History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 8, 2023)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa What would you say is the most important human-designed algorithm of all time? - Historically, who has led the trends in science, practitioners or academics? - Did Richard Feynman really think that "philosophy is baloney"? Did you ever discuss non-physics subjects? - If simulation becomes sufficiently good in the future, will it cause experimental scientists to be out of a job? - How did we go about solving the goat problem? - According to the history of science, what might be the ratio of the number of minor paradigm shifts to the number of major paradigm shifts? - What was the fifth class of cellular automata that almost was, which you mentioned in your personal history paper? - ​Has an idea like the ruliad existed before, or is this a novel object? - Neural networks show that combining two seemingly unrelated fields of research can produce great results, but our academic and business cultures are focused more on specialization. Your thoughts? - What would a modern analog computer look like today?

Om Podcasten

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.