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

Why is this a problem? Doing maths purely for its own sake is as valid and useful as painting a picture, or cooking a delicious meal instead of just eating dry bread.

If that's not good enough for you, there are plenty of examples of maths that was considered useless at the time but ended up finding a use years, decades, or centuries later.

I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy discussion could look like: Wolfram didn’t believe black holes were real for the longest time, or at least, had some skepticism about that. One could’ve had a reasonable debate, pointing out where he may have erred (up until he changed his mind). Like a proper scientist does.

But vilifying him for wanting to create a research institute is absurd. I have never seen such petty anger at the idea of doing more scientific research.

He’s done a fantastic job creating a new model for understanding reality, some of which suggest interesting physical structures underlying our Universe. He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity.

And he’s laying the groundwork for understanding the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes. It’s fantastic stuff.

The great Richard Feynman himself frequently collaborated with Wolfram and talked about Rule 30, the foundational insight that spurred Wolfram to create a New Kind of Science. Calling him delusional or a fraud is Wittengtein’s Ruler in action: It says far more about you than it does about him.

I always click on a Wolfram thread, and occasionally you do get interesting insights and even informed disagreements, but this is just disgraceful to be honest.

There’s true evil in the world. Truly despicable sins. Calibrate your outrage towards that.

If you disagree with Wolfram, read his work, steelman it, and show where it’s wrong in a way worthy of scientific skepticism and empiricism.

Otherwise you’re worse than what you think he is.

Related to your point, if Wolfram hadn’t had the history he did, would Hacker News general suspicious reaction still be present? And would his status affect our perceptions of validity of the criticism.

Granted, what drew me to this thought was the recent treatment of Eric Weinstein, an occasional podcast collaborator (if hostile) of Stephen Wolfram. I won’t rehash it all here, but a critic of Weinstein who is trained in physics countered him in writing. Then when Weinstein moved onto another area, the critic submitted another arxiv piece attacking his second product (an econ talk given in Chicago).

Now, I don’t think much of Weinstein, but the critic’s second attack created doubt about the motives of his first. Was this a defense of science, or a serial attacker obsessed with Eric Weinstein?

Circling back, I think these issue will inevitably arise when a person is actively self marketing their contribution to science, whatever its quality.

I don't really understand the animosity toward Stephen Wolfram on HN - has he done something evil or been super rude to someone? Maybe he has a big ego, but I think that's probably true of a lot of - if not most - of the rich and/or influential people that are discussed on here, whether Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk or Stallman. It takes a certain hubris to think you can make a dent in the universe. Why is that if your hubris is to believe you can make a billion dollar startup, HN is all "you go girl!" but if someone wants to do theoretical physics, they really need to check their ego?

I don't know if cellular automata as a foundation of physics will turn out to be a revolution or a dud. I do know that we've been looking for a unified theory of quantum gravity for many decades to no avail. If somebody is motivated to come at the thing from a new perspective, then more power to them. Are they likely to succeed? Of course not, statistically the vast majority of theories don't. But just working to provide new perspectives is a worthwhile goal, and I'm glad he's working on it.