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I actually think this is just computer science. Why? Because the first "computer scientist" - Alan Turing - was interested in this exact same set of ideas.

The first programs he wrote for the Atlas and the Mark II ("the Baby"), seem to have been focused on a theory he had around how animals got their markings.

They look a little to me (as a non-expert in these areas, and reading them in a museum over about 15 minutes, not doing a deep analysis), like a primitive form of cellular automata algorithm. From the scrawls on the print outs, it's possible that he was playing with the space of algorithms not just the algorithms themselves.

It might be worth going back and looking at that early work he did and seeing it through this lens.

Sure, it's typical Wolfram, inviting the typical criticism. If you can understand what he's talking about at all then you won't be very convinced it's new. If you can't understand what he's talking about, then you also won't be interested in the puffery and priority dispute.

The rest of his stuff tagged ruliology is more interesting though. Here's one connecting ML and cellular automata: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/whats-really-goi...

Ruliology provides a powerful descriptive framework - a taxonomy of computational behavior. However, it operates at the level of external dynamics without grounding in a primitive ontology. It tells us that rules behave, not why they exist or what they fundamentally are.

This makes ruliology an invaluable cartography of the computational landscape, but not a foundation. It maps the territory without explaining what the territory is made of.

he invented the term and so pleased its blowing up.

Amount of "I" and "me" is astonishing.

Didn't find anything on falsifiable criteria -- any new theory should be able, at least in theory, to be tested for being not true.

Someone mentioned his apparently failed earlier work ANKOS. I had to look that up - it is 2002 book by Wolfram with seemingly similar ideas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science

But exactly what is the problem here? Other than perhaps a very mechanical view of the universe (which he shares with many other authors) where it is hard to explain things like consciousness and other complex behaviors.

This looks very exciting but wolfram language being paywalled makes me super sad I can't play around with it

It's starting to sound an awful lot like a Ruligion.

Surprised it’s not called Wolfrology. This man is ego personified - not reading.

I am struggling to understand what is new here - other than the word ruliad - which to me seems to similar to what we have in theoretical computer science when we talk about languages, sentences, and grammars.