Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

writings.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 376 posts

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

#201

Post by sjg007 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #145
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?

There are two Stephen Wolframs: the one who makes useful software (Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha), and the one who fancies himself an academic. His success in the former lets him avoid humility in the latter, and this conflict is where the problems come in.

Wolfram is by any measure a successful academic. One general issue though is that particle physics basically hit a dead end. The future was in simulation (hence Mathematica) and then the idea that the universe is computational and if it is how could it be and how might it work.

This multi computational idea seems to draw from the double slit experiment where observation collapses the wave function and the multi-probability path history based on the observer. This is saying that computations can be modeled similarly. And this type of model handles non-determinism in general and "threads of time" apparently. Interesting. Ambitious but very interesting.

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

#202

Post by abetusk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #199
abetusk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Wolfram gets a lot of unnecessary hate by people online and the scientific community and that Wolfram has a lot of interesting things to say but I also see why the community at large bashes on him so regularly. Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory. I often find that I have to really work to find the content in what Wolfram says after wading through what sounds like marketing. I'm of…

> Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory Not making a comparison in terms of contributions to science. But the same could be said about Newton and a host of other great (mostly) men of history. One of the most useful emotional filters I've learned to drop is the predisposition against zealous enthusiasm. Automatically dismissing it is as reductive as immediately submitting to it.

That's absolutely fair. We forgive and/or forget that arrogance when the contribution is significant.

I will push back a bit and say that the arrogance of current and past scientists and engineers mostly comes across in dealing with them personally and, for the most part, they try to put their egos to the side to better communicate their ideas. Wolfram puts his ego front and center in his more recent scientific communications (the CA collected papers didn't have this problem, as far as I can remember). It's been a while since I looked at ANKoS but, as I remember, the scientific ideas are intertwined with his editorializing. The editorializing gets in the way of understanding what actual fundamental scientific ideas he's trying to push forward.

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

#203

Post by dudeinjapan »

leephillips wrote: post #197
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…

“new model for understanding reality...the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes...” Is there any evidence whatsoever that he’s accomplished these things? He’s been at this for decades. Is there any prediction of any natural phenomenon? Did he predict a new elementary particle? Can he predict the flow of water through a pipe? Is there a quantitative connection with anything in th…

You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven Ramwolf is the lone iconoclast raving about D-branes.

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

#204

Post by Tr3nton »

I've been hearing/seeing Stephen Wolfram's name for about 2 decades. Each time I see it, it's associated with some supposed incredible breakthrough in math, science, physics, or perhaps a combination of those; and that's it. There's never any application to the real world, there's never any great discovery that enlightens or improves the common man's life. You could argue I'm not smart enough to understand his work, but I could argue he's not smart enough to make the importance of his work comprehensible to dumb people like me.

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

#205

Post by pwr-electronics »

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…

Yeah, I don't get it. He's a guy who runs a business to support his hobby, both pretty harmless. Bonus points for creating and sharing enjoyable and useful things and ideas. I'll debate his ideas, but I'm not gonna tell him what to do with his life.

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

#206

Post by codethief »

m12k wrote: post #196
Spinnaker_ wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!).

And just to add on top of this - there is to the best of my knowledge little if any research that shows that the current practice of publication and peer review is actually effective at weeding out bad science. The current replication crisis in psychology and other fields would suggest that it's actually quite bad at it. For a community that is supposed to be based on the ideal of experimentation and falsifiability,…

> The current replication crisis in psychology and other fields would suggest that it's actually quite bad at it.

Not saying that you're necessarily wrong but be careful not to compare apples to oranges: There is a huge difference between fields like math & physics on the one hand and fields like psychology on the other.

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

#207

Post by codethief »

ergonaught wrote: post #185

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 somet…

> let’s all be honest here and recognize that we’ve reached the “Is it GPT-3 or is it Stephen Wolfram?” singularity.

Damn, that's such a great way of putting it!

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

#208

Post by leephillips »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #203
leephillips wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“new model for understanding reality...the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes...” Is there any evidence whatsoever that he’s accomplished these things? He’s been at this for decades. Is there any prediction of any natural phenomenon? Did he predict a new elementary particle? Can he predict the flow of water through a pipe? Is there a quantitative connection with anything in th…

You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven Ramwolf is the lone iconoclast raving about D-branes.

People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.

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

#209

Post by SantalBlush »

ganzuul wrote: post #187
d--b wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pointing out character flaws is not an ad hominem in itself. Stop calling everything an ad hominem, folks.

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

#210

Post by al2o3cr »

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’s true evil in the world. Truly despicable sins. Calibrate your outrage towards that.
Holy whataboutism, Batman.

Funny how "focus on true evil in the world" doesn't apply to stanning rich weirdos on HN...

Post reply on HN