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goobster  ·  1857 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Stephen Wolfram - Announcing the Rule 30 Prize

    "...The problems that are of interest are those whose solutions might contain concepts or truths that can be relevant to other fields of math...."

That's what I expected, and what I was getting at with my attempt at recognizing that, in mathematics, the process of solving a problem can be even more valuable than the solution.

    "...prime numbers, which are equally a human construction..."

Are they? I thought they were a basic element or fact of nature, that we just found an easy way to represent mathematically...? Like E=MC2... it is just a mathematical expression of a physical property.

The Wolfram problem expressed in the article seems completely divorced from any practical, real world property. It's like he dropped six dice on a table, arranged them in some perceived order, and then made up some questions to ask about that order: Does it repeat? Is it infinite? What happens when you run the calculation a billion times?

I'm mostly just marveling at how other people's brains work... not looking for an "answer", per se, just enjoying the window into other thought processes...