Chapter 46 been scolded

been scolded In late 1989, what Farmer had been dreading finally happened when Langton applied to the Los Alamos headquarters for an international grant.In the process of reviewing the documents, the upper echelons of the lab discovered that Langton had been a postdoc for three years and had still not received a Ph.D. "That was a bad thing," Farmer said. "I still remember it because I was on vacation in Italy. Somehow they tracked me down. I had to make a series of phone calls to the phone. Throwing thousands of lire in coins. When I came back I had to defend Langdon at the post-doctoral committee, and I had to defend myself as Langdon's advisor. I was severely reprimanded.' How could What happened?' They said to me. All I could do was tell them that Langton was the founder of a new field of science, the science of artificial life. However, this explanation aroused their suspicions even more. Finally , we even had to apply for a three-month extension for Langton’s postdoctoral status because he didn’t complete his Ph.D.”

David Campbell, director of the Center for Nonlinear Research, where Farmer and Langton worked, continued to support Langton.But everyone understands that the pressure has been suppressed.First and foremost, the second artificial life academic conference has been scheduled to be held in February 1990.This time Langton had Farmer and a few others to help organize it, but the seminar was still his baby, and he still had to finish this damn doctoral dissertation.So he works like crazy. In November 1989, he flew to Ann Arbor to prepare for his doctoral dissertation defense committee.His doctoral dissertation defense committee was co-chaired by Holland and Birx.If they thought his doctoral dissertation was acceptable, they would award him a doctorate on the spot, which relieved him of the burden.

But unfortunately, the unanimous opinion of his doctoral thesis defense committee is: "Not yet." They said that the discussion of the basic theory of the edge of chaos in this paper is very good, and you have done a lot of computer experiments to support this. a discussion.But you've made overly broad statements about Wolfram's hierarchy, about the emergence of computing, etc., and the connections between the data are rather vague.What you want to do is to tone down your statement, make it more supportive of your argument, and align it better with the data. But that means rewriting the whole paper!Longton said in frustration.

Then you better start rewriting right away.Holland, Box and others said. "It was a really frustrating moment," Langton said. "I thought I was ready to defend, but it didn't work out. And the second symposium on artificial life was coming up in February. So I had to put the paper aside."