What Stephen Wolfram thinks about design

@stephen-wolfram · 23 positions · On ppll ↗

Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and author of A New Kind of Science.

Stephen Wolfram did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

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Only Stephen Wolfram on design. See everyone on design

1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Stephen Wolfram has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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1. 21 Jul 2026

   Our readingA program is only worth running if its behavior cannot be fully foreseen in advance.

   Their wordsto make the program worth actually running, there have to be parts of its behavior you can't foresee. But then there's a piece of intuition from the Principle of Computational Equivalence: once there's anything you can't foresee, there tends to be a lot you can't foresee. In other words, the system will tend to be full of computational irreducibility.

   ↗Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpectedwritings.stephenwolfram.com 3rd of 3 in this piece