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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

#351

Post by copperx »

mrjangles wrote: post #151

I 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…

> decline in the quality of Mathematica

Has Mathematica gone down in quality lately?

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

#352

Post by copperx »

ogogmad wrote: post #265
hobofan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone enlighten me why he is delusional and why he has lost it? DISCLAIMER: Views not necessarily my own I think it would be hard to try to pinpoint a single point in time where "he lost it". Stephen Wolfram grew up as a mathematician/physicist wunderkind, so as it's often the case for people that produced highly praised work early in their life, it's hard to transition to a life with humbleness and where outp…

Wolfram Alpha isn't "revolutionary" perhaps, but it's surprisingly useful for some queries. There's the obvious use-case of solving mathematical problems. But you can also use it to (for instance) count the number of weeks from 3rd August 2022 to 7th January 2023. It often "just works" for these kinds of things.

It's funny; 99% of my interactions with Wolfram Alpha are about dates.

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

#353

Post by mrjangles »

posix_me_less wrote: post #299
mrjangles wrote: post #151

I 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…

Feynman wrote something in the sense Wolfram did invent an interesting way to implement quantum chromodynamics on a computer, so he did something contributory to science.

You are going to need a very specific citation for that because, if he did, no one working in physics today has heard of it.

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

#354

Post by mrjangles »

copperx wrote: post #351
mrjangles wrote: post #151

I 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…

> decline in the quality of Mathematica Has Mathematica gone down in quality lately?

Every release is more bloated, runs more slowly, non of the old problems fixed or improved (e.g. still can't handle large files well and every release handling of graphics gets slower). The user manual has gone from being one the best I have ever seen to being terrible for all the new sections for the new functionality they implemented. A lot of the new functionality is badly designed, not like the old stuff which was incredible. The actual useful stuff like interfacing with external code is so old that it barely works anymore (like interfacing with c# compiled later than 2010)...etc.

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

#355

Post by mrjangles »

daneelsan wrote: post #279
mrjangles wrote: post #151

I 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.

The fact that no one could possibly have a clue what this sentence means is a pretty good indication of how important this work was.

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

#356

Post by crispyambulance »

motoboi wrote: post #340
gammarator wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t tell us much about the quality of the work under discussion.

No. But I'm replying to the OP argument that his physics career began with the book.

No, I was trying to say that the book was when he first demonstrated that he was very much an outsider. Even by then he had been out of academia for a long time, busy building his company and making his fortune.

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

#357

Post by SantalBlush »

ganzuul wrote: post #308
Chris2048 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if you consider that a judgement of character (or at least, one equivalent to the OP). Can you fully expand on the things you say rather than leaving them cryptic? I'm having to guess what point you are making.

No I cannot fully expand on what I say. I can not predict the full extent of how you will interpret my words. You need good faith to be more valuable that a programmable object. This is why you assume the best about a person and if you overestimate then you carry the discussion forward. This is why unquestioning criticism, judgement, is of no substance.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.

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

#358

Post by jazzyjackson »

copperx wrote: post #350
jazzyjackson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John von Nuemann comes to mind, Edison of course... seems history is written by the patent submitters

> John von Nuemann Are you saying that some of the work attributed to Neumann was not his? Are there any examples?

The famed "von Neumann" architecture refers to a write-up he was asked to do to update the Army on progress on the ENIAC. He didn't even intend to publish it, the ENIAC was classified, it was Goldstine that published it with their names on it. See the "controversies" section here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_t...

The book "Pioneer Programmer" by ENIAC programmer Jean Jennings Bartik goes into detail about the egos at play in taking credit for the work done by Eckert & Mauchly.

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

#359

Post by lioeters »

georgewfraser wrote: post #255

Wolfram wolfram wolfram wolfram! Wolfram’s wolfram wolfram, wolfram wolfram. Wolfram wolfram? Wolfram wolfram wolfram wolfram.

Looks like you've discovered the Wolfram Calculus, a universal model of computation in which all the laws of physics can be derived from the simple, irreducible existence of Wolfram, the Self of all selves.

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

#360

Post by spindle »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #119
esperent wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the problem. Maybe it will, but as of yet nobody has figured out a practical application beyond "helping us appreciate nature" (replace nature with any chaotic system). 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 t…

It's a problem when someone is claiming that a technique Solves the Big Problems when it clearly doesn't. Maybe it will one day, and no one is saying it's not an interesting avenue to explore. But making grandiose claims is not doing science. Making novel falsifiable concrete predictions is science, and Wolfram hasn't made enough of those to justify the extreme self-regard.

I strongly agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but:

> making grandiose claims is not doing science. Making novel falsifiable concrete predictions is science

It seems to me that making grandiose claims is absolutely essential to science every now and then. A good example is when Einstein made the grandiose (and unfalsifiable) claim that the mathematical theory of relativity already worked out by Lorentz and Poincare and whoever was best seen as the denial of the existence of simultaneity etc., a claim which obviously turned out to be very fruitful since it lead to General Relativity.

However (and this is one reason I so strongly argee with the spirit of what you're saying), (a) there isn't room for very much of this stuff, (b) Einstein was much better at it than Wolfram is, and (c) Einstein was listened to because at the same time (ha ha) as he was making grandiose claims he was making unarguably gobsmacking breakthroughs in atomic theory and quantum mechanics.

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