What this project needs is someone at the center of it. A visionary. A leader. A genius. A prolix author. Can anyone think of someone???
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The Wolfram Physics Project
61–70 of 342 posts
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#62Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and submit them to peer review?
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#63If I have to read through so much of the article context disguised as bragging without anything resembling something new then maybe this Fundamental Theory is less important than Stephen Wolfram showing how many Important Things he's done
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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way. His book A New Kind of Science (the first chapters) have been revolutionary. I think his work will lay down the foundations of science for centuries to come. It is curious though. Nearly every criticism I’ve read hasn’t grappled with his ideas—just the man, out of insecurity and ego. And he’s a lovely writer. I don’t sense ego from him. Just honesty about the work he’s done and contributed. You r…
One potential archetype for him that is consistent is he simply cannot recognize these political concerns. Many of us feel anxiety about the idea we may be interpreted as stepping on peoples' work, or failing to recognize their efforts and how they may have led to our own advancement. It may be that Wolfram, for whatever reason, simply doesn't have that - not out of malice, but just as a core deficiency in his abilit…
His self-promotional patter is so simple and consistent you can train half-convincing markov models on it; clearly he could intellectually understand the problem and tone it down a notch or five if he wanted to.
He doesn't, and IMO that makes him responsible.
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#65Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and submit them to peer review?
It's been waiting for a genius, a visionary, a maverick, ...
Wolfram's narcissism is so extreme it's just comical. When I was really into complexity science and stuff everyone in the field would joke about it, suggesting a drinking game where you take a shot every time Wolfram refers to how he was a gifted child or started studying math in his teens or single-handedly accomplished some amazing feat. The guy toots his own horn like a circus clown.
It's too bad because he actually does have some very interesting ideas and a good skill at explaining things. His narcissism is self-defeating. He needs to just chill out, write like a normal human being, and publish. Maybe he should take up amateur astronomy. Nothing gives perspective more than carefully observing photons older than the human species with your own eyes.
I sometimes recommend A New Kind of Science with a huge caveat. It's a decent compendium of fascinating cellular automata, complexity, and theoretical CS research with some interesting speculation attached, but (1) Wolfram did not invent all this or do all this work himself, and (2) he takes his speculation too far to the point of flirting with crackpottery. If you can read NKS with those caveats in mind, it's worth at least skimming and taking in the interesting bits.
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#66Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and submit them to peer review?
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Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#67Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#68Anybody who has coded Game of Life can draw a parallel to this. Simple rules can lead to arbitrarily complex systems. I'm all on board with this concept. Graph theory is amazing and useful in many ways we don't understand yet. I'm all on board with this concept as well. But a graph has nodes and edges. Nodes, in this case, can be particles.. I guess? But what are the edges? When a "simple rule" is applied to a collec…
Still not done reading, but in this representation, particles are stable shapes in the successive steps of the hypergraph (e.g. like gliders and other stable shapes in Game of Life).
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#69Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and submit them to peer review?
He… already knows this. https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/
Re: The Wolfram Physics Project
#70Could somebody explain to Stephen Wolfram physics is already underway and the normal way to join in is to publish your ideas in appropriate venues and submit them to peer review?
He… already knows this. https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/
Although it's also worth noting that that page states:
>Note: Since 1987, Stephen Wolfram's intellectual efforts have not primarily been reported in academic articles.