History of Science & Technology Q&A (December 4, 2024)

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: What is a very interesting "big picture" discovery in your minimal model for biological evolution that answers questions about Darwin's natural selection? How does it change the narrative? - So the most successful organism is you and me, because we have the potential to organize/find solutions for this überabzählbar unendliche chaos, and for that we get rewarded, according to Blaise Pascal's wager. - Who created the first map? - ​​Do you find morphological attractors in your simple models of biological evolution? There is evidence that morphospace might be like a hyporuliad, according to work by Prof. Michael Levin with planaria. - ​​Are LLMs disconnected from humans in the ruliad? - LLMs' view of reality is mostly language and texts, right? - ​​My experience with art makes me guess illusions tend to be more of a lower/hardware level, since they aren't much subject to qualia. - Do you think it's possible Egyptians had a basic light bulb (Dendera light bulb)? - Were there prominent researchers in ancient civilizations who often referred to "things of the past," or were they mainly working based off of new ideas and hypotheses? - ​​How much of ancient myth reflects technology, like Hephaestus making a giant rock-throwing android? - ​​There's a hieroglyph that looks like a snake inside a light bulb.