Lex Fridman
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2023
3:11:09 · 1.8M views · Apr 18, 2020
Lex Fridman interviews Stephen Wolfram for about three hours on cellular automata, computation, the Wolfram Physics Project and his career with Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha.
HN points to it as an accessible long-form introduction to Wolfram's ideas and a window into his passion, though some are critical of his claims.
7 comments from Hacker News
Lots of comments about his "arrogance" but i just see someone passionate, judge for yourself! He has three long interviews on Lex Fridmans youtube channel! I greatly enjoyed watching those those. 1:[Stephen Wolfram: Cellular Automata, Computation, and Physics]( this video ) 2:[Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe]( [LINK] ) 3: [Stephen Wolfram: Complexity and the Fabric of Reality ]( [LINK] )
Random math doesn't imply intelligence: [LINK] is that shell intelligent? Wolfram has an alright interview where he considers this: this video My own thoughts: intelligence is something which you need to observe predicting the future, ie something proactively reacting to the future in order to achieve a goal. This means ideally you have a bit of interaction so that you can see that you're interacting with is capable of learning in response to you
I still use it regularly too - even more so after listening to Stephen Wolfram’s 3 part podcast [1] with Lex Fridman where he discussed the latest developments in Wolfram, Mathematica etc [1] this video
Regarding reading suggestions, you'd probably like Wolfram's cellular Automata theory. accessible intro: this video
I am a huge fan of Sandspiel, which Max described in this article from 2019, and recently I was delighted to discover that he and TodePond have been doing a huge amount of wonderful work since then. What happens when you combine Sandspiel with a Scratch-like blocks based visual programming language that lets you look inside and see how rules work, tweak and modify them, and even define your own rules for different types of particles? And then form a community around it for sharing Here is Max's and TodePond's brilliantly ambitious visually programmable sequel, Sandspiel Studio! [LINK] Here's my profile, where you can play with the version of Max's flower growing rule that he shows here: [LINK] ...to grow underground potatoes and fancy flowers: [LINK] I've written more about Sandspeil Studio and related topics of artificial life, cellular automata, and visual programming, and quoted some interesting discussion with Max and TodePond from their Discord server (they actually already knew about most of this stuff, but they love it as much as I do), in the "Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?" discussion, in reply to api's comment about Digital Artificial Life: [LINK] api 67 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/pa... Digital Artificial Life -- as in evolving program ecosystems, artificial chemistries or cellular automata that can manifest life-like phenomena, etc. Haven't done much with it in a while but w