Ancient Insights: Knowledge and Innovation

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

Questions include: 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.