Stephen Wolfram Q&A
Submit a questionSome collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram
Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.
Science
(70)March 1, 1993
From: Interview by Paul Wellin, Mathematica in Education
Why have computer science and mathematics departments diverged so strongly in the recent past?
One of the biggest mistakes of research mathematics in America in the last 50 years has been to let computer science get away. If you look at what was done when computing was young, there was a strong and definite strand of computing that was essentially part of mathematics. The mathematicians rejected it: this was a big mistake. Read more
March 1, 1993
From: Interview by Paul Wellin, Mathematica in Education
Do you think that mathematics and the rest of the sciences will tend to become less distinct, becoming more and more involved in similar computational tasks, albeit on different problems?
With the current system of science in America, I don’t see any mechanism to reduce the rigidity of it. I think it’s a hell of a pity, because more good science and more useful science could be done if there was less rigidity. Over the 15 years or so that I’ve been doing science in America, Read more
June 1, 1996
From: Interview by Stephen Collart, Euromath Bulletin
You have been working on a book about science for some time. Can you sketch some of your ideas? Are there implications for symbolic computation and symbolic computation systems?
Well, that’s a whole other discussion. What I’m trying to do is a pretty big thing: I’m trying to build a whole new way of thinking about science. If you look at most of science for the past three hundred or so years, there’s been a common theme all the way through: that nature should be somehow or another be described by mathematical equations. Read more
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February 6, 1998
From: Interview by David Stork, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
Do you really think that we can get a handle on profoundly hard, high-level problems of AI—such as my favorite, scene analysis—by looking at something as “simple” as cellular automata?
Definitely. But it takes quite a shift in intuition to see how. In a sense it’s about whether one’s dealing with engineering problems or with science problems. You see, in engineering, we’re always used to setting things up so we can explicitly foresee how everything will work. And that’s a very limiting thing. Read more
July 7, 2002
From: Interview by Loch Adamson, The New York Times
After A New Kind of Science, do you have a follow-up project planned?
I’ve been meaning to take a vacation for years, but I think I’m actually about to enter a tool-building phase again. I see a number of directions from the science that I’ve done, and one that I like rather a lot is approaches to fundamental physics, sort of trying to find a final, Read more
July 7, 2002
From: Interview by Loch Adamson, The New York Times
Is it hard for you to look to a larger audience for the future of A New Kind of Science, to think of its having iterations you can’t control, as if it were a program itself?
I have to admit that I have some misgivings about taking the things that I find—these beautiful facts—and putting them out there into the world. What is always disappointing for a person like me is that one has gone to a lot of effort to explain what one has done, and then people start trying to take steps beyond that, Read more
July 7, 2002
From: Interview by Loch Adamson, The New York Times
What kinds of scientific contributions might come about in response to your book? And when do you think we might see them?
I’m probably more nervous about people trying to apply what I’ve done in the book too quickly, rather than too slowly. It would be bizarre if my attempts to sort of change the direction of quite a bit of science were, you know, immediately absorbed and understood by people who had spent decades working in some different direction. Read more
August 6, 2002
From: Interview by Mary Kathleen Flynn, PC Magazine
Why has your book A New Kind of Science caused controversy?
It’s a classic paradigm-shift situation. Part of what made it take 20 years for me to figure out what I say in the book is that I had to get over all the preconceptions I had from doing traditional science. I’d feel really silly if, in just a few weeks, everyone could absorb everything I’ve done.
August 6, 2002
From: Interview by Mary Kathleen Flynn, PC Magazine
Why do programs offer a better way to model nature than equations?
Traditional equations involve just the rather specific kinds of rules that are built into ordinary human mathematics. But programs can involve much more general kinds of rules. It is those more general rules that nature seems to be using a lot of the time.
The crucial discovery from the 1930s is that it’s possible to make universal systems that can compute anything, Read more
April 7, 2003
From: Interview by The Scientist Magazine
How has A New Kind of Science’s reception been from biologists in general?
Rather enthusiastic. I think there’s a tremendous awareness in that community that the next big steps have to involve theoretical modeling, and trying to understand global mechanisms. Questions about evolution theory often loom large in public discussions of biology. But a much greater interest among practicing biologists is to take what I’ve done and use it as a framework for new basic models and theories. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
Why did you self-publish A New Kind of Science? Why not present your ideas in a peer-reviewed journal, where they could be assessed by other scientists?
Well, you just need to go to Amazon.com to see a lot of comments on the book. Most of them are bull____. This is too big a thing to propagate through the standard mechanism of science. As a person who’s published a journal for the last 17 years (Complex Systems), Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
How will A New Kind of Science be applied to solving biological problems?
The basic thing is, we know what the genome looks like. Now the question is, “How do we go from that to what cells and organisms actually do?” And that question is really, “What methodology might we imagine [for doing] that?” Many theories in science [have] been based on the idea “let’s make a mathematical equation that describes the question”. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
Who is looking for primitives to use to describe biological systems, and how long will it take before we see tools that are based on them?
Not long at all. There are people working on it right now. You can just search in the space of all possible simple programs because there just aren’t that many of them. There might be a trillion of them. It’s not hard to search a space of a trillion simple programs. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
You’ve said the conventional idea of natural selection is wrong. What do you mean?
People have tended to think there can’t be a predictive theory of biology because they say, “Well it’s all governed by natural selection and adaptation. You know, the way we are today is due to some accident that happened to some trilobite 200 million years ago”.
But I don’t think that. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
One unsettling aspect of NKS is computational irreducibility—the idea that you can’t predict what will happen with a program. Can you define what you mean?
Well, [let’s say] you want to predict where Earth is going to be a million years from now. We don’t have to follow each orbit a million times. We just have to plug a number into a formula, and immediately we can work out where Earth will be in a million years from now. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
Most of the examples in A New Kind of Science look at things easily represented by images, such as leaf patterns. Can NKS be used to model other tasks, such as biochemical pathways?
The things I’ve studied in great detail are large-scale morphological features like, for example, shapes of leaves. So when it comes to looking up mollusc pigmentation, I look at a pattern and it’s very easy to see what class of programs [are appropriate]. It turns out you can also look at networks with simple programs. Read more
May 9, 2003
From: Interview by John Russell, Bio-ITWorld
Are there problem areas in which the ideas and techniques of NKS are not applicable?
Who knows? It’s hard to answer that question until you’ve tried them all.
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
Is it correct to say that with your discoveries regarding the behavior of cellular automata, you are introducing a paradigm shift in the sciences on par with Darwin?
If there’s an analogy, it’s probably this. Darwin went on voyages around the world and saw all sorts of remarkable biological phenomena—that led him to a new paradigm. I’ve taken a lot of abstract voyages in the computational world, and have seen all sorts of remarkable phenomena there—that have led me to a new paradigm, Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
How long will it take for your ideas from A New Kind of Science to become accepted/commonplace?
It’s inevitably a gradual process. But I think it’s off to a very good start. Right now, for example, there’s an average of one or two academic papers per day involving NKS being written. I’m sure that in a decade there’ll be lots of people who have built their careers on NKS, Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
One of the most stunning aspects of A New Kind of Science—at least for a layman—is the absence of mathematics. In the long term, will your discoveries make mathematics an obsolete tool for scientific inquiry?
Two things are already happening. First, there’s a new kind of basic science emerging—“pure NKS”. It’s like a physics, or a chemistry, or a mathematics, but concerned with systems in the computational world. Second, ideas and results from pure NKS are getting applied to lots of other places. Some of them aren’t science at all. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
Has this idea of computational irreducibility changed the way you view your existence? Is this idea as menacing to historical faith traditions as Darwin’s theory of evolution?
I do think that the history of the universe—and everything in it—is completely determined. But the point about computational irreducibility is that it shows that that doesn’t mean it has to be dull. Even though it’s determined, it can still be unpredictable and surprising. And it’s irreducible—so we actually have to live it in order to see what happens. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
Ray Kurzweil says of class 4 automata, “… they do not continue to evolve into anything more complex, nor do they develop new types of features… They do not evolve into, say, insects or humans, or Chopin preludes…”. Is this a damaging critique of the Principle of Computational Equivalence?
Class 4 cellular automata can actually make surprisingly good music! It takes doing a lot of actual experiments to get a good intuition for systems like cellular automata. One of the things I’ve always found is that whenever I think “they can’t do X”, I’m always wrong. It’s just that I can’t imagine how they do “X”. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
How do you see the future of the human race? Will the implications of the Principle of Computational Equivalence, if recognized and adopted, alter the evolution of the human race? If so, how and how soon?
There’s going to be more and more coupling between computers and humans. More and more of our activities—including cognitive ones—will be successfully “outsourced” to computers. Then there’ll be questions about what’s essentially different between computers and humans. And the Principle of Computational Equivalence says there will never be anything fundamentally different. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
What is the relation of your Principle of Computational Equivalence with chaos and complexity theory?
Chaos theory is really about a very specific phenomenon: that sensitive dependence on initial conditions can lead to randomness. And what one finds in the end is that the only way to get randomness out of this phenomenon is just to put randomness in, in the initial conditions. What I’ve found is that simple programs can actually produce randomness—and complexity—without it ever being put in. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
Of the various areas of scientific inquiry, which do you think will be first to radically change due to your new kind of science, and how will it change?
Two things are already happening. First, there’s a new kind of basic science emerging—“pure NKS”. It’s like a physics, or a chemistry, or a mathematics, but concerned with systems in the computational world. Second, ideas and results from pure NKS are getting applied to lots of other places. Some of them aren’t science at all. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
When did you decide to put A New Kind of Science on your website? How important will the internet be for introducing NKS into the global intellectual community?
I’d planned to put the book on the web, though representing its visual elements there is still a challenge. One thing that’s great about NKS is that once you understand it, all you need to do it is a computer. So that immediately allows it to be a very global enterprise. Read more
July 1, 2008
From: Interview by Luciano Floridi, Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions
What example(s) from your work (or the work of others) best illustrates the fruitful use of a computational and/or informational approach for foundational researches and/or applications?
I’ve now spent about 25 years applying computational ideas to questions in basic science. The single most fruitful concept has been exploring the computational universe of possible programs.
The exact sciences have always tended to use a fairly small set of models, mostly based on traditional mathematics. A key new concept from computation is to enumerate all possible programs—and potentially use them as models. Read more
July 1, 2008
From: Interview by Luciano Floridi, Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions
What is the proper role of computer science and/or information science in relation to other disciplines?
Every discipline will inevitably become “computational”—and its methods and practice will become deeply infused with computation. I happen to have seen this personally over the past two decades as Mathematica and the computational capabilities it brings have spread through more and more fields.
Computation is crucial both to doing better what has been done before in other disciplines, Read more
July 1, 2008
From: Interview by Luciano Floridi, Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions
What are the most important open problems concerning computation and/or information, and what are the prospects for progress?
There’s a lot still to discover about the computational universe. It’s like many past explorations&mdash’whether of the flora and fauna of Earth, of the chemicals that can be created or of the diversity of astronomical objects. We’ve learned enough to be able to do some basic classification, and we’ve been able to guess at some general principles. Read more
November 12, 2008
From: Interview by Carlos Gershenson, Complexity: 5 Questions
How would you define complexity?
Formal definitions can get all tied up in knots—just like formal definitions of almost anything fundamental: life, energy, mathematics, etc. But the intuitive notion is fairly clear: things seem complex if we don’t have a simple way to describe them.
The remarkable scientific fact is that there may be a simple underlying rule for something—even though the thing itself seems to us complex. Read more
November 12, 2008
From: Interview by Carlos Gershenson, Complexity: 5 Questions
What is your favorite aspect/concept of complexity?
That it’s so easy to find in the computational universe.
One used to think that to make something complex, one would have to go to a lot of trouble. That one would have to come up with all sorts of complicated rules, and so on. But what we’ve found by just sampling the universe of simple programs is that nothing like that is the case. Read more
November 12, 2008
From: Interview by Carlos Gershenson, Complexity: 5 Questions
In your opinion, what is the most problematic aspect/concept of complexity?
In the early 1980s I was very excited about what I’d discovered about the origins of complexity, and I realized there was a whole “science of complexity” that could be built. I made quite an effort to promote “complex systems research” (I would have immediately called it “complexity theory”, but wanted to avoid the field of theoretical computer science that was then using that name). Read more
November 12, 2008
From: Interview by Carlos Gershenson, Complexity: 5 Questions
How do you see the future of complexity (including obstacles, dangers, promises and relations with other areas)?
It’s already underway… but in the years and decades to come we’re going to see a fundamental change in the approach to both science and technology. We’re going to see much simpler underlying systems and rules, with much more complex behavior, all over the place.
Sometimes we’re going to see “off-the-shelf” Read more
August 31, 2009
From: Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, CrazyEngineers
What discoveries have you made about the origins of complexity?
I started exploring the computational universe, looking at what very simple computer programs do. One might have thought that simple programs would always just do simple things. But to my great surprise, my computer experiments showed that that isn’t the case. Out in the computational universe, it’s easy to get complexity. Read more
January 5, 2010
From: Interview by Gregory T. Huang, Xconomy
Are physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using your computational techniques?
There’s a lot of Mathematica usage. I’d expect LHC people would use [NKS] on their laptops for searching the space of models. It’s for the future of NKS to figure out if something bizarre is seen at LHC.
November 3, 2011
From: Interview by Mark Jannot, Popular Science
Is it possible for nature, writ large—for the universe itself—to ever do anything that is anything other than incremental?
Yes! When you look at different things that happen in different physical systems, you can ask, is it the same case in the way that fluid flow works in this situation versus that situation? They may not be connected. There’s no requirement that the fluid flow be—from one situation to another, Read more
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November 3, 2011
From: Interview by Mark Jannot, Popular Science
How simple would you imagine the underlying rule for the universe could be? How many lines of code would you guess, roughly what range?
Here’s a way to think about that. If you start enumerating possible universes, you can—the best representation I’ve found for what I think is a reasonable way to get at this is using networks, transformation rules for networks, so you can represent that as code in Mathematica or something. And each of these transformation rules is probably two, Read more
November 3, 2011
From: Interview by Mark Jannot, Popular Science
Is your theory that if one universe can be generated from simple algorithms, all universes can and have been? Or would be?
The only thing we can meaningfully talk about in science, as far as empirical science is concerned, is our actual universe: there’s only one. Anything else we say about it is a purely theoretical thing. Now, the question would be—we might then say, gosh, what must be happening is that somewhere out there, Read more
November 3, 2011
From: Interview by Mark Jannot, Popular Science
Computational irreducibility is like prime numbers in a sense, right? So as long as it has pockets of reducibility, it is not the fundamentally irreducible thing? It’s not the universe that’s computationally irreducible, it’s…?
It’s the processes that go on. OK, so what is the universe? Is the universe the underlying code from which you can generate the universe? Or is it these dynamic processes that are going on inside the universe today? Or is it just one slice of those dynamic processes? This is the universe as it is today, Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
If you were to write a Chapter 13 to the NKS book, what would it be about?
Funny you should ask… I had forgotten until recently … but actually I did start writing a “Chapter 13” … though I called it the Epilog. Its title was “The Future of the Science in This Book”.
I looked through it as I was writing my blog post today: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/05/looking-to-the-future-of-a-new-kind-of-science/
And actually … Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Will we ever formulate the Grand Unified Field Theory, or will it always be a mystery to us?
It’s hard to know for sure… but my guess is that we will find an easy-to-describe theory of physics. It might even happen soon. I’m guessing we have the science and technology needed to do it. Now it’s just a question of deciding it’s possible, and putting all the effort in…
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Do you have any sci-fi type ideas that you really think are achievable within your lifetime? Faster-than-light travel, meeting extraterrestrial intelligent life, things of that sort.
Well… some things may actually be impossible… and I even wrote an essay about that a little while ago: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/fqxi09/
Some things may happen gradually; others may be the result of a sudden discovery.
I’m guessing “AI” (with some footnotes about what it means) will happen gradually, as will the merger of humans with machines. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Have there ever been periods of time where you’ve been burnt out or pessimistic about science and/or the way people react to science, and if so how did you rationalize and overcome those frustrations?
I wrote last week about reactions to the NKS book: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/05/living-a-paradigm-shift-looking-back-on-reactions-to-a-new-kind-of-science/
For years, I’ve tended to do things much more for myself than for the sake of other people’s opinions. Opinions also get pretty statistical after a while: there’ll be people who are very positive, and people who are very negative. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What’s your favorite NKS rule and why?
Rule 30. I even have it on my business cards 🙂
Because it was when I absorbed what was going on in that rule that I began to understand that there needed to be an NKS… Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
You seem to be fixed on the concept of finite state automata in NKS, why not continuous state systems? Now that we have a greater understanding/respect for emergent phenomena, would you find a place for continuous state automata in your theory?
A fundamental question is whether continuous variables are really things that can concretely exist in our universe, or whether they’re just mathematical abstractions. (Or in the words of Kronecker: “God made the integers; all else is the work of man”.)
My guess is that ultimately the universe is discrete. But even so, Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
You mentioned existence of a model for galaxy formation being in the NKS domain. What other cosmological applications are you aware of in this vein, either published or being pursued?
I worked on cosmology and its relations to particle physics back in the late 1970s, long before that was fashionable… With my friend Rocky Kolb, I even mentioned inflation in a footnote to a paper before it had officially been invented, saying that I thought it was implausible…
There are some really interesting cosmological implications of the kinds of network-based models of physics that I discuss in the NKS book. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What effect do you think monetization of intelligence has had on scientific pursuit? Do you think your decision to delve into private enterprise has lessened your potential contribution to scientific fields?
I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to set my life up so that I can really work on things that I think are worthwhile. And to create an organization that’s good at stimulating me, and taking ideas I have and turning them into reality. It’s great, and I’m certain I’ve been incredibly much more productive than if I’d for example stayed a professor or something. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What will be the most promising topics of research in computational science in the near future?
There are lots. Including many based on NKS… some of which I touched on in a blog post I did today: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/05/looking-to-the-future-of-a-new-kind-of-science/
It’d be fun to make an organized list, though. Perhaps something for our annual summer school https://education.wolfram.com/summer/school/ Read more
April 26, 2013
From: Interview by Patrick Tucker, IEET
Your seminal book, A New Kind of Science, is ten years old. You recently wrote a blog post on the anniversary. Can you talk a little bit about the future of science?
The main idea of A New Kind of Science was to introduce a new way to model things in the world. Three hundred years ago, there was this big transformation in science when it was realized that one could use math, and the formal structure of math, to talk about the natural world. Read more
February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
You are a physicist who seems very keen on understanding the fabric of the universe at the most primitive levels. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard your thoughts on consciousness/qualia. Have you given it much thought?
I think the most interesting issue here is whether there’s a formal theory of the concepts that we seem to form with consciousness, independent of a theory of the physical world. No doubt our actual consciousness emerges from a theory of the physical world, but we can ask whether we can have a formal theory of concepts that doesn’t rely on connection to the physical world. Read more
February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
You’ve mentioned that you may return to do physics and explain the universe. Now you seem to be pretty excited about the gravitational waves. So, are you still planning to do that?
Oh yes, I definitely hope to return to seeing if my ideas about physics make sense. I was excited about the gravitational wave discovery partly because I saw the beginnings of that project when I was at Caltech 35 years ago… and it’s pretty neat when something comes to fruition after all that time. Read more
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February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Who is your favorite historical scientist? Why? What is in your opinion the most significant scientific achievement of the human race?
It depends what you mean by “favorite”. There are people who have ended up making contributions that are particularly relevant to me (e.g. Gottfried Leibniz, Kurt Godel, Alan Turing). There are people who would have been fun to meet (e.g. Ramon Llull, Galileo, Ada Lovelace, Albert Einstein). And there are people who managed to live their lives well in one way or another around their scientific accomplishments (e.g. Read more
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February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
How did you manage to start legitimate research on quantum field theory when you were only 15?
I discovered that one could learn things pretty well by reading books (well, today it would be reading the web). I always found (and still find) it much much easier to learn things when I have a particular question I’m trying to answer, or project I’m trying to do. At that time lots of things were happening in particle physics, Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Which do you think is more important to the history of science: the accomplishments of scientific geniuses or the broader research trends of the scientific community?
As in so many things, new ideas and new directions in science are most often the result of leadership by one or a small number of people. But almost always, they have to build on lots of detailed work that’s been done by many other people.
But even after someone comes up with a great idea, Read more
November 7, 2016
From: Interview by Dingyu Chen, Eton Magazine
Hypothetically, if you could choose two fields of math, physics or computing to be magically fully researched, which ones would you choose, and why?
I’d like to know the fundamental theory of physics: what’s underneath space and time and quantum mechanics and all the other things we know in physics today.
I’m not sure if you’d quite call it “computing”, but I’d like to know how to capture human concepts in a precise symbolic way that one can compute with. Read more
November 7, 2016
From: Interview by Dingyu Chen, Eton Magazine
What pushed you to study quantum and particle physics, especially starting from such a young age?
Back when I was at Eton in the early to mid-1970s, particle physics was the most rapidly advancing field of science. It was an exciting time: there were significant new discoveries every few weeks. And it was really exciting for me to be part of that. Today that kind of excitement is what you find in lots of new “computational X” Read more
November 21, 2016
From: Interview by Sarah Lewin, Space.com
What parts of the science were already there before you joined on to the Arrival movie project?
There are three levels that one could take the science at. One is the “what the aliens are really doing” type thing, which is future science we don’t know yet, at the other end there’s the high-school level physics, and in the middle is the leading edge of what physics might have to say about it if a great big black spaceship showed up in your backyard today. Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
Can you summarize, briefly, the theme of A New Kind of Science? Are you satisfied with the book’s reception?
It’s about studying the computational universe of all possible programs and understanding what they can do. Exact science had been very focused on using what are essentially specific kinds of programs based on mathematical ideas like calculus. My goal was to dramatically generalize the kinds of programs that can be used as models in science, Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
Can the methods you describe in A New Kind of Science answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing?
Not that I can see so far. Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
Can the methods you describe in A New Kind of Science solve “the hard problem”? That is, can they explain how matter can become conscious?
One of the core discoveries that I discussed in the book is what I call the Principle of Computational Equivalence—which implies that a very wide range of systems are equivalent in their computational sophistication. And in particular, it means that brains are no more computationally sophisticated than lots of systems in nature, Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
The concept of computation, like information, presupposes the existence of mind. So when you suggest that the universe is a computer, aren’t you guilty of anthropomorphism, or perhaps deism (assuming the mind for whom the computation is performed is God)?
The concept of computation doesn’t in any way presuppose the existence of mind… and it’s an incorrect summarization of my work to say that I suggest “the universe is a computer”.
Computation is just about following definite rules. The concept of computation doesn’t presuppose a “substrate”, any more than talking about mathematical laws for nature presupposes a substrate. Read more
March 21, 2018
From: Interview by Tim Urban, New York Magazine
Have we seen extraterrestrial intelligence? What might that mean?
Well my own suspicion is that the first form of nonhuman-aligned intelligence that we’re getting exposed to is artificial intelligence. My guess about how things will develop historically is we’ll get more and more used to the idea of AI and nonhuman intelligence and so on. Eventually, we’ll get used to the idea that there are these kind of nonhuman intelligences embodied in what’s possible in the computational universe and what we can use for AI. Read more
March 21, 2018
From: Interview by Tim Urban, New York Magazine
Why is it important to try to communicate to aliens and send out time capsules and capture information about us?
I think it’s having pride about what we’ve achieved and building a monument to it. That’s as important as it is to imagine that at some point, some alien is gonna pick it up and do something with it. It’s like, Why were the pyramids built? Well, it was probably in large part as an exercise for the time, Read more
May 29, 2018
From: Interview by Byron Reese, Gigaom.com
What is intelligence?
It’s a complicated and slippery concept. It’s useful to start, maybe, in thinking about what may be an easier concept, what is life? You might think that was an easy thing to define. Here on Earth, you can pretty much tell whether something is alive or not. You dig down, you look in a microscope, Read more
July 24, 2019
From: Interview by Will Carey, Creative Chair
More recently there seems to have been an increase in filmmakers who want their projects to have a sound scientific foundation. Do you think that this is important, and if so why?
I always think it’s nice when a movie lets one engage intellectually as well as emotionally, and having a sound “science story” is a way to help achieve this. I think filmmakers often assume that the science will get in the way of the story they want to tell. But for me it’s just that one has to be creative about the science as well as about everything else in the movie. Read more
November 4, 2019
From: Interview by Margaret Harris, Physics World
What are some examples of ways that thinking computationally, rather than mathematically, about a system can aid understanding?
For 300 years mathematical equations were the dominant method used to make models of things. In just the last decade or so, there’s been a kind of silent revolution in modeling, and new models of almost any concept or system—regardless of whether it is physical, engineering, social, biological—have started to be based on computation (and effectively, Read more
November 4, 2019
From: Interview by Margaret Harris, Physics World
Why do you think physicists, in particular, should consider framing problems in computational, rather than mathematical, terms?
Computation is a generalization of mathematics. Yes, there are plenty of systems that have traditionally been studied in physics that can be modeled mathematically, for example with differential equations. But there are a lot more systems (including plenty of physical ones) that need a generalization of the equations approach. There’s a lot of new physics that’s made possible by this.
November 4, 2019
From: Interview by Margaret Harris, Physics World
What role do you think computation will play in the future of physics?
Physics was early in using computers to aid in working with its existing paradigms, and I would like to think that Mathematica helped with that. The biggest growth directions, I think, will be in the use of computation as a paradigm for physics. Part of this involves using computational models for physical systems. Read more
December 18, 2019
From: Interview by Guy Kawasaki, Remarkable People Podcast
Are we a simulation?
This whole simulation argument thing, it’s kind of charming how some of these theological, religious ideas and so on get reiterated in these very different, bizarre wrappings. It’s kind of like if we look at our universe. One thing about our universe… this is almost a theological fact about our universe… Read more
December 18, 2019
From: Interview by Guy Kawasaki, Remarkable People Podcast
What is your reaction to the reputation of science these days, particularly at the highest levels of our government?
Science is in some ways its own worst enemy in that regard because what’s happened is that there are things that science has done a really good job of establishing. There are things where there is science that can be said about them, but it’s kind of overreached in some way or another, Read more