The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

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's the difference between bits and bytes? - Can you talk about what a "sufficiently smart compiler" is? ​​​​- Sometimes I wonder if a program can be "lifted" to an unrelated mathematical representation, in which certain transformation rules would discover a more efficient optimization than in the absence of such "lifting." I think this requires "multicompilation."

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: Do you think we'll ever get to the stage of having flying cars? Is there any historical evidence? - Even now with traction control, anti-lock braking systems, automatic crash avoidance and the like, driving cars has automated "smart" safeguards nowadays. - It seems like many science discoveries or inventions happen due to some mistake or error that ultimately makes the insight or experiment work. How prevalent is this? - Can you talk a little bit about the history of automated theorem proving? Do you think we are on the cusp of an era when computers will be proving theorems and mathematicians will interpret them? - I think one interesting question would be to flip that around: could one use theorem-proving algos to figure out why black-box neural nets do what they do? - Will artificial general intelligence be the future of automation or a symbolic language like the Wolfram Language? ​- I think the computational mathematics system of the future will be generating new languages, new notations, new proofs, new theorems and new conjectures. - Artificial intelligence is an effort to create electronic learning. Not human thinking. ​A self-learning program will not develop human-like emotions. It has no physiological needs, and it has no need to fear. It can be replicated, it can be backed up, it can be turned off and on.

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: Does evolution move toward complexity or simplicity? - ​​​We should breed extremophile bacteria and algae to terraform planets by slowly exposing them to toxic atmospheres. ​​​- Can bacteria be diabetic? - ​​Did Craig Venter indeed create synthetic life, or did he just change the existing species? ​​- Maybe there are as many species on Earth as there are different CA rules that exhibit DNA patterns of the mechanical structure of an organism. ​​- The fact that you can edit genes makes me think that so much can be done to cure disorders and diseases. -  ​​What if the malaria parasite has some kind of function in biological systems that we're completely unaware of? This is the kind of thing I'm always wondering about.

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 think software innovations are stronger with mathematical research tied to them, even for "non-mathematical software"? - Can you say more about your writing process? How much time does it take for you to finish writing a blog post? How do you integrate a bunch of connected ideas into a coherent post? - The way I write is writing a rough draft of the most general ideas, then working to clarify them through more precise prose. - How do you tell a good story within your writing and also when communicating that story, i.e. when telling it to people in real life? - Are you going to publish a collection of open questions in ruliology? - Was Steve Jobs a "wave machine," or did he just have the tremendous luck and skill to ride five or six waves during his career? - What is your opinion on the usefulness of pure philosophy? - Would you separate business ideas and ideas that are curiosity- or discovery-driven, i.e. NKS? 

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: Do you think having many (eventually thousands of) IoT devices will necessitate some kind of additional routing logic on local networks to prevent primary devices (desktops) from being slowed? - ​​The implementation of IPv6 solved the problem of the number of possible internet addresses, at least. ​​​​- As higher frequencies are utilized in Wi-Fi to achieve higher bandwidth, Wi-Fi range and penetration are reduced. Is there some tech that would simultaneously increase both bandwidth AND range? - ​​​​​If gravitational waves travel through Penrose's eons, wouldn't these gravitational echoes make every particle wiggle at the quantum level, considering that there is a "noise" in spacetime? - ​​​How can we still see radiation from the early universe? Did it expand faster than light? ​​​​​Was it like a balloon expanding, where the light source was in the beginning expanded along with the universe? ​​- Is it theoretically possible to detect individual gravitons by launching space probes into black holes?

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: Why did electromagnetism become a focus of study so late into human civilization? Wouldn't the ancients have observed and studied magnets and static electricity and characterized it as easily as we did? - Why did Turing come up with Turing machines as a basis for computation and not tag or substitution systems, or mobile automata or register machines? - According to Wikipedia, Telex became an operations teleprinter service in Germany in 1933. Maybe not Telex, but ticker tape. Ticker tape was around in the 1800s. - According to Wikipedia, ticker tape stock price telegraphs were invented in 1867 by Edward A. Calahan, an AT&T employee. - The joke was that Gödel was the only one who read it! - Einstein came to regret the name "theory of relativity." Would "theory of invariance" have been a better choice? - It's somewhat ironic that Russell had one of the clearest prose styles of all time and was responsible for one of the most unreadable books! - At least he didn't name it "Spacetime Stuff and Things."

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's the densest thing in the universe? I've heard that black holes don't count—why? - The entire mass of the Earth at neutron star density would fit into a sphere of 305 m in diameter (the size of the Arecibo Telescope). - What if black holes are like visible branchings in the multiway system? Consider the existence of white holes. So if there is "another universe" on the other side, that universe is causally... - AFAIK, fractal-like patterns are the best method to receive signals, but we now have cellular automata—which can maybe do it even better? - ​I lived in a 16th-floor apartment across from a field of transmission towers for an AM station. There were 5–6 radio towers, the closest about 200 yards away. So the AM station could be heard on lots of electronic devices in our house: telephones, answering machine, recording devices, etc. (The AM station towers were powerful.) - Can it be that one day we will be able to see into Earth's past, finding an object in space that mirrors light left by Earth a long time ago? ​- I can imagine future humans, having forgotten we sent such a signal on a long round-trip journey, receiving our message and jumping to all sorts of funny conclusions, depending on what we sent.

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: Would you agree that the way you succeed matters a lot in regards to whether you get to enjoy your success or not? - How do you mold your environment to create good working habits? - What's the best passive way to make money (stock trading, investing, etc.) and how stable is it? - ​It's a matter of time. If you spend a lot of time on investments, you won't have time for research and other projects. - Any thoughts on managing people's personalities on a project? - What is your approach when exploring a new topic or learning a new technology, e.g. note taking, practice, recall? - On the same note, I believe that a great team makes great products, not great individuals. Have you found this to be true in your products?

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 Excerpt from livestream episode History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 22, 2023), Stephen Wolfram answers: What is the history of AI? What is the first recorded example of artificial intelligence? Stephen's conversation with Terry Sejnowski on the history of neural nets is available here: https://youtu.be/XKC-4Tosdd8

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: Can you explain rasterization? -  Does the human visual system use a molecular-scale version of rasterization? - When I close my eyes and apply pressure, why do I see colored dynamic geometric patterns? ​I also see the grid, and it's interesting how it fades when your normal vision fades back in, and the gray/black squares sometimes oscillate while maintaining the grid structure. - Do you have any stories about Fresnel lenses? I just got the Meta Quest 2 VR headset and it uses them; the same kind that a rear-projection TV or a lighthouse uses, which is amusing. - ​Considering visual perception discontinuous or discrete, can we consider it quantized? In that case, could it be calculated as "discrete packets of visual perception," based on quantum physics?