Stephen Wolfram

I mean, in the early theologians, that was exhibit number one for the existence of God.

Now, people have different conclusions about it, but the fact is, right now, I mean, I happen to be interested, actually.

I've just restarted a long-running...

kind of interest of mine about fundamental physics.

I'm kind of like, I'm on a bit of a quest which I'm about to make more public to see if I can actually find the fundamental theory of physics.

Excellent.

What is computation?

That's a good question.

Operationally, computation is following rules.

That's kind of it.

I mean, computation is the result, is the process of systematically following rules, and it is the thing that happens when you do that.

Not necessarily.

It can be something where there's a very simple input, and then you're following these rules, and you'd say there's not really much data going into this.

You could actually pack the initial conditions into the rule if you want to.

So I think the question is, is there a robust notion of computation?

What does robust mean?

What I mean by that is something like this.

So one of the things in an area of physics, something like energy,

There are different forms of energy, but somehow energy is a robust concept that isn't particular to kinetic energy or nuclear energy or whatever else.

There's a robust idea of energy.