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We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#11

Post by eternityforest »

perihelions wrote: post #6
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

It's kind of sad for me. I read and read but could not get the gist of the institute. Can someone write a summary?

If you scroll down a bit, I think the 26th paragraph comes closest to lucidity: - "What will the Wolfram Institute be like? There’ll be a leadership core, which, yes, I’m signing up to head. But the main meat of the institute will be a collection of researchers and fellows, working on particular, managed projects—together with students at multiple levels from high school to graduate school. We’ll be doing open scienc…

That sounds amazing! I wish they'd study something like energy storage or cheap imaging mmWave radar, or portable chemical analyzers, or any of those supposedly world changing things that seem to totally vanish without a trace again whenever anyone makes a breakthrough.

Hopefully it's not just this?new physics thing.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#12

Post by john567 »

seibelj wrote: post #3

This guy is full-on crank at this point. His newer kind of science is going to revolutionize everything, I’m sure. > We want to use our new paradigm to basically rewrite the foundations of several important fields of science. As with the Physics Project there’ll no doubt be tremendous synergy with existing approaches and the communities around them. Cellular automatons are going to do all of this?

It's Branchial Graphs and Multiway Causal Graphs now.

I find it interesting. He has a lot to prove but good on him for trying to make progress. Who knows what this could lead to.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#13

Post by syats »

Let us concede that in the last 20 years, the number of mentions of "I" in his writing has decreased, and there are more mentions of "We".

As much as a cellular automata, and computation in general, fan as I am, and after having read a fair amount of his work... I am still not convinced that Wolfram is not just a rich crack pot.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#14

Post by john567 »

ttul wrote: post #5
seibelj wrote: post #3

This guy is full-on crank at this point. His newer kind of science is going to revolutionize everything, I’m sure. > We want to use our new paradigm to basically rewrite the foundations of several important fields of science. As with the Physics Project there’ll no doubt be tremendous synergy with existing approaches and the communities around them. Cellular automatons are going to do all of this?

I saw Wolfram give a live talk after launching his big ass book on cellular automata being the foundation of all things. It seemed far fetched and I don’t think anyone outside of his egosphere takes the concept seriously. Let alone understands it.

What he is trying to do is that he is trying to create a computational theory to explain the world. As opposed to pure mathematics which isn't computational. Not really that crazy.

He may be off putting at times but when he gets in to it he can be very interesting to listen to.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#15

Post by froh »

ridaj wrote: post #9

The more I hear about Stephen Wolfram's schemes to name things after Stephen Wolfram, the more admirative I grow of Nicolas Bourbaki and wished he were publishing amazing math software these days.

You've sent me down an interesting reading path, about a group of mathematicians working under the pseudonym "Nicolas Bourbaki" and lo and behold they do even have a web site these days:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki

https://www.bourbaki.fr/

Now how does that relate to Stephen Wolfram?

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#16

Post by tsimionescu »

eternityforest wrote: post #11
perihelions wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you scroll down a bit, I think the 26th paragraph comes closest to lucidity: - "What will the Wolfram Institute be like? There’ll be a leadership core, which, yes, I’m signing up to head. But the main meat of the institute will be a collection of researchers and fellows, working on particular, managed projects—together with students at multiple levels from high school to graduate school. We’ll be doing open scienc…

That sounds amazing! I wish they'd study something like energy storage or cheap imaging mmWave radar, or portable chemical analyzers, or any of those supposedly world changing things that seem to totally vanish without a trace again whenever anyone makes a breakthrough. Hopefully it's not just this?new physics thing.

I think he was pretty clear that the Wolfram Institute, headed by Stephen Wolfram, has the single purpose of exploring the Wolfram Multicomputation model as a new foundation for all of science and mathematics. To do so, it is going to apply Wolfram's methods for productivity that have made Wolfram Research a successful company, and Wolfram Physics Project a successful delivery. Also of note, any major discoveries will be shared to the world in Wolframs clear and simple exposition style.

In short, maybe this leads somewhere, who knows, but right now it looks like a massive vanity project. It also looks like it has a good chance to start derailing other people's money from actual research into Wolfram Pet Theories.

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#18

Post by adastra22 »

john567 wrote: post #14
ttul wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw Wolfram give a live talk after launching his big ass book on cellular automata being the foundation of all things. It seemed far fetched and I don’t think anyone outside of his egosphere takes the concept seriously. Let alone understands it.

What he is trying to do is that he is trying to create a computational theory to explain the world. As opposed to pure mathematics which isn't computational. Not really that crazy. He may be off putting at times but when he gets in to it he can be very interesting to listen to.

Pure math isn’t computational? o_O

(Constructivist mathematics is a thing, and it is pretty easy to formulate physics in a constructivist framework. Many serious quantum theoreticians do.)

Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute

#20

Post by tsimionescu »

syats wrote: post #13

Let us concede that in the last 20 years, the number of mentions of "I" in his writing has decreased, and there are more mentions of "We". As much as a cellular automata, and computation in general, fan as I am, and after having read a fair amount of his work... I am still not convinced that Wolfram is not just a rich crack pot.

To me that reads mostly like the royal "we", as in "We, Stephen Wolfram". Especially when saying things like "Wolfram Research has been geared towards making things we think up into products".
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