History of Science and Technology Q&A (April 17, 2024)

Stephen Wolfram hosts a live and unscripted Ask Me Anything about the history of science and technology for all ages. Find the playlist of Q&A's here: wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Originally livestreamed at: / stephen_wolfram
If you missed the original livestream of this episode, feel free to submit a question you would like Stephen to answer in a future Q&A livestream here: wolfr.am/12cczmv5J
00:00 Start stream
00:20 SW starts talking
00:31-13:01 Are there languages or logic systems we haven't yet discovered from the past?​​
13:23-17:35 Can smart keyboards help with this process of language discovery?​​
17:41-23:35 ​​Do you view mathematics as a subset of language, or the other way around?​​
23:47-35:30 How did different languages come to develop? Will we slowly move toward a universal language?​​
35:35-36:15 "Ona, also known as Selk'nam (Shelknam), is a language spoken by the Selk'nam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America." Spoken by only one person.​​
36:22-40:45 ​The distinction is the unique role of mathematics expressing and formalizing ideas in ways that transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries.​​
40:53-43:29 Language came before humans, e.g. dolphins and whales; we just scaled it up and complexified it​.
43:36-48:42 Was Shakespeare's style unique to him? Would there have been a possibility for people to speak in a more poetic language?​​
49:11-53:10 ​​I think language is closer to 1.5-dimensional, considering we have relative pronouns and other constructions that link up with previous statements, such that a 2D diagram of it can be made.​​
53:13-54:09 ​​If I want to write a short statement, I prefer English. For a detailed style, I would prefer German... which is usually longer and not as nice to read as short English text.​
54:34-58:07 Bulgarian is pronounced exactly as it is written. One of its quirks.​​
58:17-1:02:59 If LLMs are hallucinating all the time and good ones are just hallucinating correctly/accurately most of the time, does that explain how Ramanujan might have arrived at his formulas without proofs?​​
1:03:30 End Stream
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