My unpopular opinion is that Stephen Wolfram doesn't get enough credit. Yes, he has a large ego, but he remains one of the most remarkable people in science today.
I agree. It's a tough one because his ego is so huge he's often accused of taking credit for other peoples' work. My impression from reading through A New Kind of Science is that it wasn't some plot by him to take credit for the whole of CA research but that his ego just kind of caused him to write in such a way as to give that impression. All personalities aside, I feel like the core thesis of this and other books o…
What is a "CA"? I tried googling it but seems there are many CAs. Which CA are you all talking about?
I agree. It's a tough one because his ego is so huge he's often accused of taking credit for other peoples' work. My impression from reading through A New Kind of Science is that it wasn't some plot by him to take credit for the whole of CA research but that his ego just kind of caused him to write in such a way as to give that impression. All personalities aside, I feel like the core thesis of this and other books o…
What is a "CA"? I tried googling it but seems there are many CAs. Which CA are you all talking about?
If you're in London and in any way interested in computing history, you owe it to yourself to visit Bletchley Park. It's a fantastic day visit from London. (About an hour away or so via the railway, as I remember it.) There's a direct train from Paddington, iirc. UK people please fill in.
Less than an hour, in walking distance of Bletchley station, to boot. Go on a weekday morning and you’ll be there in 40m.
Yes, the same features that made it desirable for its wartime usage are rather handy for the tourist today!
"Bullying by the state" is not a conspiracy theory. He was actually, objectively punished by the state in a manner that is considered cruel and inhumane by modern standards.
GP may be referring to the actual definition of “conspiracy theory”, in that there are many theories of state conspiracy against Turing.
Your P is objecting to 'other conspiracy theories' (thus implying the forementioned is one).
it's an openly debated topic, ranging from a simple accident to bullying by the state and other conspiracy theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death
"Bullying by the state" is not a conspiracy theory. He was actually, objectively punished by the state in a manner that is considered cruel and inhumane by modern standards.
I do believe he was bullied by the State. Period. And I doubt anyone can disagree with that! The crown issued an apology even!
What i mention as theory is that some claim that is the direct cause of his death. Nobody will know for sure.
https://bletchleypark.org.uk/ An on-site museum of the WW2 Enigma code breaking activities, where they happened. This is where Alan Turing worked. Live demonstrations of the 1940s eras computer "bombes". But, perhaps, most of all: A chance to visit a historic site.. the activities there could very well have decided the outcome of WW2. There's also a neat live retrocomputing display of early home computers. And it als…
Well, you can see an original Enigma machine at Churchill's war room, with a nice quiz about the facts that the allies pretended they didn't know about. The Science Museum also has nice displays about Alan Turing work. Some time ago they hosted the exposition Code Breaker: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/codebreaker
I write a lot. I can tell from my own experience that what I'm feeling when I write translates into my handwriting in subtle ways. You may object to some particular method that I'm unaware of, but I don't think "handwriting analysis" in general is absurd. It's data and so there are models of it and inferences.
Personal feelings are not how we evaluate a scientific discipline. It's phrenology level nonsense. A coworker once told me that his chiropractor told him he could help him with hemroids. This not only made me dubious about her ability to cure hemroids. It made me dubious that she could do anything about back pain. Capable people don't spew nonsense within the scope of their capabilities. The second his analyst regist…
People felt the same way about Einstein's cosmic intuition. Things evolve in stages, from intuition and anecdotes to more formal developments or refutations. I didn't say handwriting analysis is a fully legitimate area. I said as a writer I see how my writing changes and don't find the concept as absurd as many here do because of my anecdotal experience. You may hand wave that away because I don't have a statistical analysis here that is peer reviewed, and that's fine, but to me saying something is nonsense without a proof that it's nonsense is equally bad. Everything that isn't completely rigorous isn't nonsense. It's not good science, but not necessarily nonsense.
I know SW is famous for his arrogance/egotism, but it still kills me how he always discusses everything in terms of Mathematica's programming language, instead of mathematical notation or pseudo-code. It's like giving a linguistics lecture using the made-up language you invented with your twin.
“Made-up language” is a bit harsh. The Mathematica company has hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, right? It makes sense for his public communications to use it, just like you’d expect to see the guy who wrote Haskell to give examples in Haskell.