The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

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: Are the stars and constellations we see today the same that were seen by the ancient civilizations who first studied them? Do star positions ever change? - What do you make of the relationship between rhetoric and math? They are held in contradistinction, but I am thinking of the relation between rhetorical invention and Chaitin's idea of math-creativity. - What about sudden novas and comets? Sudden shifts in orbits? - Is the Moon moving away measurable compared to human history? As in, since humans started recording history, did the Moon appear to get 10% smaller or so? - How will history be able to correct the continuous conundrum of the accuracy of our forefathers' discoveries, inventions and ideas? Additionally, how can we as humans preserve this? - How did early civilizations explain supernovas? Did they understand it as a star exploding? How did they come to this conclusion? - "The stars are like the Sun, but far away." When said for the first time, this must have been crazy to hear for others. How often were ideas like these disregarded at first? How did researchers of this time convince society of their findings? - Is it possible that errors in translation have affected results of research? Are there any examples of this in history? - When was the first time anyone considered what the angle of our solar system's ecliptic is relative to the Milky Way's galactic plane? Apparently, the angle is about 60 degrees. - Why did science evolve so rapidly in the Western world? - What's there to say about alchemy in history? - Is that because ethical questions are fundamentally computationally irreducible questions? - How do you filter out the "good new" from the "bad new"? It's remarkable that old ideas stood the test of time.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: From a leadership standpoint, what are your best teachings on how to lead with purpose? What is your leadership style? - How do you handle making mistakes? - It is impressive to see you (in a livecoding session) pull open a 20-year-old Mathematica document to refer to an earlier idea that you had. How have you managed your massive inventory of Mathematica idea notebooks over 30+ years? (e.g. do you create standalone Mathematica notebooks or massive ones?)? - Have you seen other people learn to not need to "relax" and to continuously work, as you do? I am most satisfied when I'm being productive, but I find myself getting fatigued or losing focus at some point. How do you maintain your work ethic? - Could you share your personal experience with how your intelligence has evolved as you've aged, particularly in terms of recall? Specifically, can you describe what it feels like for you when you take a brief pause of 0.2-2 seconds to grasp a concept while discussing complex topics in communication or video presentations? - Do you have any advice for the new generation of college graduates entering the workforce? What's the best way to apply for jobs? How do you maintain those jobs for years to come? - Do you think we'll get to a point where AI is in charge of interviewing? How could this be beneficial? Or even harmful? - What is your advice on how to lead when you sincerely do know less about the subject than the people you're assigned to lead? - As a company that functions worldwide, do you find language barriers to be an issue? Can AI help eliminate these barriers with some sort of universal translator? - Are there any self-evaluation techniques that you would recommend for everyone? - I'm curious about your approach to digesting new content, especially in the context of a research paper. In circumstances where time is limited and reading everything is not feasible, how do you determine when it's worth pausing to explore a referenced citation in depth versus continuing the reading without fully understanding the citation? Could you share your strategies for efficient and selective reading? - How do I go about learning mathematical thinking? My school focuses on learning formulas and just solving questions in the age of computers. - What would you suggest for a self-taught programmer on the "trader" side who wants to get more knowledgeable on "computational thinking"–books, courses, topics, anything you could share as clues for making a personal curriculum would be great!

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Why is it important that the periodic table is structured as a table rather than a list of elements? - Is the periodic table just the table for the current state? Since there weren't heavy atoms from the start (Big Bang), maybe in the far future everything decays and just the electrons survive. - How certain are we that the Big Bang actually happened? What are the chances of the Big Bang theory being displaced in the future? - What do you make of the very early galaxies seen by JWST, which seem too large to exist so early? - Is it possible that the expansion of space due to dark energy could eventually be fast enough that even atoms and nuclei come apart? - How is the temperature of cosmic background radiation measured? Is it just from the wavelength of the microwaves?

Renowned physicist Stephen Wolfram delves into observer theory, discussing the interplay between computation and observation, the complexities of chaos theory, and the expansion of observer abilities through scientific measurements. The podcast explores how observers perceive the world, the challenges in predicting outcomes, and the significance of enhancing observational skills.

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: When researching, do you find it's more helpful to stay close to modern times in terms of content, or do findings from hundreds of years ago also prove valuable? - ​Can you talk about the history of theories of cognition and consciousness? What did the ancients think? Did Gödel or Turing think about this much? Does ChatGPT disprove Penrose's Orch OR? - Aristotle, Leibniz, Godel, Wolfram: How were/are these philosophers able to somewhat understand the idea of universal computation? How did they and you reach those insights? - Is there something you could speak to about von Neumann's work to understand that the models of computation could relate to the mind? - Has the importance of areas of science shifted in history? What was the main focus of science five hundred years ago? One hundred years ago? Ten? - Is there a connection between these advances in science and education? Does education evolve with these changes? - What has been the most important invention that has improved research overall? - Right! By 1991 we had ERIC for upper-graduate research, and it was a game changer. No more need for librarians in the traditional way and history at our fingertips. - Historically, what have been the the most difficult problems or obstacles for us to overcome or solve in the areas of science and technology? - About unintended consequences of revolutions: what lessons from the Industrial Revolution have we learned that we could use for the AI revolution? - Do you think it's fundamentally possible for science as we know it to hit a wall at some point and slowly degenerate into a nonproductive state?

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Congrats on the new blog post! Are there any dangers to these "custom" plugins? Allowing ChatGPT access to your computer seems like asking for an AI takeover. - Is current tech like ChatGPT going to be able to answer every question imaginable? - Are you worried about being replaced by AI? - A caveat, though: LLMs can quite easily be asked to write in any non-perfect way we want! - What are some ways LLMs can be improved? Do these improvements require advancements in technology that haven't yet been made? - One thing that worries me about LLM is that right now, many people are using LLM as a "source of truth" or even "references" to their arguments.- Perhaps the only real way for an AI to make those value judgments is for it to be able to model its own possible future states and decide for itself? - Asking for ChatGPT to write less formally makes me think of the evolution of music genres, i.e. electronic music is now "not perfect" on purpose. - We're gonna one day find out that these livestreams are like a really advanced Turing test being conducted at Wolfram, and both Stephen and the moderators in the chat have been AIs all along.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Do you like philosophy? Do you see math as a part of it? - Is it better to get a college degree in something practical like business and save interests as extracurricular classes or side hobbies? - It just seems like being in a university allows you to spend more time learning, and also lends you access to the best tools and access to published information. But is there time to do things that you are personally interested in, like invention? - Looking at all your blogs, which has been your favorite to write? Which has been the hardest? - How successful do you think educational games would be for teaching children higher-level skills? Do you think they would absorb information faster compared to traditional education methods? - Do you tend to focus on multiple tasks at once or focus on a single task until it's complete before moving on to the next one? I feel like I get overwhelmed by folders if I try to work on several projects at once, and would like advice on how to manage the overload. - Are there conditions or situations that make you particularly creative? - What do you pack when traveling? - Is there a distinction like "continental vs. analytic philosophy" in computer science? - How do you cultivate peace of mind? - Do you have research assistants, or do you work on your projects on your own? - How important do you think your culture of very direct communication has been to Wolfram's success? - In retrospect, college is most important for opportunities to sit down with a few like-minded people and just openly talk. - What are the most important insights and fundamental questions for planning and establishing a career? - Do you find yourself still learning new things today? Is there a point in life where learning slows? What are some ways to combat that? - How helpful is it to have routines? I find it a helpful method to make fewer decisions about my day and put my focus elsewhere. - What is your breakfast?

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: In quantum chromodynamics, what is color confinement? - How did we discover strong nuclear force? - Is there a finite number of sub-atomic particles? Or will we forever find new unique ones? - How do detectors sense the presence of these particles? For example, if a microphone has a diaphragm detecting vibrating air, what is the diaphragm of this detector?

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: Can you discuss the history of programming languages? Is programming always associated with computers or were there other forms of programming? - Didn't IBM have its own extremely labor intensive "telegraph" system? - How do you think Ada Lovelace would view the current age of AI? - Sometimes I wonder what'd happened if Newton or Gauss had access to digital computers. - Any thoughts about Plankalkül? - Isn't mathematics itself following rules? - Could you talk about the history of cybernetics and the idea of feedback loops in general? - How are the history of education and programming connected? When did degrees in programming become significant? - Do Wittgenstein's experiments with language models have any relevance to LLM and AI today?

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: If you ask the AI the exact same question several times, will it give the same answer or will it change it based on some random function? Or do the neurons change during self-learning and change the answer? - Do you think at any point we will create an AI factory? Like specialized AI algorithms that create other AIs (which can do very well one specific task)? - Any thoughts on using physics simulations vs. the real world to teach robots? - Is it computer power then that speeds real progress? - What do you think about sources of energy now and in the future for developed and developing countries? - What will happen when oil runs out? Will there be a shift to "clean" energy well before this happens? - For nuclear energy, do the dangers pose a problem? Or do the pros outweigh the cons in this situation? - Apparently the death rate for nuclear energy is around 0.04 deaths per terawatt-hour, which is similar to wind and solar. - Nuclear is safer than coal, because people are more cautious when the stakes are higher. - What do you think of small modular reactors? - What is the connection between computational irreducibility and extracting usable energy? Can energy be "mined" with computation? - Nuclear is not going to be a good thing until we have some way of dealing with the waste products.