History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 8, 2023)

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

What would you say is the most important human-designed algorithm of all time? - Historically, who has led the trends in science, practitioners or academics? - Did Richard Feynman really think that "philosophy is baloney"? Did you ever discuss non-physics subjects? - If simulation becomes sufficiently good in the future, will it cause experimental scientists to be out of a job? - How did we go about solving the goat problem? - According to the history of science, what might be the ratio of the number of minor paradigm shifts to the number of major paradigm shifts? - What was the fifth class of cellular automata that almost was, which you mentioned in your personal history paper? - ​Has an idea like the ruliad existed before, or is this a novel object? - Neural networks show that combining two seemingly unrelated fields of research can produce great results, but our academic and business cultures are focused more on specialization. Your thoughts? - What would a modern analog computer look like today?