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

111–120 of 376 posts

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

#111

Post by froh »

carlob wrote: post #85
anyfactor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't a group like this emerged in software? My opinion is that you obviously don't pay for free and/or open software with money but you do pay with the fatigue of bearing the creators ideological and personal whims. Software requires maintenance and support. It is not a do it once and do it perfectly. Also let's not forget about us the users who constantly attempt to dictate the path the software is heading. If…

Possibly Satoshi Nakamoto?

I just hope they have deposited some post mortem disclosure somewhere...

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

#112

Post by OOvsuOO »

Wolfram software is awesome! It beats any other software and it's why they charge for it. It's worth it. Education about computers, science and math made easier to manipulate. Fact based results.

If you google something you get jumbled results. Wolfram either you get it right with some facts back at your query. Or you get nil. You can be confident that it's a fact staring at you. You can cross reference and check it too! that's something google can't do.

Expand your world, try out Wolfram.

Wolfram behooves truth it seems people are afraid of the truth. Hence the comments here.

Being able to do your own research and learn programming. I haven't seen a better documentation for software compared to Wolfram's.

He's beyond time in the future. Wolfram's software was used on the ISS to do some real world calculations to make a course correction. It helped me understand programming and computers. I look forward to wolfram adventures.

Computer literacy can be understood and learned using Wolfram.

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

#113

Post by qwerty456127 »

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…

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 the other people ignite in trying to demonstrate they are "more huge". All the reason and meaningful discussion is lost at this point, no matter how clever and educated the people involved are and what they actually achieved/contributed.

By the way I wish more people would create research institutes so there would be more free competition and less bureaucracy in research. There are many talented people who could do some useful/interesting research but ~80% of them probably won't manage with all the obstacles on the path to actual research (including the obstacles which effectively filter subjects and other parameters of research to what's trending in Nature).

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

#114

Post by lanternfish »

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).

With the correct initial state, any Turing complete cellular automata (like CGoL) can model any computable system. We can computationally model prevailing quantum models (albeit incredibly slowly), so an unbounded CGoL field would fit the criteria.

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

#115

Post by infogulch »

The one thing that unites mathematicians throughout history and field is the pursuit of beauty. And by some happenstance the most beautiful theories are often found to be useful in the real world. Human beings are embedded and embodied in this admittedly beautiful fractally complex existence. Somehow it doesn't seem surprising for us to be attracted to patterns that can manifest in our reality.

If anything, finite automata are beautiful.

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

#116

Post by adastra22 »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #58
adastra22 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure math isn’t computational? o_O (Constructivist mathematics is a thing, and it is pretty easy to formulate physics in a constructivist framework. Many serious quantum theoreticians do.)

My current layman pseudo-insight into this: Why in mathematics do we want to approximate non-linear functions by linear functions? Why do we not have sufficient theory to understand complex non-linear phenomena? Perhaps a different paradigm is required.

We do have ways of solving many classes of complex, non-linear functions. There are whole fields of math devoted to this. Pure math is full of non-linearity.

However in the realm of applied math, linear functions rather uniquely have a set of standard algorithms which work on all classes of linear functions, which make them very, very easy to work with. And any non-linear function can be approximated to whatever level of detail you want just by adding more (linear) parameters. You can try solving your non-linear function slightly more exactly... but why bother?

It's like saying "why don't we have other models of computation besides a Turing machine?" to which the answer is: "we do. but every computation can be represented as a Turing machine, so why bother?"

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

#117

Post by farseer »

noizejoy wrote: post #78

Could be a fun ask HN: What would happen if Mr. Wolfram and Mr. Musk would have to share the same room for a while?

Things would get physical very quickly, probably ending with Musk strangling Wolfram due to his advanced age.

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

#118

Post by chrisseaton »

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

Narcissism more often comes from hidden or repressed insecurity - the opposite of confidence.

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

#119

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

esperent wrote: post #71
teruakohatu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Practically it can lead to better encryption like I linked above, superior understanding and prediction of weather 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). We are pretty good with weather prediction and getting better all the time. The fundamental problem is the chaotic nature. CA…

> 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.

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

#120

Post by tokai »

It's interesting with the sycophant outrage over criticism of Wolfram. With arguments ala "criticise his work not his person". But if you actually follow his work (scientific work, not his business) it is clear that there is a lot to critique, but not in a useful sense. Scholarly reviews of A New Kind of Science were universally negative. The usefulness of what he proposes is doubtful and it is unoriginal. He is unable to engage with other scientists in a way that furthers his program. And he is know to use academic shadow writers. I can't wrap my head a around why anyone would defend a self-centred entrepreneur that purchase the scientific relevance he couldn't work up organically (Sending thousands of copies of your own book to academic libraries all over the world is very much not in the spirit of science).
Post reply on HN