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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

#181

Post by Pilottwave »

poulpy123 wrote: post #157
m12k wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's attempting to come up with a new way to model observable physical phenomena. If that's not science, then neither are Feynman diagrams, complex numbers or even calculus. Whether it will prove useful like the above models still remains to be seen, but calling it "not science" seems ahistoric. Let's see if they can evolve the theory to the point where it can make novel predictions. If it never makes one, then the m…

When you work in a research institute, you get used of receiving messages of people thinking they have a new theoritical model explaining physics. But that's not how science works. When you're a scientist you work on a specific topic of a specific branch of a specific science. Then you publish your work in one of the mainstream revue of your field. Then if your work is interesting, other scientists use your article t…

Wolfram is saying that the new multicomputational paradigm that, he is heavily intellectually invested in and paying for the R&D himself, MIGHT revolutionize physics biology economy and the rest. This blog post is about scaling up the efforts, by founding an institute, to see if this new paradigm can actually deliver.

So weird for the hackernews audience to hate on this mans idea's so much. Its worth a shot no?

Elon Musk is often hailed a hero for paradigm shifting to reusable rockets and wanting to use this to colonize mars. But try and do a paradigm shift in physics, out of pocket, and the haters come out in droves.

I say let the man have a go at it. We might learn something!

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

#182

Post by LudwigNagasena »

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…

There is a quote (written 20 years ago) about Wolfram that sums up why people feel that way towards him,

> There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories. Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.

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

#183

Post by api »

wildmanx wrote: post #147
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…

He is not just "creating a research institute". He basically claims to have solved all of science. Case in point: Yesterday he streamed a "History of Science and Technology Q&A" session. [1] Is it about the history of science and technology? No! It's a sales pitch for his new institute! As if he is the singularity that all of science and technology have culminated in. So obviously when talking about history of scienc…

Wolfram is well known for... lets just say... tooting his own horn. It can get comical. I saw a drinking game once. Take a drink every time he opens a sentence with a self-congratulation about discovering something. Take two drinks when he talks about being a child prodigy. Etc...

He's human. Let him be human. Evaluate his work and the work of others that he promotes on its merit. Let the work be more important than whatever personality flaws he has.

The worst allegation IRL I've heard about him is a tendency to give the impression that he discovered all of this stuff when he did not. He did do a good chunk of brilliant original work in the field but for example A New Kind of Science contains work by dozens of others. He did eventually revise the book to add a ton of citations that were not explicit in the original edition.

In keeping with his writing style, he definitely exaggerates the impact and significance of some of this work. Nevertheless I think there are some incredible insights here. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole field (complexity / emergence / cellular automata / computational physics / informatics) does indeed end up solving a lot of serious issues in physics and other fields.

I'm fond of the umbrella term "informatics" for all of it. There's some thinking around informatics as a branch of physics that studies information qua information.

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

#185

Post by ergonaught »

I’m not hating on the man, as I do not care enough about him or his alleged behaviors or alleged personality traits to hate any of it, but let’s all be honest here and recognize that we’ve reached the “Is it GPT-3 or is it Stephen Wolfram?” singularity.

He produces enormous, voluminous, prodigious quantities of words, usually built around a very interesting core prompt, that seem to imply that they may point to something that will definitely be significant, using words that certainly carry a suggested context of the scent of sciencemath, and this goes on forever, but goes nowhere.

You can definitely be smarter and see farther and clearer than your critics and your peers, but at the “end of the day” you have to deliver something actionable, a result, a real change.

Where has this occurred?

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

#186

Post by Spinnaker_ »

underdeserver wrote: post #164
m12k wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading his one year update instead[1] "But now this deflection is not in physical space but in branchial space. The fundamental underlying mathematical structure is the same in both cases. But the interpretation in terms of traditional physics is different. And in what to me is a singularly beautiful result of our models it turns out that what gives the Einstein equations in physical space gives the Feynman path…

It sure sounds promising. Lots of things do. This is why we have peer review and standard publishing practices.

This idea never sat right with me. Only one of Einsteins paper's went through the now standard practice, and he was upset that it did.

Peer review is useful, but let's not pretend it's the only way forward for a theory of everything. It's a very, very modern practice. We did a lot of great physics before it existed.

Nearly everything wolfram does is available to anyone who is interested (including code!).

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

#187

Post by ganzuul »

d--b wrote: post #166
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…

Oh come on! We call him delusional cause he has lost all humility. He is utterly convinced that he discovered the underlying mechanism of literally everything from physics to eceonomics. Delusion of grandeur is a well-known psychological condition, and no matter what you think of the science, it's hard to argue that Wolfram doesn't have it. Why can't he just say: "hey I've got this idea, it's crazy, but you know what…

Do you have more substance to your argument than an ad hominem? This is trite.

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

#188

Post by KingOfCoders »

underdeserver wrote: post #164
m12k wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading his one year update instead[1] "But now this deflection is not in physical space but in branchial space. The fundamental underlying mathematical structure is the same in both cases. But the interpretation in terms of traditional physics is different. And in what to me is a singularly beautiful result of our models it turns out that what gives the Einstein equations in physical space gives the Feynman path…

It sure sounds promising. Lots of things do. This is why we have peer review and standard publishing practices.

It's not about peer review, it's about making predictions. Theories that make predictions that come out true are good ("correct"). Peer review is a poor substitute.

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

#190

Post by motoboi »

underdeserver wrote: post #148
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…

My problem with Wolfram is that every time I hear him talk or read him, I end up spending 15-20 minutes and come out the other end confused. I studied physics in my undergrad, I have a graduate degree in math, I've shipped large features on planet-scale systems. I'm no genius, certainly nowhere close to Dr. Wolfram, but I don't think I'm far from your average HN reader in reading comprehension ability. I've read 35 p…

He writes in a very marketing-informed way.

He clearly point to (his) previous work, clearly and repeatedly remembers the reader how amazing is the things he is trying to do, and shameless link (both in text and via hiperlinks) to his own enterprises and current initiatives.

I suppose this is some kind of mental template he uses when writing (think about someone writing a paper: the forma and hidden rules, the necessary and obligatory parts).

Of course I cannot vouch for his science but heck! the man is spending his own money, not trying to sell you anything (other than Mathematica) and has an impressive track record since he was a kid! Let’s give him some space to do his things.

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