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

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Are there languages or logic systems we haven't yet discovered from the past?​​ - Can smart keyboards help with this process of language discovery?​​ - ​​Do you view mathematics as a subset of language, or the other way around?​​ - How did different languages come to develop? Will we slowly move toward a universal language?​​ - "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.​​ - ​The distinction is the unique role of mathematics expressing and formalizing ideas in ways that transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries.​​ - Language came before humans, e.g. dolphins and whales; we just scaled it up and complexified it​. - Was Shakespeare's style unique to him? Would there have been a possibility for people to speak in a more poetic language?​​ - ​​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.​​ - ​​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.​ - Bulgarian is pronounced exactly as it is written. One of its quirks.​​ - 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?​​