> Merzenich earned his doctorate in math from Oregon State University in 2021, but currently works on a farm.<p>Is this a common thing? We had a contractor that had a doctorate in math. When his contract ended, he went to work on a farm in Oregon. And no, his name is not Merzenich. Or, is there a farm in Oregon that specializes in hiring people with PhDs in Math?
Some discussion on the discovery <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543133">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543133</a>
This isn't meant as some cheeky passive aggressive thing, but a genuine curiosity from someone who has always been really fascinated by CGOL and cellular automata in general: has there been any practical uses of cellular automata outside of hobbyist mathematics?<p>I read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", and it certainly <i>feels</i> like there's a lot of value to be gleaned from Cellular Automata, but thus far I haven't seen anything terribly useful. I'm happy enough for it to just be a fun mathematics game, but it would be nice to be able to explain something useful coming from me spending hours and hours hacking together different Langton rules.