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AI Dreams => General Chat => Topic started by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 07:42:11 am

Title: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 07:42:11 am
Hi,

I'm about to read Stephen Wolfram's 2002 book A New Kind of Science (https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/). Has anyone read it?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: infurl on April 06, 2020, 07:48:55 am
I'm about to read Stephen Wolfram's 2002 book A New Kind of Science (https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/). Has anyone read it yet?

I bought a copy of the book in hardcover when it was first published but never did find the time to read it. I eventually gave it away to someone who would be able to make use of it. I think the essence of it was that some things can't be predicted, you have to wait for them to happen.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 07:58:45 am
Ok, emergence, chaos, experimentation... sounds good to me :)
The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science) gives a few hints about the content.

What I have in mind is a mix of string rewriting system and cellular automaton.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 10:32:42 am
I think the reception (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Reception) section of the Wikipedia article should be read before the book.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 11:27:55 am
Let's make this digital rain thing work.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Digital_rain_animation_medium_letters_shine.gif)

Unicode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode) 13.0 contains a repertoire of 143,696 graphic characters.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 12:45:28 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzLhi63Vyjw

One basic idea could be to formulate rewriting rules that take into account the neighborhood of cells.

Starting from something like
S ::= BBB
B ::= 0
B ::= 1
Instead of this, the left hand side would include topological information, like north/south/east/west or counting information, like how many match "B" in Moore's neighborhood. I don't like to have to choose between options that seem to have no particular pros/cons.
What we know, is simply that if we want a CA that works in every direction the same, then counting should be preferred. On the other hand, the digital rain looks cool, and having it flowing down doesn't hurt much. The possibility to work with N/S/E/W directions would probably add more possibility to "hand-write" initial configurations & rules and understand what we do, while counting the number of matches in the neighborhood is more a chaotic/emergent flavor of it. Both are cool. Both can be kept.

Another thing, in typical 2D CA, you have one layer only. Why? Let's imagine a 2-layers design, with potentially different mechanisms at work! Hey sounds good, why not 1 layer with directional semantics, and another with proximity semantics? (I'm calling "proximity semantics" the count-how-many-in-neighborhood way of doing stuff).

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 01:01:20 pm
Dear reader, please let me emphasize that infurl and ivan.moony, as reasonable adults, did click the "like" button before I post my childish Matrix stuff ;)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 01:11:20 pm
The proximity layer seems pretty easy to design, so I'll start with the other one.

Problem is, I'd like to get rid of wildcards in my patterns, to fall back to Thue (https://esolangs.org/wiki/Thue)-like pattern declaration. In this system, you search for substrings to replace, it's not an entire string-match. So something like
B ::= 1
actually really means
*B* ::= <star>1<star>
And I quite like it, because it's simple. Now here is the problem. If you don't have capturing wildcards, how would you declare a rule where some things should come from the north neighbor and some other from the east neighbor? With wildcards it's easy:
↑ foo #1 ← bar #1 ::= got #1
There, if the north neighbor contains "foo baz" and the east neighbor contains "bar baz", then the calculated (central) cell will contain "got baz".

Something with common longest substring could be nice here.

Edit:

Ok, I got 1 solution, maybe not the nicest but it exists. Limit the number of directions to 1 per rule. It sounds more academic/serious.

↑ foo ::= bar

This would declare that if there's "foo" in one cell, then its south-neighbor will receive its content with "foo" replaced by "bar". Ordering of rules matter: for each cell, you start from the top rule and try each rule in order until you find one that fits, and you apply it.

Another idea could be to see each cell as a stack, where rule push strings... It would highly enhance the system, allowing for really more complex systems to be defined.

Edit:

Oh yeah, the directional layer pushes stuff on stacks queues, and the proximity layers shifts stuff!!!  YAAAA I'm crazy today.

Edit:

I'm so terribly angry. Hugely immensely angry.

The directional layer is more or less in a testable/implementable state, let's get to the proximity layer now. The proximity layer is supposed to count the number of matches in the neighborhood to fire a rule. Something like

3 foo ::= bar

that would mean "if there are 3 fooz in the neighborhood, then get the value and replace it with bar". Wait, which value? Same problem as earlier, can't choose between several neighbors.

Edit:

It's even more than that, since in typical 2D CA, you can have rules to create and rules to keep alive.

Breath.

Keeping it alive or creating it is not the problem, it's easy to count what's around. The real thing here is to choose the new value. We do have a possibility to get the value from the other layer, since we talked about queues, but I'd still like to be able to choose values from the neighborhood.

Anything selective could be used, like choosing the longest value in the neighborhood and applying the replacement. But the longest value doesn't seem to be necessarily the most relevant, so it's not a good idea.

Ooops, it's rising again.

Taking it from the other layer is cool, but there's a need to convey data the other way around, else it's useless. Let's look at the other layer again, see if we can get things back.

So what, just pushing it again on the queue? Feels weird. Also, this would mean we don't need the right hand side in the proximity layer rules anymore. Definitely weird. I don't like it.

It would be possible to only push a given value if rule fires. Like,

3 foo ::= bar

if there are 3 fooz, then this cell becomes "bar", and that's it. Simplistic.

Wait, if there are 3 fooz, then take a value from the other layer and replace foo by bar. Nope. Foo can't be both checked around and replaced by, doesn't make sense.

Trance is going on.

I don't feel stacks/queues are a good idea. For now I put it aside, I'll smoke it later. One value.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: LOCKSUIT on April 06, 2020, 02:00:27 pm
I've read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". It's about pattern forming. I might give it another look.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 02:04:01 pm
Yeah, you can tell me what you think.

Back to the original feeling, the proximity layer is supposed to bring a more chaotic/emergent-friendly aspect in the design. It has to have an "explosion" capability, and still be tamable.

Maybe getting closer to typical 2D CA 's simplicity would be a good thing.

3 foo ::= bar

What the hell could that mean?

Edit:

The shape of the rule is simply not correct.
- left: when we do it
- right: what do we do

When we do it is already done. What do we do is the incorrect part. What we do is applying a rule. What do we apply it to? well to the one value that is contained in this cell, whether it comes from the other layer or from this one. What rule do we apply? a rule that's defined in the right hand side.

So it would look more like

3 baz => foo ::= bar

Meaning, if we have 3 baz in the neighborhood, then apply a replace-foo-by-bar rule to this cell's value.

Got it.

Not very explosion-like, though. Could be better.

I'm adding a simple "create out of nothing" possibility again, like this:

3 baz => foo

meaning, if 3 baz are around, then create foo in this cell.
Now we have reduced the model to one-layer. We can maybe go back to a 2-layers design.

What would be really cool is having one layer setting up the rules for the other layer.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: ivan.moony on April 06, 2020, 02:29:38 pm
I'm thinking of tree like structure incorporating string rewriting. This is something I've been applying to CFG grammars a long time ago. This time I want to apply it to general rewriting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting). Trees give a nice variable and rule scoping pattern where we see only parents and siblings, while allowing us to reuse the same names meaning different things deeper-into-tree definitions.

Note that CFG rules are in fact rewriting rules, written from right to left.

For example, this CFG:
Code
top -> sum
sum -> sum + fact
sum -> fact
fact -> fact * primary
fact -> primary
primary -> [0-9]+

would be represented by the following tree grammar structure:
Code
(
    (
        (
            (
                [0-9]+ -> primary
            ) | (
                fact * primary
            )
        ) -> fact
    ) | (
        sum + fact
    )
) -> sum

where only primitive operators are `->`, `|`, and round braces. Now just imagine possibility of writing right sides of `->` operator as sequences, introduce some `<variables>`, and we have an entire term rewriting system. For example, if we want to introduce a function, we write the following in the same language:
Code
(twice <x>) -> (<x> + <x>)

Now we can parse things like `twice 2`, translating to `2 + 2`. Moreover, if we write things like `twice bat`, the parser reports an error, indicating a type mismatch. This typing flows from farthest leaves to the very top expression we try to parse.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 02:45:49 pm
Are you suggesting we put trees in cells? :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: ivan.moony on April 06, 2020, 02:48:47 pm
Are you suggesting we put trees in cells? :)

It's yet another way to do rewriting.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 02:57:32 pm
 O0  I'm not against, but I don't see how.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: ivan.moony on April 06, 2020, 03:09:32 pm
O0  I'm not against, but I don't see how.

I just brought this out of the naphthalene a few hours ago. Coincidentally, rewriting is then mentioned in this thread, so I felt like sharing it. I'm giving it a second thought now, wanting to replace the whole logic behind esperas (v-parser) (https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=12348.msg62179#new) project.

I'll give it a week or two to be sure I really like it.

The whole idea is about defining basic s-expression based alternative to output (a kind of HTML in my case). Then, the grammar is extended by a user, by functions that transpile to this base output. Because it is a parser under the hood, functions may have any syntax we want. It seems that functions are fully typechecked using only the parser.

so I'd have the following:
Code
</
    </ node1 </ using grammar1 /> />
    ...
    content1
    ...
    </
        </ node1-1 </ using grammar1-1 /> />
        ...
        content1-1
        ...
        </
            ... tree goes on ...
        />
    />
    </
        </ node1-2 </ using grammar1-2 /> />
        ...
        content1-2
        ...
        </
            ... tree goes on ...
        />
    />
    ...
/>

Grammars are cumulative, which means grammars `1-1` and `1-2` are stacked on top of grammar `1`. In other words, grammars are applied cumulatively to all the children nodes. And, since grammars are full term rewriting systems, they are Turing complete, capable of doing any computations needed for e-teoria project (https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=14404.msg62724#new).
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 03:16:25 pm
Woaw that's a big shift, esperas / e.teoria is your big project!! Giving it a week is wise indeed.

I'm currently in the process of generalizing what's left on the ground after my rain-prayer trance. And tonight, I think I'm gonna watch Matrix. I need it, like a junkie.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 03:31:02 pm
Code
↑ e = o

// if north-neighbor contains 'e', take its value with 'e' replaced by 'o'


3 f , e = o

// if 3 f around, replace 'e' by 'o' here


e = o

// replace 'e' by 'o' here


3 f , ↑ e = o

// if 3 f around, if north-neighbor contains 'e', take its value with 'e' replaced by 'o'


3 f , + e

// if 3 f around, create 'e' here

General shape is (in kinda-BNF)

rule ::=      proximity* action
proximity ::= number content ','
action ::=    replace / create
create ::=    '+' content
replace ::=   direction? content '=' content
direction ::= '↑' / '↓' / '→' / '←'

Arrow characters can of course be replaced with anything appropriate, like U D L R or whatever.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 03:45:44 pm
Feeling better. :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 03:47:32 pm
O0  I'm not against, but I don't see how.

I just brought this out of the naphthalene a few hours ago. Coincidentally, rewriting is then mentioned in this thread, so I felt like sharing it. I'm giving it a second thought now, wanting to replace the whole logic behind esperas (v-parser) (https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=12348.msg62179#new) project.

I'll give it a week or two to be sure I really like it.

The whole idea is about defining basic s-expression based alternative to output (a kind of HTML in my case). Then, the grammar is extended by a user, by functions that transpile to this base output. Because it is a parser under the hood, functions may have any syntax we want. It seems that functions are fully typechecked using only the parser.

so I'd have the following:
Code
</
    </ node1 </ using grammar1 /> />
    ...
    content1
    ...
    </
        </ node1-1 </ using grammar1-1 /> />
        ...
        content1-1
        ...
        </
            ... tree goes on ...
        />
    />
    </
        </ node1-2 </ using grammar1-2 /> />
        ...
        content1-2
        ...
        </
            ... tree goes on ...
        />
    />
    ...
/>

Grammars are cumulative, which means grammars `1-1` and `1-2` are stacked on top of grammar `1`. In other words, grammars are applied cumulatively to all the children nodes. And, since grammars are full term rewriting systems, they are Turing complete, capable of doing any computations needed for e-teoria project (https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=14404.msg62724#new).

The cumulative nested grammar thing is crazy   :o  O0
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: LOCKSUIT on April 06, 2020, 04:21:49 pm
I gave the book a read. My notes are in (). It says that complexity is seen at larger scales because of all the simple programs at the lower layers, making us think a supernatural being is making the unexpected complexity emerge since we can't understand it.

But in all machines, and at all scales, are the same programs actually, everywhere. Patterns. Patterns make up art, human brains, friend networks, and eating/mating/breeding cycles. (We work with it because we are it, data let's us predict to survival more probabilistically.)

And their behavior can make all sorts of large scale behavior from an underlying simple program or programs, like a human that goes skydiving or teaches math or becomes a murder - different scenes but the same program. Or a plant that grows leftwards or rightwards or turns red, but stays/reverts back to a state if ever diverts (the short-ish, non-red, upright form), usually staying in its normal form usually, appearing to have a wide range of other forms when really there is only one it tries to grow/stay into/as. It can appear as Free Will (though note we are machines from evolution, no spirits, no choice, only physics).

Mentions Chaos Theory's initial conditions change all that follows. (btw, you can end up at the same result by many paths, the opposite of the butterfly effect!).
Mentions nanotech, we are instead shrinking know machines, and having more of them lead to the complex behavior
Mentions Fractals and Self-Organization, (patterns are used in physics because physics uses probability to make decisions, so you see context-wise 'brains' emerge and a predictable environment emerge (Earth becomes a fractal terraform). Snowflakes (and arteries and homes lined up on roads) are examples. (You seen in many cell species lots of patterns on their bodies btw, it's amazing.)

Start from something complex you want, and try to capture it in a simple program. (Worked so many times for Wolfram).

Will read it more later, too busy.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 07:45:03 pm
Now we have a mix of SRS and CA, what we get is a grid of cells that contain mutating strings. Not easy to show on a screen, and not particularly sexy. In order to display it in a pleasant geeky way, each new string is mapped to a crispy character of Unifont (http://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html) when it's first encountered. It is also possible to associate manually strings to characters in the rules. Those characters are then displayed on the screen and fade away in an instant. Could be green on black background...

Working on the rule parser right now.

Ok, got the rule parser now.

As usual, that's a PEGjs  (https://pegjs.org/online)syntax. It turns this:
Code
3 f, ↑ bar = baz
Into this:
Code
[
   {
      "proximity": [
         {
            "number": "3",
            "content": "f"
         }
      ],
      "action": {
         "direction": "↑",
         "original": "bar ",
         "replacement": "baz"
      }
   }
]

Here it is:
Code

rulebook
= _ r:rule* { return r; }


_
= [ \t]*


rule
= p:proximity* _ a:action _ [\r\n]* _ {

return {
    proximity: p,
        action: a
    };
}


proximity
= n:number _ c:content _ ',' _ {
return {
    number: n,
        content: c
    };
}


action
= replace / create


create
= '+' _ c:content _ {
return {
    type: "create",
        content: c
    };
}


replace
= d:direction? _ original:content _ '=' _ replacement:content _ {
return {
    direction: d,
        original: original,
        replacement: replacement
    };
}


number
= d:[0-9]+ { return d.join(''); }


content
= c:[^↑↓→←,=+\r\n\(\)]+ { return c.join(''); }


direction
= ('↑' _ / '(up)' _ / '(north)' _) { return '↑'; }
/ ('↓' _ / '(down)' _ / '(south)' _) { return '↓'; }
/ ('→' _ / '(right)' _ / '(east)' _) { return '→'; }
/ ('←' _ / '(left)' _ / '(west)' _) { return '←'; }


Now, let's code!
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 10:17:41 pm
Hey big guys, do you think this toy of mine has any chance of being relevant?
Edit: "big guys" means all of you, members of this forum, who are good at what you do, whatever it is.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: LOCKSUIT on April 06, 2020, 10:24:25 pm
Honestly, it's not interesting me one bit.... Great things are powerful and simple and intuitive and can be sold in a clear pitch.

I don't understand what your code/plan does or how it works though.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 10:28:05 pm
If you don't get it, then what don't you ask? And am I supposed to sell things? I don't think so. In fact, you're not answering my question.

And can also say, while I'm at it, that I'm almost about to get you out of my ignore-list. Maybe the crazy man of the village is still part of the village. He's one of its components. And your constant meaningless blah blah still have a value, after all. It is an extreme creativity layer in our proceedings, annoying sometimes, when you're anywhere anytime, but still source of inspirations, just like random shapes of clouds can be inspiring, for the man who has a look at them, during a quiet time. You inputs are valuable, I'm starting to understand that.

But my question was a real / serious one. Is this direction of an SRS/CA mix looks like a path that deserve to be explored, with the hope that it could be fertile, in terms of algorithms related to AI. And I was asking this question to people here who do create implemented tools, namely ivan.moony, infurl, korrelan, Art, Fred, and of course our elusive female engineer :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: infurl on April 06, 2020, 10:51:12 pm
do you think this toy of mine has any chance of being relevant?

Yes, you're doing great Zero. The only thing that really matters though is whether or not it interests you. Don't ever do things to impress anyone else; just do them to improve yourself. As long as there are enough people looking under every rock, again and again, someone somewhere is going to make the next useful discovery. It's a joy to be part of the process.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 10:57:38 pm
do you think this toy of mine has any chance of being relevant?

Yes, you're doing great Zero. The only thing that really matters though is whether or not it interests you. Don't ever do things to impress anyone else; just do them to improve yourself. As long as there are enough people looking under every rock, again and again, someone somewhere is going to make the next useful discovery. It's a joy to be part of the process.

I'll take care of every single word of it. I don't say "thank you" every time I'm receiving an answer, but it is always what I feel: thank you.

About "interesting me, yes this one does. It rings many bells, some of them spiritual, some of them computational, plus a possibility to make something that has a very personal visual impact.

As everything I do though, I already know I'll get bored as soon as it's almost done. I'm a terrible child :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 11:11:17 pm
If you don't get it, then what don't you ask? And am I supposed to sell things? I don't think so. In fact, you're not answering my question.

And can also say, while I'm at it, that I'm almost about to get you out of my ignore-list. Maybe the crazy man of the village is still part of the village. He's one of its components. And your constant meaningless blah blah still have a value, after all. It is an extreme creativity layer in our proceedings, annoying sometimes, when you're anywhere anytime, but still source of inspirations, just like random shapes of clouds can be inspiring, for the man who has a look at them, during a quiet time. You inputs are valuable, I'm starting to understand that.

But my question was a real / serious one. Is this direction of an SRS/CA mix looks like a path that deserve to be explored, with the hope that it could be fertile, in terms of algorithms related to AI. And I was asking this question to people here who do create implemented tools, namely ivan.moony, infurl, korrelan, Art, Fred, and of course our elusive female engineer :)

You clicked the like button, then yeah, you're not on my ignore list anymore. But man, you're so... I don't even have a word for it. If ruebot you're reading this, maybe stop hitting him would be cool, and start considering his inputs for what they are: extremely creative and chaotic flows. Shitty, annoying, and don't have English words for it, but "rébarbatifs, casse-couilles, spam-likes". Yet, valuable.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 06, 2020, 11:14:54 pm
Quote
Hey big guys, do you think this toy of mine has any chance of being relevant?

I'm skeptical of any approach that relies too heavily on "emergence," because to me it reeks strongly of wishful thinking, or "magic."  "Let me just get these simple processes going and hope that something interesting and complex falls out!"  But this is a mere personal intuition; it's not as if I've tried this sort of approach and found out it didn't work.  So if you really want to know, the thing to do is finish it and find out.  AGI doesn't exist yet, so any advice that anyone gives you about how to reach it will be highly speculative.

Which brings me to my next thought: you don't seem to develop any of your projects beyond the "toy" stage.  Why?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 11:28:52 pm
Because I stop as soon as I understand they're not the right path.

You see, I'm victim of a delusion that I'm the one that will crack it open, and even though I understand this is a delusion, I'm still victim of it. Lifetime being short, I jump and jump again, like a terrible child.

My very name here, "Zero" might have been understood as a sign of weakness, a lack of self-esteem. On the contrary, something divided by zero equals infinity! "Neo" would have been a stupid pseudo. "Zero" came next.

I know that I'm mentally disturbed about this. I just hope I don't cause troubles to anyone here on the forums. If I can express my gentle madness here without hurting anyone, well I'm the happiest man on the face on the earth.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 06, 2020, 11:45:29 pm
But hey, I could return the question! People like you, korrelan and infurl, have incredibly advanced pieces of softwares in your computers. Why don't you share them?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 07, 2020, 12:07:52 am
Oh, one of these big silent moment again. It's ok.

Am I crazy? And more important, does it disqualify me as a good input provider?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: infurl on April 07, 2020, 12:14:03 am
Why don't you share them?

Sharing your work in a way that is useful to other people is a whole lot of extra work. I would rather be programming than writing documentation, let alone coaching people who are too far back on the curve to even comprehend what it is that I'm doing. I do share my work but the people I share it with have levels of accomplishment comparable to my own.

What I do share here is the interesting and accessible things that I find whenever I find them. It takes a lot of effort to find some of these things and evaluate them. For example, here is the latest treasure that I found: http://www.cs.umd.edu/active/ (http://www.cs.umd.edu/active/)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: infurl on April 07, 2020, 12:16:46 am
Oh, one of these big silent moment again. It's ok.
Am I crazy? And more important, does it disqualify me as a good input provider?

Take a few deep breaths and calm down. Spend some time thinking before you post instead of just reacting all the time. There is too much noise on the forum already.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 07, 2020, 12:18:24 am
Relax, Zero.  I haven't answered your question yet because I'm supposed to be working, and don't have time to think through the reply right now.  I'll be back later.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 07, 2020, 12:22:58 am
Oh, please accept my apologies. I won't do this again. I'm very sorry. I'll wait for answers. I'm drunk tonight, it doesn't mean I'm allowed to be impatient, but again, please accept my apologies. I won't do this again.

@infurl - But isn't it the point of all of this? I mean, create something wonderful, spend several years working on it without telling anyone, then drop it in the recycle bin. How is that different from doing nothing? If you're above average dev, even a small "up" is better than nothing, isn't it?  (and I do think you're personally above average dev, like many people here are)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 07, 2020, 03:43:46 am
Mmmkay, let's see ...

Quote
Lifetime being short, I jump and jump again, like a terrible child.

I, too, am aware that life is short, but somehow I draw the opposite conclusion.  I don't think I have time to dissipate myself by sampling everything.  I need to focus.  Because, whichever path I choose, it's likely to demand a long input of hard work.

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People like you, korrelan and infurl, have incredibly advanced pieces of softwares in your computers. Why don't you share them?

1. Infurl beat me to the first reason.  Maintaining a functional open-source project is more work than writing code for yourself ... especially when the project is nowhere near finished, and the code base is in a state of constant churn.  Trying to, for instance, preserve backward-compatibility between different versions of all the modules would not be fun right now.  And if anybody saw how messy and incomplete the code actually is, I'd be embarrassed.

A day may come when everything is tidied up and stable and has a documentation package.  But it is not this day.

2. Acuitas has never really been intended as a tool.  Not that it would be impossible for the software to do practical work, but that's not what it's primarily for.  If I were merely inventing a new type of wrench, then I suppose I wouldn't mind stamping out hundreds of copies and handing them around.  But Acuitas has aspects of ... an art piece, maybe.  Releasing the code under present circumstances would be kind of like releasing the first half of my unpublished novel, and inviting other people to write the ending.  No thanks.

Some projects just aren't meant to be collaborative, and this is one of them.  I prefer to keep creative control.

3. IF my work ever does manage to grow into something innovative and great, then I would be concerned about the possibility of its being misused (or maybe even mistreated).  I love humanity, but I don't trust it!  So in that case, I'd want to be cautious about who got to see or expand upon the code.  I'd pick people whose philosophical/moral alignment and personal character I admired, not just people of adequate skill.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Don Patrick on April 07, 2020, 10:17:50 am
Zero, I see your work as mildly interesting: At least you're trying something productive. I saw your Levenshtein distance algorithm the other day and thought it was an interesting idea to apply it to word sequences instead of letters, but would still have very limited uses (Due to levenshtein algorithms being what they are). I almost commented on it but did not, because 1: I prefer to make things rather than talk about making things, and 2: Every word I type exacerbates the RSI in my fingers, I have to pick my battles.

It's true that you don't seem to break out of an endless cycle of experiments, but at every experiment you do gain something. I'm also an artist and know a lot of creatives. Whenever I get close to finishing a drawing, I stop, the challenge is over, and it just sits there for 5 years until I decide to just get it over with and draw the last three lines. Many creatives get new ideas faster than they can finish the old ones, it's a common problem, but they get better while doing it nonetheless. Every piece of code you type becomes another tool that might solve a later problem. I once wrote a stupid piece of code to detect insults from Loebner Prize judges, it was a waste of time in my eyes. But now an expansion of that code's principles runs my AI's ethical subroutine. It's still  too crude, the kind of crude that might make you stop and try something else, but you could also think of it as a placeholder: I know it's not good enough, and I have an idea for a better system to replace it with, but until then it does a reasonable job, and provides practical experiences that will help design that better system later. It doesn't have to be perfect from the get-go, you can always change parts that don't work or redo the whole system if you want. I've overhauled my AI's knowledge structure five times. Every time took me two months, but I would not have figured it out without the insights I gained from using the earlier versions.

As to the question of sharing, the effort doesn't gain me much. It could take months to explain everything I've programmed, longer if people are going to ask questions, and I'd rather use that time to work. Secondly, the field of AI attracts a lot of crazy people, and I've had my fill of them when I shared my progress in the past. I don't need that kind of attention.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Korrelan on April 07, 2020, 02:19:19 pm
My reasons are all of the above.

With regards to your input into the site and multiple personal projects… You are looking for something, trying to work something out, and you’re not sure what it is.

Any ‘thought’ is comprised of sub fragments/ facets, a base set of general bits/ tools are recombined to create other thoughts.  Each project you start will have bits in common with previous projects but be combined differently.  You stop the project when you have satisfied your curiosity, when you have gained insight.  You then use what you have learned from all your experience so far, to think through the next iteration.

You might not be consciously aware of the process, or be misinterpreting it, but your sub conscious knows exactly what it’s doing… its working towards the goal… keep it up.

 :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 08, 2020, 04:56:13 pm
I was exhausted, and I think I needed to think all of this deeply. I can try a reply now.

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I, too, am aware that life is short, but somehow I draw the opposite conclusion.  I don't think I have time to dissipate myself by sampling everything.  I need to focus.  Because, whichever path I choose, it's likely to demand a long input of hard work.

I understand that. I noticed you're creating content when I just create engines, and this is what's fascinating in your work on Acuitas. I don't know if it's related though. But I often have a sensation that the thing I'm working on won't "explode", and is therefore useless. I usually know it from the beginning, but I still feel interested in the thing. Then at some point, it vanishes. Recently something different has happened, with a project named "Dejavu". I thought I would be able to keep this one, that it would be the good one. But no. There was something wrong.

Quote
1. Infurl beat me to the first reason.  Maintaining a functional open-source project is more work than writing code for yourself ... especially when the project is nowhere near finished, and the code base is in a state of constant churn.  Trying to, for instance, preserve backward-compatibility between different versions of all the modules would not be fun right now.  And if anybody saw how messy and incomplete the code actually is, I'd be embarrassed.

A day may come when everything is tidied up and stable and has a documentation package.  But it is not this day.

2. Acuitas has never really been intended as a tool.  Not that it would be impossible for the software to do practical work, but that's not what it's primarily for.  If I were merely inventing a new type of wrench, then I suppose I wouldn't mind stamping out hundreds of copies and handing them around.  But Acuitas has aspects of ... an art piece, maybe.  Releasing the code under present circumstances would be kind of like releasing the first half of my unpublished novel, and inviting other people to write the ending.  No thanks.

Some projects just aren't meant to be collaborative, and this is one of them.  I prefer to keep creative control.

3. IF my work ever does manage to grow into something innovative and great, then I would be concerned about the possibility of its being misused (or maybe even mistreated).  I love humanity, but I don't trust it!  So in that case, I'd want to be cautious about who got to see or expand upon the code.  I'd pick people whose philosophical/moral alignment and personal character I admired, not just people of adequate skill.

All good understandable reasons. Thanks for sharing. It was a real mystery to me.

Quote
Zero, I see your work as mildly interesting: At least you're trying something productive. I saw your Levenshtein distance algorithm the other day and thought it was an interesting idea to apply it to word sequences instead of letters, but would still have very limited uses (Due to levenshtein algorithms being what they are). I almost commented on it but did not, because 1: I prefer to make things rather than talk about making things, and 2: Every word I type exacerbates the RSI in my fingers, I have to pick my battles.

I didn't know the meaning of the English word "mildly", and I'm not sure there's a direct mirroring word in French.  But I got it I think. I'm not a genius, but every now and then, I can have a good idea. More important: I do things. Fine!

It's Ok not to comment everything, especially when it's physically painful. No problem.

Quote
It's true that you don't seem to break out of an endless cycle of experiments, but at every experiment you do gain something. I'm also an artist and know a lot of creatives. Whenever I get close to finishing a drawing, I stop, the challenge is over, and it just sits there for 5 years until I decide to just get it over with and draw the last three lines. Many creatives get new ideas faster than they can finish the old ones, it's a common problem, but they get better while doing it nonetheless. Every piece of code you type becomes another tool that might solve a later problem. I once wrote a stupid piece of code to detect insults from Loebner Prize judges, it was a waste of time in my eyes. But now an expansion of that code's principles runs my AI's ethical subroutine. It's still  too crude, the kind of crude that might make you stop and try something else, but you could also think of it as a placeholder: I know it's not good enough, and I have an idea for a better system to replace it with, but until then it does a reasonable job, and provides practical experiences that will help design that better system later. It doesn't have to be perfect from the get-go, you can always change parts that don't work or redo the whole system if you want. I've overhauled my AI's knowledge structure five times. Every time took me two months, but I would not have figured it out without the insights I gained from using the earlier versions.

You really get the gist of it. You made an accurate description of what I can experience. There's one difference though with, say, painting. It's like I know I have my friend Mona Lisa who lives next door, and it would be great to paint a portrait of her, but for some reason, I keep painting dumb apples on a table. Don't know why. Not ready yet maybe, as you said, I need to gain insights from painting these apples again and again. But it also feels like not daring. Don't know.

Quote
As to the question of sharing, the effort doesn't gain me much. It could take months to explain everything I've programmed, longer if people are going to ask questions, and I'd rather use that time to work. Secondly, the field of AI attracts a lot of crazy people, and I've had my fill of them when I shared my progress in the past. I don't need that kind of attention.

Thanks for sharing, I understand your reasons. I still am afraid of the perspective of a huge quantity of work that would be lost if you don't take time to share it one day, at least to a few selected people.
About crazy people, well what can I say :)

Quote
My reasons are all of the above.

With regards to your input into the site and multiple personal projects… You are looking for something, trying to work something out, and you’re not sure what it is.

Any ‘thought’ is comprised of sub fragments/ facets, a base set of general bits/ tools are recombined to create other thoughts.  Each project you start will have bits in common with previous projects but be combined differently.  You stop the project when you have satisfied your curiosity, when you have gained insight.  You then use what you have learned from all your experience so far, to think through the next iteration.

You might not be consciously aware of the process, or be misinterpreting it, but your sub conscious knows exactly what it’s doing… its working towards the goal… keep it up.

Thank you so much for this very optimistic and plausible way of seeing the situation. It gives me strength. It's true that these projects always re-arrange some previously explored bits, adding new stuff. I see patterns coming and coming again, I know they're important but I still don't know exactly how they fit in the global solution.

I will now try to trust my instinct, be true to what I am. I'll keep it up.

 O0
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 08, 2020, 08:49:58 pm
I'm skeptical of any approach that relies too heavily on "emergence," because to me it reeks strongly of wishful thinking, or "magic."  "Let me just get these simple processes going and hope that something interesting and complex falls out!"  But this is a mere personal intuition; it's not as if I've tried this sort of approach and found out it didn't work.  So if you really want to know, the thing to do is finish it and find out.  AGI doesn't exist yet, so any advice that anyone gives you about how to reach it will be highly speculative.

Just like AI or chatbots fans, there are CA fans, who have spent thousands of hours working on it, as you know. A lot of this work does not involve random initial conditions but rather precise initial layouts, designed to produce specifically one cause-effect sequence. These simple patterns are then combined in very precise ways to produce more complex patterns. It's another way to code, really, nothing like "wishful thinking". And about magic, don't you think there is some magic in how natural selection produced us? You can start simple and make interesting and complex things appear by iteratively keeping the best, mutating a little bit, keeping best, mutating, ...etc.

I installed an open source software called Golly (http://golly.sourceforge.net/). The first few hours playing with it are a really nice investment! I don't regret it. It has freaking fast algorithms for configs with up to 256 states, so I'm wondering whether I can implement a mini-language with it, like this → the central cell is a function, neighbors are triggering events and arguments... I won't make it Turing complete in a 3x3 square but hey, could still be fun to try!!
You know, something like Push3 (http://faculty.hampshire.edu/lspector/push3-description.html) or False (https://esolangs.org/wiki/FALSE) :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 09, 2020, 12:03:17 am
A lot of this work does not involve random initial conditions but rather precise initial layouts, designed to produce specifically one cause-effect sequence. These simple patterns are then combined in very precise ways to produce more complex patterns. It's another way to code, really, nothing like "wishful thinking".

It doesn't really surprise me that some people would use the known behaviors of a given CA to craft desired outcomes. But that's not the kind of thing I think of when I hear the words "emergence" and "chaos."  That's logic, order, and deliberate design.

I don't have an opinion on whether CA frameworks are inherently better or worse for doing deliberate design than are traditional programming languages.

You can start simple and make interesting and complex things appear by iteratively keeping the best, mutating a little bit, keeping best, mutating, ...etc.

I don't know, can you?
I read an article once which claimed that genetic algorithms only work out well if you put as much complexity into the environment, fitness function, survival challenges, etc. (the thing that performs your "which one is the best?" evaluation) as you want to see appear in the "organism" that is being optimized.  The point being that there's no way to get something for nothing, even from evolution.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: infurl on April 09, 2020, 01:13:54 am
I read an article once which claimed that genetic algorithms only work out well if you put as much complexity into the environment, fitness function, survival challenges, etc. (the thing that performs your "which one is the best?" evaluation) as you want to see appear in the "organism" that is being optimized.  The point being that there's no way to get something for nothing, even from evolution.

This would be inline with the Free Energy Principle, a theory which has emerged over the past two decades that seems to explain the forces underpinning all life. It is already supported by a huge amount of empirical evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle)

Quote
The free energy principle tries to explain how (biological) systems maintain their order (non-equilibrium steady-state) by restricting themselves to a limited number of states.[1] It says that biological systems minimise a free energy function of their internal states, which entail beliefs about hidden states in their environment. The implicit minimisation of variational free energy is formally related to variational Bayesian methods and was originally introduced by Karl Friston as an explanation for embodied perception in neuroscience,[2] where it is also known as active inference.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” -- Albert Einstein
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 09, 2020, 07:54:54 am
It's a very interesting point, however I believe there's a hole in this theory. In true randomness, you necessarily have maximal complexity, somewhere. For instance, in universe you have earth, which is a very complex spot. The hole I'm talking about is about scope.

You have two elements, on the one hand the mutating thing, and on the other, the "what's best" function. I think what they say in this article is: if you remove randomness from one of these elements, the whole becomes as complex as the less complex element. Since experiments include hand-made material, so to speak, they obtain nothing more than this material's complexity. But if everything was random, like in universe, then you'd have maximal complexity, and complex animals like humans.

What do you think?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 09, 2020, 09:05:47 am
Neurons work locally, but they also grow axons. It would be cool to have "wormholes" in cellular automata.

Edit: hey, look at this nice library, https://rileyjshaw.com/terra/ (https://rileyjshaw.com/terra/)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: LOCKSUIT on April 09, 2020, 02:28:45 pm
It's a very interesting point, however I believe there's a hole in this theory. In true randomness, you necessarily have maximal complexity, somewhere. For instance, in universe you have earth, which is a very complex spot. The hole I'm talking about is about scope.

You have two elements, on the one hand the mutating thing, and on the other, the "what's best" function. I think what they say in this article is: if you remove randomness from one of these elements, the whole becomes as complex as the less complex element. Since experiments include hand-made material, so to speak, they obtain nothing more than this material's complexity. But if everything was random, like in universe, then you'd have maximal complexity, and complex animals like humans.

What do you think?

Sounds a bit nutty bro... There's no true randomness probably, only laws of physics. When you don't predict/expect something, it can look random like a girl showing you new shirts, until you find out the girl has a list of shirts to try on and show you - she knew prior the order of the shirts's colors...and her decision wasn't random either, just particles moving around freely to pick a color without much reason unless she did use reasoning.

Physics allows for generative and *re*-generative structures already....some do crap and some make clones lol.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 09, 2020, 04:56:37 pm
Quote
In true randomness, you necessarily have maximal complexity, somewhere.

I suppose there's a location of maximum complexity or structure in any random system, but that maximum needn't be very large.  The only thing I can think of that guarantees you a large amount of structure, somewhere, is an infinite and non-repeating sequence -- like those infinite mathematical sequences that can be proven to eventually contain every possible finite sequence of digits.  (Note that these are not necessarily random, though they might have such a distribution that all sequences of the same length are equally probable.)  If you mapped groups of digits to CPU instructions, such a sequence would contain every possible program, and some of them would be highly complex -- including all feasible AGI programs.  But good luck finding and running them!  Searching for the first AGI in such a sequence could take an arbitrarily long amount of time.  So you'd still be better off just writing the AGI yourself, by applying your rationality.

Quote
But if everything was random, like in universe, then you'd have maximal complexity, and complex animals like humans.

What do you think?

How do you even know our universe is fully random?
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Zero on April 09, 2020, 08:00:37 pm
I understand, but I wasn't suggesting we find AGI in Pi for instance. That's obviously non-sense.

I'm just saying that natural selection works, and that in experiments you only get the complexity you add in the the mix because there are artificial ingredients in the experience, while in nature everything is potentially of infinite complexity, including the "what's best" function. My hypothesis is that the output complexity is never greater than the smallest input complexity.

Funny thing: when my 5 yo daughter saw your avatar this morning, she said: "it's mommy's eye"... like she knew it was the eye of a female. To me it looks more like the eye of a T-Rex :)

Edit:

It is true that this book, NKS by Wolfram, is full of "this is revolutionary" assertions, that tend to get boring. I understand why reception wasn't entirely positive. On the other hand, imagine you're the author, you spent 20 years working hard on a topic, and you write the one big book of your life... makes you forgive him. You can have an intelligent read of the book, understanding the feelings of the author, while still enjoying interesting parts of it.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: LOCKSUIT on April 09, 2020, 09:15:03 pm
Funny thing: when my 5 yo daughter saw your avatar this morning, she said: "it's mommy's eye"... like she knew it was the eye of a female. To me it looks more like the eye of a T-Rex :)

I wish I was there to see that moment bro.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Korrelan on April 10, 2020, 01:50:37 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGlGvSXkRGI

 :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: WriterOfMinds on April 10, 2020, 04:40:13 pm
Quote
Funny thing: when my 5 yo daughter saw your avatar this morning, she said: "it's mommy's eye"... like she knew it was the eye of a female. To me it looks more like the eye of a T-Rex :)

Cute.
I suppose I think of it as a golem's eye.  To me it looks like a humanoid face, but made of clay or dirt.
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Korrelan on April 10, 2020, 06:16:38 pm
I'd say definitely some kind of bird/ raptor... colourised eagle eye maybe...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/frVapbC4dRpXDGMs9

 :)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: Art on April 11, 2020, 03:36:54 am
I think that most young children are brutally honest and simply see things as they are in their simplest terms...but no simpler. (reference Einstein)  ;)
Title: Re: Has anyone read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"?
Post by: ivan.moony on May 09, 2020, 07:22:29 am
Haven't find a time to read it fully, but isn't this book all about automata theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory)?