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 are there still mysteries in our knowledge of the human body in spite of exponential advancement in our understanding? - What are the approximate odds that two people have had the same fingerprint pattern? (odds of a collision among all fingerprints within the enumeration of the parameter space of fingerprint patterns) - Isn't the finger prints a two dimensional reminiscent from the torus like inversion that occurs in the body? - Is there a way to make trees grow faster? - If there exists a machine code for our bodies. Is the model you're working on some kind of a debugger? Could you explain the things you expect to be able to predict with your theory? - So conscious is like user space code and unconscious is like kernel space code? - How far away are we from finally doing away with physical smartphone screens and replace them with virtual projected screens in front of the user, which can be made as big or as small as one desires? - MIT developed AlterEgo reading your mind so you do not need to type. - Ed Fredkin - Tablet PCs didn't take off in the 90s but much later. Why? - Is typing/writing a bottleneck on productivity? I wonder if thought typing will have a significant effect on how much most people get done. - Thanks for that answer[Ellipsis]I guess for now we will just have to keep getting excited every time someone comes up with yet another smartphone with a slightly bigger (by a few mm) screen! - What if somebody falls asleep in front of his computer with the electrodes still on their heads and starts dreaming, then typing in his/her dreams? - If you drink MILK before u go to sleep you will remember YOUR DREAMS. There's some bio chemical there - Dreams are so interesting... from the habit of having a dream journal (writing them down as soon as you wake) triggers you to 'remember' the dream. But who's to say it's an accurate memory, or just an on demand created thought - How come that we sometimes experience more subjective time in a dream than actually has passed? Does our brain somehow "outruns" the normal computation rate? - What do think about molecules (supplements) that increase synaptic plasticity which controls how effectively two neurons communicate with each other I look for molecules to boost my brain power? - But what is a memory really? Where does one memory start and another end? What is the boundary between the "interior" and "exterior" of the mind? - The human brain does seem to have a bias towards discrete categorization though, e.g. the alternating illusions, Yanny/Laurel effect. - Companies into AI (like Tesla) put a lot of emphasis on 'vision' over other sensory detection. Is that also true for us as human beings? Are some senses 'more important'?

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: I am writing a long-form article about James Lovelock, who was unusual in that he was an independent scientist. It struck me that you count as one too, and I wondered if you had ever blogged about the upside or downside of not being part of the scientific establishment? - ​What is the artifact behind you? It looks like something one might use to trap a mouse. ​- Have you ever focused "too much," such that the focus was detrimental to your work? - So you are on an island? I have been looking for an isolated island with limited tourists to spend some stress-free time. They are hard to find! - Any tips for building a remote software company, and how to maintain company culture when everyone is working from home? -  From a business point of view, how do you make the jump to working on highly technical projects that have long development times and higher costs? - Hypothetically, if one had the opportunity and means to pursue a completely different avenue in life even though it was not one's formal field of study... Thoughts on big life changes?  - Any interesting discussion of the history of the whaling business? - Sorry for a bit of a silly question, but you seem to like to use a light theme as opposed to a dark theme on your computer. Does it have any effect on your eyes in the long run? - How much time do you spend each day on your phone? - If you had to spend one year without computers, what would you do? - ​​I'm still waiting for phones that can do projection on the wall with a keyboard touchscreen with light detectors. - ​Did you learn anything useful during your brief time as a consultant? - If you could go back in time with your laptop running Mathematica, who would you show it to? Euler? Bernoulli? Newton? Others? - A discussion between Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing would be interesting. - You need to write this fiction, even if it's just blogged in chunks.

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: How is computation in nature different than the computation that a computer does? ​- Why do cars get much hotter than the outside air temperature? In Austin this week, my car's internal air temperature was 130° F, while it was 100° F outside. - Why haven't we discovered a cure for baldness? Compared to the other great apes, we have lost most of our body hair, so I wonder if baldness is not just our further evolutionary progression of losing all body hair. - Think about things in nature as having autonomous rules. For example, a flower is one rule, but different shapes, colors, etc. of flowers have different initial conditions. Is this too crazy an idea? - To what extent are plant cells Voronoi meshes? How about animal cells? To what extent could one build a simulation of a tree using something like a "Voronoi mesh automaton"? - Do you believe there is a concrete description of evolution waiting to be fleshed out in the multicomputational paradigm? If so, does its basic rule relate to the expansion of the hypergraph? - If mammals have a common ancestor, then how did they get divided into carnivores and herbivores? - What do you think of the notion of chemical interspecies communications? - ​Can we think of some fungi species that could reach some kind of intelligence like the human one in the future? - Are bubbles round because of gravity?

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: You have published several other books after NKS. Has publishing technology and quality changed in the intervening time? - Would you like to provide a history of fluid mechanics, for example how the Navier–Stokes equations were discovered and how they work? - Given the recent hearings on and history of UFOs, do you have any thoughts on this subject? - In general, how do you engage with conspiracy theories or "alternative science"? I'm curious because most scientists in institutions are immediately dismissive of anything outside mainstream thought, but to me this seems just as intellectually dishonest as ascribing absolute certainty to any given conspiracy theory. - Isn't there a suspicious correlation between a surge in UFO sightings since the 1950s and a surge of UFO movies during that same period? - What about the Phoenix Lights event where thousands of people saw the same exact thing? - What are some other notable phenomena that people thought they observed that never were proven to have scientific validity (e.g. alchemy)? - How has your view of the future changed over the past 40 years? - Most surprising is that so many people are using the internet for watching cat videos instead of doing useful things. - Maybe cats are the aliens.

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: How do glaciers form? - Is the orbit of the Earth constant around the Sun? Or is there a variation on a large time frame? - Could it explain the ice ages? - ​​Have you ever studied aerial photos of ocean waves to assess their evolution for irreducibility/pockets of reducibility? - Do you think ocean waves are computationally universal? ​What are neutrinos for? Why do they exist if they don't interact with anything? Could aliens have a purpose for them? - ​​Didn't some neutrinos cause hardware failure in airplanes? - ​If technology could produce a small practical neutrino emitter and detector, would it be useful to send messages with them? - Will holograms as seen in the Iron Man movie ever be available for widespread use? - Why do some foods, like peanuts and crustaceans, cause deadly allergic reactions in some people, while others can eat them daily without harm? How many species have allergies?  - Do we know the mechanism behind this "training"?

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: In science, when is it preferable to self-publish rather than go through academic journals? ​- What place do you see for competitive behavior (especially in respect to the paper/citation system) in science? - What do you think would be a good replacement for peer review? - Have you ever considered working in finance instead of physics? Many very smart people work for trading companies (such as RenTech/Jane Street) for a couple years. - I sometimes think we waste some of our brightest minds on "making money." Could we somehow "shift" the market demand for technology that highly favors intellectual advancement in ideas sufficiently so that these "analytically bright" people are interested in scientific progression? - How do you "decide" to direct your behavior when faced with aggression in tense meetings? - Is it possible for low-level employees to prove themselves by solving complex problems in an operation despite lacking the typical formal qualifications of education, but nevertheless being promoted? - ​​One of the best docs for technical computing comes from Wolfram. Is there any general philosophy in Wolfram on balancing technical and business-oriented documentation that generates leads? - ​What advice would you have for someone who wants to pursue some academic field that's a bit unorthodox—like, say, your kind of physics—as a graduate student? - What I've been told is to save that for when you become a tenured professor (if ever). ​Is there a way to contribute to science without a college degree? - ​​Humans were scientists for a long time before there were college degrees (let alone colleges).

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: ​​What does the concept of the ruliad say about teleportation? ​​​- So are we experiencing a single state of the universe, or are we sampling different branches to build our experience? ​​​- ​If the speed of light emerges from propagation through discrete emes, then does the speed of light vary slightly? Could this be experimentally validated? ​​​- I've listened to live neurons in a lab, amplified and made audible—very strange experience. - It would be the ultimate biofeedback experience to visually see one's own neuronal activations spatially. Engineering that might be tricky for a while. - Would there be, in theory, a way to measure your relative position in rulial space? - How do new concepts get created and integrated in the mind of humanity? What makes them robust over 1,000+ years?

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: How was it determined that light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum? - Could you speak about the history of the hard sphere model in statistical mechanics? In many textbooks, it is mentioned rather briefly for something so fundamental. - How did the study of nonlinear dynamics come about? I'd imagine it would be a known thing after Newton's work. - How important are complex numbers in the history of science and tech? Would the current state be possible without them? - Solving equations of that form led negative and complex numbers to be taken more seriously, but people did not see the utility of these types of numbers. A lot of facts that are true about real numbers are also true about complex numbers. They're not necessary to solve many problems, but they're convenient for packaging. - Have you ever seen CA-like objects produced by a Jacquard loom? - Just curious on your thoughts on technological singularity.

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: How much does a cat's tail affect its ability to land on its feet? Do cats without tails tend to fall over frequently? - ​​​​​Could a planet have "internal" rotation of its molten core while having a stagnant outer surface, or perhaps a slowly rotating surface? - ​​​​What's the deal with the Dzhanibekov effect (the observation a cosmonaut had when a spinning bolt flipped in space)? ​​​- The head and the shaft are rotating in unison. The head has more inertia around the axis. Don't forget the bolt is in a standing pressurized chamber of air. - ​​​​Will the Earth eventually cool down enough to stop producing a geomagnetic field? - ​​​​​Tails seem to be vestigial for many organisms. 

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: Are periodic boom and bust cycles of the economy inevitable, or should we by now be capable of managing national economies better, simultaneously avoiding both recessions and excessive inflation? - What modes does Stephen Wolfram have? - What are the personality traits of Stephen Wolfram that have made him become an entrepreneur? - Have you ever questioned your competence? If you did, what did you do in that situation? - What methodology do you use when you have to solve a problem you don't know how to solve but that has to be solved fast? - How does Stephen stay organized, in general? And specifically, how does he organize and write his papers and books? - Are there specific questions/audits that you routinely run on your business, life or thought process to facilitate innovation? - Problem solving with other people requires understanding other people's psychology. How do you go about understanding how to influence others to be efficient at solving problems? - Good banter can enhance the conversation. - How do you deal with multiple smart people on your teams disagreeing with each other, e.g. team member A proposes doing f() while team member B proposes g()? - Did you know Paul Graham between 2002 (NKS) and 2005 (Y Combinator founded)? Was NKS implicitly/explicitly why he ran many different "programs" (startups) to see what happened empirically? - It's mind blowing how many of the important points in time of modern innovation Wolfram was in the room for.