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Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#61

Post by Retra »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
isoprophlex wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy manages to, within three sentences, turn a eulogy into a diss of IEEE floating point calculations, only to boast about how his shitty proprietary math toolbox does arbitrary precision better. Just one of many grating examples of how he communicates. He's a genius though, so he has that going for him...

He's not wrong, though...

Not being wrong doesn't absolve you from being deceptive. ("Save up to $1000!") A scientist doesn't hide the truth in fine print and technicalities, they expose it.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#62

Post by chx »

carapace wrote: post #36
miobrien wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone elaborate as to why Wolfram’s insufferable? I’ve only looked at his blog once or twice. However this post was great.

I have a lot of respect for the man despite his personality problems. He knew what he wanted at a young age and pursued it with determination and persistence and achieved it. Mathematica and the business he built to support it are both great accomplishments. I'm sometimes surprised he's not more popular on HN than he is. I mention all that so it won't seem too mean-spirited when I repeat this: I've heard a joke, "Whi…

> I'm sometimes surprised he's not more popular on HN than he is.

This is a guy who have filed a patent on pure mathematics https://patents.google.com/patent/US4809202 and it was nowhere near original, compare to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167278984... and the folks 'round here are not hot on software patents and this is much worse.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#63

Post by jordigh »

ISL wrote: post #28
WhitneyLand wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's kind of hard to get more fundamental than waves and circles. Although, as I was just about to say what math could you do without them on second thought, the answer seems to be quite a lot. For example I couldn't say without researching it but how much did Gödel or Turing rely on them, at least for their most influential work? That question will probably come back to bite hard given their footprints. Another…

Agreed -- I used the word "fundamental" to suggest that it emerges from pure mathematics. In that sense, Feigenbaum's constants are in the same class as \pi and e, which is distinct from the traditional "fundamental constants" of physics like c, \hbar, fundamental charge, etcetera. The fundamental constants of physics have, as yet, no known mathematical origin. Feigenbaum's constants, on the other hand, emerge from p…

Do we know the constant is irrational? I'd be surprised if we did.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#64

Post by tripzilch »

tomxor wrote: post #59
anbop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s one of the great minds of his generation but his insecurity complex is so severe that he constantly needs to boast about himself and his achievements to an extent that is unbecoming even in a professional athlete. Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. Even in this eulogy to a dead f…

> Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. There are a couple transcribed lectures of his on amazon, one of them "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition", they are short and deep and I find them very interesting, I read them maybe a couple years ago... somehow within that little…

NKS has a lot of very interesting bits of information, ideas and experiments. Some of it is truly novel. At least, I think some are truly novel, because there are also quite a few ideas that aren't novel, but he doesn't mention that fact or cite anyone. And he kind of speaks down about biology and other sciences, about things they are supposedly not researching, except they do.

It would have been a much nicer book if he had connected his ideas in universality, fundamental computing, math, physics and biology, to the rest of those fields. He mentions many of these connections/theories, but does not cite them or even attribute them to their respective fields of science.

Otherwise if you can read past all that, it's super interesting. It just leaves me with the inclination that, if I want to find out more about these new subjects, I'd be best of starting out looking for information not by Wolfram, if only just to get a good view/idea of the field right now, since Wolfram isn't citing anyone, but others probably are.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#65

Post by BeetleB »

anbop wrote: post #29

I normally find Stephen Wolfram insufferable (and he still is, in this article) but boy what a privilege it is to have a friend who will eulogize us like this. If I was an intellectual associate of Wolfram’s I’d ask him to write this article for me to read before I died.

The first thing I did was to start scrolling to see where he would either inject himself into the story, or go off touting his own achievements. I was then going to come here to post a snarky comment here about it.

But as I scrolled, I did see quite a bit of really interesting content in the article, and thought such a comment may turn people away from the article, which would be a shame, so I decided not to.

(Well, until I saw your comment).

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#66

Post by aeorgnoieang »

tomxor wrote: post #59
anbop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s one of the great minds of his generation but his insecurity complex is so severe that he constantly needs to boast about himself and his achievements to an extent that is unbecoming even in a professional athlete. Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. Even in this eulogy to a dead f…

> Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. There are a couple transcribed lectures of his on amazon, one of them "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition", they are short and deep and I find them very interesting, I read them maybe a couple years ago... somehow within that little…

If you can overlook his immodesty, or choose to ignore it, I think you might enjoy reading NKS. It's very interesting, even if you don't agree that he deserves all of the accolades he claims he's owed.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#67

Post by aeorgnoieang »

tripzilch wrote: post #64
tomxor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. There are a couple transcribed lectures of his on amazon, one of them "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition", they are short and deep and I find them very interesting, I read them maybe a couple years ago... somehow within that little…

NKS has a lot of very interesting bits of information, ideas and experiments. Some of it is truly novel. At least, I think some are truly novel, because there are also quite a few ideas that aren't novel, but he doesn't mention that fact or cite anyone. And he kind of speaks down about biology and other sciences, about things they are supposedly not researching, except they do. It would have been a much nicer book if…

Are you including the extensive notes in the book when you claim that he doesn't mention any connections nor cite any existing research? I think he wrote the main book much like a textbook, i.e. a straightforward presentation of the ideas, and not like a typical academic publication. IIRC, the extensive notes do mention many connections and include a lot of citations.

The entire book is available online for free. Here's the first section of the notes:

- [Note (a) for An Outline of Basic Ideas: A New Kind of Science | Online by Stephen Wolfram [Page 859]](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/notes-1-1--mathematics-in...)

... but, after looking at some more sections of the notes, I think now I remembered very much incorrectly – there are in fact very few citations or specific references. There are, in my opinion, very many connections noted tho.

Also from the notes:

- [Clarity and modesty – Note (e) for General Notes: A New Kind of Science | Online by Stephen Wolfram [Page 849]](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/notes-0-1--clarity-and-mo...)

- [Citations and references – Note (d) for General Notes: A New Kind of Science | Online by Stephen Wolfram [Page 850]](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/notes-0-1--citations-and-...)

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#68

Post by aeorgnoieang »

Retra wrote: post #60
miobrien wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone elaborate as to why Wolfram’s insufferable? I’ve only looked at his blog once or twice. However this post was great.

There is an example right in this article: >(Confusingly enough, with typical “machine precision” computer arithmetic, this doesn’t work correctly, because even though one “runs out of precision”, the IEEE Floating Point standard says to keep on delivering digits, even though they are completely wrong. Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language gets it right.) The man can't help but promote himself. He worded this i…

> makes it look to a lay person like he invented arbitrary precision arithmetic

I think that's pretty uncharitable. If what you claimed were true, particularly of his intentions, I'd expect him to have written something like "Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language got it right.".

But then I can't imagine a layperson having any idea what almost any of the sentence you quoted means anyways so your point seems pretty moot.

For anyone that already understands or is at least familiar with 'machine precision', 'floating point numbers', or 'arbitrary precision' (computer arithmetic), I'd think his claim that "Wolfram Language gets it right" would seem to be a pretty innocuous plug. Yes, the man regularly promotes the products of the company that bears his name on his own blog. I think it's fine.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#69

Post by aeorgnoieang »

onychomys wrote: post #8

One interesting place that period doubling shows up that the article doesn't mention is in population ecology. I'm most familiar with the Tribolium work of Constantino, Dennis, Cushing, and some other folks, which you can read an example of here[0]. Basically, the beetles have three life stages (four, actually - egg, larva, pupa, adult - but adding eggs in the model doesn't increase accuracy any so they leave it out…

There were several references to fish populations and and even "population biology". I wouldn't have thought 'population ecology' was that different but a cursory Google search leads me to believe I was wrong.

That's a neat connection!

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