[deleted]
We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
271–280 of 376 posts
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
The web/media representation of Stephen Wolfram somehow seems (I never had a chance to know him personally so I have no idea if he even creates such an impression, let alone actually does) like he has a "huge ego". Whenever someone produces such an impression (which can often be an unfortunate coincidence, I wouldn't expect popular ideas about people to be reliably related to their actual characters), "egos" of all t…
I honestly think it is that his academic accomplishments in youth combined with the work he has done since is just triggering to people who have their identity wrapped up in being the smart kid. Since he names his companies after himself, knocking him for being "egotistical" is an easy attack to feel better about oneself for not having a PhD from Caltech at 20 with Feynman advising. I have listened to hours of him on…
Isn't naming your business after yourself a common, centuries-old convention?
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#273> Something remarkable has happened these past two years. For 45 years I’ve devoted myself to building a taller and taller tower of science and technology—which along the way has delivered many outputs of which I’m quite proud. But starting in 2020 with the unexpected breakthroughs of our Wolfram Physics Project we’ve jumped to a whole new level. And suddenly—yes, building on our multi-decade tower—it seems as if we’…
>An author who sets a piece up like that had better deliver the goods - big time. The author does not.
That's been my impression of Stephen Wolfram and what he does in general. He has some accomplishments but his ego is comically large by comparison with those. Very hard to take him seriously.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#274> Something remarkable has happened these past two years. For 45 years I’ve devoted myself to building a taller and taller tower of science and technology—which along the way has delivered many outputs of which I’m quite proud. But starting in 2020 with the unexpected breakthroughs of our Wolfram Physics Project we’ve jumped to a whole new level. And suddenly—yes, building on our multi-decade tower—it seems as if we’…
> it's nothing more than noodling cellular automata in ways that have had no effect whatsoever on chemistry, physics, or biology.
I mean, you could at least read a bit about what his Multicomputation stuff is really studying. CA are not being noodled there.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does his ego effect anyone who doesn’t work for him? I read most of the announcement and he’s promising research papers and lecture/teaching materials. That’s good, no? Wolfram’s over the top next level ego, to be sure. But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac.
>But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac. Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.
You're describing generally positive traits, not specific to science. Science was pushed forward by many kinds of people, many of them obnoxious, arrogant, racists, etc. You can't disqualify Wolfram as scientist by pointing to his bad personality characteristics.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#276Man 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…
IMO all of the comments about Wolfram as a topic are low quality, including this one. The topic of the post is the "Wolfram Institute". I'm happy to see more investment in R&D, period. Good on Wolfram. I will probably never seek out a job at the Wolfram Institute because I believe the title is true -- there is an abundance of scientific opportunity. Working on Wolfram's agenda would not be the best use of my time, in…
> computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s
What do you mean?
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#277I came across this today:
https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/all/
"Note: Since 1987, Stephen Wolfram’s intellectual efforts have not primarily been reported in academic articles."
To be clear - no serious scientist believes that a scholarly output which is composed predominantly of non-peer reviewed publications is a serious or valid output.
Essentially, Wolfram is a glorified blogger who runs a tech company. That's not nothing, but it doesn't make someone a scientific leader.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People demand mediocrity and are furious when they don't get it. Remember that people have different preferences. Those objecting to Wolfram tend to be those who appreciate a "quiet confidence" style, which lets your work stand for itself rather than needing you to function as its hype man. To such people, Wolfram's general presentation style reads as puffery-covering-mediocrity -- someone who truly had what he cla…
Basically agreed, but isn't that preference usually context dependent? People like to let the work stand for itself.. that feels like it's from a cloistered environment where everyone is tenured and respected and get their fair time to present their work and get its due attention. Which is fine and dandy and I'm glad we have that. There's also people who are not in that environment who sometimes have something import…
I think it's somewhat context-dependent, but people do have a general preference that applies across situations.
Particularly if it's a topic where you don't have the expertise needed to evaluate what someone says, falling back on presentational heuristics is pretty common. For Wolfram, I'm not a dual-PhD in math and physics, so I think I'm not qualified to really understand his claims. Thus thinking "this person's communication style makes me think of people who're exaggerating their achievements" colors my view of his likely correctness -- not enough to come out and say he's wrong myself (since I don't know), but rather to make me sit back and wait for someone who sounds more trustworthy to validate it.
I do admit it's a difficult situation, because if you do sincerely believe that you've come up with something that'll revolutionize all of science, it's difficult to say that in a humble way. (I feel I could do better at that than Wolfram, though, particularly if we take this article as representative of his style. :D)
To continue the Trump analogy... a lot of the people who believed what he was saying didn't have any deep knowledge of, say, immigration policy; they just heard someone who was giving (to them) "I am a confident and capable person" signals who was saying something was important, and they trusted that in part because of this bias.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#279I don't understand all these comments saying "Sure Wolfram may be arrogant, but he has achieved amazing things". "lets look at his work and ideas not him as a person". ... What does this even mean? Steven Wolfram has never achieved a single thing in science or mathematics. Absolutely no one has ever said otherwise, except for Steven Wolfram himself. I used to think he was a failed scientist who, at least, was good wi…
Didn't he invent a numbering schema for classifying CA? That should count as an achievement.
Re: We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
#280The idea that cellular automaton can form a foundation for physics that mathematics can't seems incredibly unlikely. Mathematica is a useful program, but his claims are a bit over the top compared to the critiques from fellow scientists.
I'm not sure why comments mention CA. His physics theory and the multicomputation stuff does not make use of CA's (at least no more than any other abstract machine).