Re: The Wolfram 2,3 Turing Machine Research Prize - Announcement

On Oct 25, 3:45 pm, egalois <hzen...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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Prize Announcement

THE WOLFRAM 2,3 TURING MACHINE RESEARCH PRIZE

October 24th, 2007

http://www.wolframprize.org
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The Prize Is Won: The Simplest Universal Turing Machine Is Proved

It has been a long time since Alan Turing's original 1936 paper about
universal Turing machines. In 2002, Stephen Wolfram identified a
candidate for the smallest universal Turing machine, from a search of
the 2,985,984 2-state 3-color possibilities. As of today, we know that
Wolfram's 2,3 Turing machine actually is universal.

On May 14, 2007, as part of the fifth anniversary of Wolfram's book A
New Kind of Science, a $25,000 research prize was announced for
determining whether or not the Wolfram 2,3 Turing machine was in fact
universal. Only five months later, that prize has now been won, ending
a quest of more than half a century to find the very simplest
universal Turing machine.

Alex Smith, a 20-year-old undergraduate in Birmingham, UK, has given a
proof that Wolfram's 2,3 Turing machine is indeed universal. He has a
background in mathematics and esoteric programming languages.

This universality proof is also another piece of evidence for
Wolfram's general Principle of Computational Equivalence.

The official prize ceremony is planned for November at Bletchley Park,
UK, site of Alan Turing's wartime work.

For more information about the prize and the solution, see:http://www.wolframprize.org

Stephen Wolfram has posted his personal reaction to the prize at:http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/10/the_prize_is_won_the_simplest.html


The FOM newsgroup is discussing the work of Alex Smith and some
technical issues are being raised. Looks like this paper was pushed
through by Wolfram and his associates without consulting the expert
committee on whether the paper is acceptable in the present form.

Anyway, I am not keeping my fingers crossed. As far as I am concerned,
the "computational universe" leaves me stone cold (no offence intended
to anybody and I wish Wolfram and Alex Smith well).

A genuine new kind of science must start from a new logic, a new
philosophy of mathematical truth, new paradigms for real analysis and
computability theory, and new theories for mathematics, theoretical
physics and theortetical computer science. In other words I claim that
the genuine new kind of science is embodied in the logic NAFL that I
have proposed; see

http://arxiv.org/abs/math.LO/0506475

This work is unheralded and I do not have anybody to even discuss it
with. It is unmentionable amongst academicians, and even within IBM
Research; I work in IBM India Software Labs. Gregory Chaitin, my
fellow IBMer (and in the committee for judging the Wolfram prize),
refuses to reply to my emails and refuses to acknowledge the existence
of NAFL, like all his illustrious colleagues in academics.

All this only convinces me that NAFL is the basis for a genuine new
kind of science. There is no need for powerful and rich organizations
to push it and there is no need for loud proclamations and PR work.
The truth will ultimately prevail. NAFL will prevail because it is the
truth. And the truth will always get the kind of initial reception
that NAFL is getting today.

The recent FOM discussion on "Gauss and non-Euclidean geometry" is a
real eye-opener on the shameful attitude displayed by Gauss towards
the work of Bolyai (and Lobachevsky?) on non-Euclidean geometry. That
the academic community is willing to let such gross injustice pass
speaks volumes about the ethical standards of the characters who man
high academic positions, even today. From such characters, no
recognition is the ultimate form of recognition.

Regards, RS

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