Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist who is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, a company behind Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the new Wolfram Physics project. He is the author of several books including A New Kind of Science, which on a personal note was one of the most influential books in my journey in computer science and artificial intelligence.

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:

00:00 – Introduction

04:16 – Communicating with an alien intelligence

12:11 – Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey

29:06 – What is computation?

44:54 – Physics emerging from computation

1:14:10 – Simulation

1:19:23 – Fundamental theory of physics

1:28:01 – Richard Feynman

1:39:57 – Role of ego in science

1:47:21 – Cellular automata

2:15:08 – Wolfram language

2:55:14 – What is intelligence?

2:57:47 – Consciousness

3:02:36 – Mortality

3:05:47 – Meaning of life