History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 9, 2022)

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: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Originally livestreamed at: https://twitch.tv/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: https://wolfr.am/12cczmv5J

00:00 Start stream
2:50 SW begins talking
3:14 ​What is the history of "infinity" in mathematics or in science in general?
23:14 I would like to see a differentiation between eternity and Infinity.
25:47 Can you talk about the history of the "elementary length"? What have people believed to be the smallest possible length, and what events have changed this belief?
52:43 If space is discrete, does this mean that the fundamental constants are rational numbers? If the fundamental constants were real numbers, couldn't you encode arbitrary amounts of information into your theory, hiding the complexity in these constants?
58:33 ​At what stage in history did the idea of extraterrestrial alien life started to be entertained? Is this a relatively recent phenomenon, or was it a thing even in Ancient Greek philosophy?
1:09:02 When did we first realize that we only see the same side of the moon?
1:11:28 ​What belief systems/groups of people have historically believed in a fundamentally discrete universe?
1:13:40 Why do you think distribution of new discoveries is so random? Nassim Taleb's example of 6000 years between the wheel and wheels on a suitcase, for example.
1:20:30 Peter Thiel at Yale: We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters

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Видео History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 9, 2022) канала Wolfram