Here is an exercise proposal: Find the hidden terms of a polynomial expression, where the fitness function is the integral of the hidden function minus the new one.
"Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his radical idea: teaching kids math through computer programming."
Y'know, maybe what we should really do is to completely decouple "mathematics" from "arithmetic". Arithmetic is useful but boring and you mostly learn it from age 5 to 12. Mathematics is harder, more interesting, and either useful or useless depending on what you eventually do with your life (no doubt 60% of people could go through life without understanding any mathematics at all -- all they need is arithmetic).
>He doesn't care how the tides work, tell him why they work. Why is the moon at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a stabilizing effect on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here? Why does gravity work the way it does? Why does anything at all exist rather than not exist? O'Reilly is correct that these questions can only be addressed by mythmaking, religion or philosophy, not by science.
Science doesn't really aim to answer the 'why'-questions, but rather the 'how'-questions. The scientific method boils down to falsifying hypothesis, and it's a lot easier with 'how does the tide work?' than 'why does the tide work (the way it does)?'.
Science can't say anything about 'Why does anything at all exist rather than not exist?', because there is no way to test any of the answers. So it's left to mythology, religion or philosophy to answer.
> Why is the moon at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a stabilizing effect on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here?
A possible answer to this stems from the anthropic principle. We evolved in a place with a moon because the moon helped us evolve. We don't see no moon because complex life such as us would not have developed without it. A stable rotation and gentle tide are conducive to the evolution of complex organisms; tides were instrumental in getting life out of the seas and onto land.
"Why is the sun the way it is?" can be answered similarly. A smaller star has too small a habitable zone where liquid water can exist. A larger star would have burned out sooner than the 4.5 billion years it took to develop sapient life. A double star has a much smaller set of stable planetary orbits. That the sun is an appropriate star for our life on earth is not divine providence or an enormously unlikely coincidence; it's the result of a universe-wide scenario of statistical multiple endpoints.
Yes, but there's a causal relationship that I think you're not quite expressing. We are where we are because here is where all the ingredients came together.
This is a good example of why (how?) language is so weird. Maybe I am just satiated, but for an inquisitive mind, to me "Why is the moon in the sky?" and "How is the moon in the sky?" parse out to be semantically equivalent. Science (astronomy) does try explain how (why?) we exist and under what circumstance the universe came into existence (if it did).
And if no, does anyone (or thing) need to come up with the rules for the simulation for us to experience it?