn carts, not expensive horses. What do you know about colors and how we represent them in computing? What do you think about the Library of Babel? Do you think that all that could ever have been written has already been written in that library and we just have to find it? Can you tell us about the history of your father? How far back can you trace your family history? Have you ever done one of those DNA tests to map your genetic history? Can you tell us about the history of your mother? Did your parents encourage your interest in physics? Or were they hoping you would pursue a different field? My experience with people in elite philosophy programs is that they're often terrifyingly sharp. Was that your experience as well? Isn't the word for tungsten in German, Wolfram? Wow, he grew up splitting time between England and Germany during the prewar years. Did he ever write about his perspective on the war? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 8, 2025) »

52 minutes

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Any progress on your understanding of Buddhist philosophy from digging into East Asian history? How do we address the interesting ways that footnotes in history have led to knowledge? How do we address multiple issues of publication within different texts and the problems of translation? What happens to the "origin" of a text? Do you think weird names are an advantage in academics? E.g. one of the translators of the new edition of Philosophical Investigations is P. M. S. Hacker, not something I would have remembered otherwise. Who came up with floating-point arithmetic and what is it? How would you think about scientific collaboration in the age before technology? How did ancient researchers/scientists collaborate with each other? Do you think there is hidden mathematics or geometry in biblical writings or the Egyptian pyramids? If you woke up tomorrow in ancient Greece with a pouch of gold coins, what sort of computing machines do you think you could have fabricated? Why is there only one species of human beings; isn't that kind of absurd? With hindsight, would "Computational Principles of Natural Philosophy" have been a good title for NKS? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 4, 2024) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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What is a very interesting "big picture" discovery in your minimal model for biological evolution that answers questions about Darwin's natural selection? How does it change the narrative? So the most successful organism is you and me, because we have the potential to organize/find solutions for this überabzählbar unendliche chaos, and for that we get rewarded, according to Blaise Pascal's wager. Who created the first map? Do you find morphological attractors in your simple models of biological evolution? There is evidence that morphospace might be like a hyporuliad, according to work by Prof. Michael Levin with planaria. Are LLMs disconnected from humans in the ruliad? LLMs' view of reality is mostly language and texts, right? My experience with art makes me guess illusions tend to be more of a lower/hardware level, since they aren't much subject to qualia. Do you think it's possible Egyptians had a basic light bulb (Dendera light bulb)? Were there prominent researchers in ancient civilizations who often referred to "things of the past," or were they mainly working based off of new ideas and hypotheses? How much of ancient myth reflects technology, like Hephaestus making a giant rock-throwing android? There's a hieroglyph that looks like a snake inside a light bulb. View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (88 videos)