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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

#101

Post by BluSyn »

DantesKite wrote: post #73

Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. 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 di…

Innovation largely comes from contrarians. If HN is polarized on a topic, to me that just signals it's probably worth MORE attention, not less.

From that perspective, overwhelming negative comments are a useful data point.

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

#102

Post by throwaway81523 »

dTal wrote: post #99
throwaway81523 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is he makes a bunch of apparently empty claims about his hypergraph stuff being related to physics. The pictures are pretty and the hypergraph stuff is perhaps interesting in its own right, but with all the hand waving about QM and GR, I looked pretty hard a couple of years ago and couldn't find any explanation of the most familiar QM phenomena like the double slit experiment. It's almost like free associat…

Even that would prove nothing. Wolfram himself makes a pretty big deal about how cellular automata, being Turing-complete, can model anything . I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now , no problem. It only becomes interesting if it can make different, better predictions than our existing theories.

> I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now, no problem

Ok, I'm interested in seeing something like that. If you have a link, I'll take a look--thanks. (If you're thinking of 't Hooft's, then I know about it, but its predictions are in serious conflict with mainstream physics, from what I understand).

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

#104

Post by afc »

mitko wrote: post #70
k8sToGo wrote: post #55

I used Wolfram Alpha a lot while I was in college and liked it a lot. So I am surprised to see the hatred toward this man in the comments. Can anyone enlighten me why he is delusional and why he has lost it?

Probably he comes off as big ego, which we are hardwired to resist. However I think a lot of that narcissism is confidence justified by his successes and track record, he’s created a lot of value for the world.

> However I think a lot of that narcissism is confidence [...]

Funny, I see it as the entire opposite: very extreme insecurity, the need to constantly remind us that, yes, truly, he was there, he pioneered this, it _is_ amazing and awesome and will revolutionize everything, believe me, and it's only second to this other thing, which we must remind you, I invented.

A confident person would strip away the fluff and just get on with the message?

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

#105

Post by dudeinjapan »

vmception wrote: post #63
aero-glide2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a good thing to have a small percentage of scientists working on whacky theories, one of them might turn out to be true.

mRNA reporting for duty

Kirov reporting

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

#107

Post by privatdozent »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #43
aj7 wrote: post #28

I’ve had more downvotes sharing my opinions about cellular automata on HN than on any other topic, so I won’t make any here. Rather, I’d like to point out that I personally have not seen a single theory, not a single piece of a theory, known to be productive in explaining experimental data, recast with underlying cellular automata theory. If I am simply showing my ignorance, please enlighten me. Meanwhile, the clock…

I think it's a good thing to have a small percentage of scientists working on whacky theories, one of them might turn out to be true.

Scientists, yes.

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

#108

Post by dTal »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #102
dTal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that would prove nothing. Wolfram himself makes a pretty big deal about how cellular automata, being Turing-complete, can model anything . I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now , no problem. It only becomes interesting if it can make different, better predictions than our existing theories.

> I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now, no problem Ok, I'm interested in seeing something like that. If you have a link, I'll take a look--thanks. (If you're thinking of 't Hooft's, then I know about it, but its predictions are in serious conflict with mainstream physics, from what I understand).

It's not really that interesting. Can you write it in a computer program? Then you can write it in a cellular automata, because many of them are Turing complete:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110#The_proof_of_universa... https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Turing_machine

And yes, this is a cheap trick. That's the point. "Porting" our current theories to some new, whacky substrate, peeking at the textbooks all the while, is Not Interesting and will not lead to new results.

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

#110

Post by SirHound »

DantesKite wrote: post #73

Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. 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 di…

Well put. He might be right, he's more likely wrong (and that's not a judgement on the quality of the ideas). But bottom line is we will never get anywhere without thinkers like him.
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