Stephen Wolfram on Natural Selection

A New Kind of Science ^ | 2002 | Stephen Wolfram

[blam]

bump for later read.

[betty boop]

Thought you might find this interesting.... Wolfram certainly has some quite unusual and interesting insights into a subject matter that has seemed quite settled in biological science....

[RightWhale]

Computational equivalence bump. We're going to hear more from Wolfram.

[RightWhale]

Get the book. At $40.95 it's something a former chip designer would like on his coffee table.

[RightWhale]

Wolfram's idea is new. It might replace much of the current thought on evolution versus creation. Goes off in a new direction.

[Lysander]

I just got a copy of this book. I have not decided if Wolfram is crazy, or I am, for reading it. It sure shakes up one's paradigms.

[NativeNewYorker]

I've been going to the gym, getting pumped up for hefting the copy of his book that's weighing down my home office desk.

[Alamo-Girl]

Very interesting post! Thank you!

[RightWhale]

It is a BIG book if nothing else. Seems to be well-constructed and hi-res printed on good paper as if the author/publisher intended this book to be around for many years.

[NativeNewYorker]

The publicity at the time the book was released indicated Wolfram dictated all physical aspects of the final product.

One wag described it as the costliest vanity book ever.

[VadeRetro]

Sometimes, as here,

But what I believe instead is that the vast majority of the complexity we see in biological systems actually has its origin in the purely abstract fact that among randomly chosen programs many give rise to complex behavior….

I suspect Wolfram has just independently discovered neutral mutations and is needlessly agog. But then I read things like,

Third, whenever the overall behavior of a system is more complex than its underlying program, almost any mutation in the program will lead to a whole collection of detailed changes in the behavior, so that natural selection has no opportunity to pick out changes which are beneficial from those which are not.

and think that Wolfram does not appreciate the way in which natural selection sculpts a population. Although of course the genetic composition of a population changes under selection pressure, individual genes are not often directly selected in or out. Individual organisms are.

In sexual species, just about every organism is genetically unique. A species is a swarm of similar genomes. A species under pressure to change its adaptation is being sculpted by selection in that those best able to get along in a new way are the most likely to make it. The pruning is continuous so long as the selection pressures stay the same. It's done at the organism level. Nothing is operating at the level where Wolfram is imagining the difficulty.

[VadeRetro]

Bump.

[RightWhale]

You need to read the book. He is a mathematician looking at how complexity arises from simple computer programs. His results may eventually be applied to many areas of science, perhaps all areas of science. Such applications and extentions will need to be done by others, he is merely reporting his research into computations done on cumputer.

[Born to Conserve]

This book is a good example of what happens when the writer owns the press.

Wolfram is working outside the scientific community. This does not mean that what he is saying is not true, but it does mean that the filtering effect that the science community normally provides has been circumvented. Huge book, many ideas, very poor reference and review. I only read the bok for about two hours (two venti caffe mochas), but in that time I saw that it was written by someone suffering from a bit of egomania. It is not new science. It is very interesting. A few small bits may be new, but it is not the equivalent of let's say, chaos. Wolfram would like it to be that big, but it is not.

Don't get me wrong -- he's a smart guy with a lot of intersting thoughts, but until the scientific community analizes it for sources, references, errors, etc, it is not anything close to real science -- it is closer to entertainment.

[VadeRetro]

You need to read the book.

Probably true.

He is a mathematician looking at how complexity arises from simple computer programs.

I know you can draw very nice mountains with fractals, but that doesn't exactly mean that mountians come from computer algorithms.

[RightWhale]

it is not the equivalent of let's say, chaos

He treats with and disposes of chaos at about page 100.

[RightWhale]

you can draw very nice mountains with fractals

He treats with and disposes of fractals by page 30.

[Born to Conserve]

Well Rightwhale, I suggest you go find Steven Wolfram and suck his %@#$.

[RightWhale]

I find that most reviewers have skimmed the book or talked to a mathematician who has skimmed the book. Such reviews that result are superficial. It is not necessary to buy the book in order to read it. Most libraries are capable of getting a copy if they don't already have it on their shelves.