111–120 of 181 posts
I do not care that Stephen Wolfram is full of himself. Every tech CEO is full of themselves too, but because Stephen is an awkward looking nerdy guy who is less business oriented people dislike him for it. He's an interesting guy, even if he isn't as interesting as he thinks he is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Notebooks, like Jupter, clearly came from his work While I often hear this claim from Wolfram and his supporters, I have never seen any evidence that it was his innovation. MathCAD was the first software released with a notebook interface, and there was research using those ideas prior to the release of the first Mathematica notebook. Maybe his particular take was an improvement on the others, but the claim that it…
I get that it's not exactly what we consider notebooks now, but Knuth was writing about literate programming several years before MathCAD.
I do not care that Stephen Wolfram is full of himself. Every tech CEO is full of themselves too, but because Stephen is an awkward looking nerdy guy who is less business oriented people dislike him for it. He's an interesting guy, even if he isn't as interesting as he thinks he is.
I think people take issue with CEOs pretending to be experts in things where they aren't - Wolfram in physics, Musk in geopolitics and freedom of speech etc.
Stephen Wolfram has a PhD in particle physics (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Wolfram&o...).
He's arrogant, he doesn't give credits to others. So what? Silly Ad hominem attack. Not listening to him because of this is a mistake, Wolfram is a true genius and, even if "his" ideas aren't fully his, you will probably not hear them with such clarity anywhere else. He is, at a minimum , an amazing explainer like few people I've ever seen.
He's arrogant, he doesn't give credits to others. So what? Silly Ad hominem attack. Not listening to him because of this is a mistake, Wolfram is a true genius and, even if "his" ideas aren't fully his, you will probably not hear them with such clarity anywhere else. He is, at a minimum , an amazing explainer like few people I've ever seen.
Populism, it works! EDIT: Generally when people are "true geniuses" their _peers_ identify them as such. That's not the case here.
Counterexample: Kurt Heegener. OK, not a genius, but nevertheless a mathematician whose proof of a deep result (class number 1 problem [1]) was not accepted by his peers
Quote from [2]:
"In 1952, he published the Stark–Heegner theorem which he claimed was the solution to a classic number theory problem proposed by the great mathematician Gauss, the class number 1 problem. Heegner's work was not accepted for years, mainly due to his quoting of a portion of Heinrich Martin Weber's work that was known to be incorrect (though he never used this result in the proof)."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Class_number_prob...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kurt_Heegner&oldi...
I do not care that Stephen Wolfram is full of himself. Every tech CEO is full of themselves too, but because Stephen is an awkward looking nerdy guy who is less business oriented people dislike him for it. He's an interesting guy, even if he isn't as interesting as he thinks he is.
I think people take issue with CEOs pretending to be experts in things where they aren't - Wolfram in physics, Musk in geopolitics and freedom of speech etc.
Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?
- They pay like shit (compared to "sexy employers") - Headquartered in Champaign, Illinois (not a bad town, but not sexy) - As "cool" as their software is, not a lot of people use it. Python is eating their lunch, ESPECIALLY outside of academia. Although, they're losing ground in academia as well - Stephen Wolfram isn't a charismatic leader who is fun to work for. There's no shortage of stories of him short circuitin…
How do they pay compared to other midwestern employers?
He's arrogant, he doesn't give credits to others. So what? Silly Ad hominem attack. Not listening to him because of this is a mistake, Wolfram is a true genius and, even if "his" ideas aren't fully his, you will probably not hear them with such clarity anywhere else. He is, at a minimum , an amazing explainer like few people I've ever seen.
In my opinion, arrogance, selfishness, and ego from (perceived) "genius" people should not be tolerated even if they made/make substantial contributions in one field or another. Academia, in particular, is full of these types. The world would survive without their precious work and would be a much better place without the shitty experience they bring to everyone else. I was just watching Avi Loeb; good riddance, no m…
People have very different needs for harmony. Your statement likely implies that yours is rather high. My stance differs: great research is what advances mankind. Unpleasant great researchers will die some day, their research is there to stay.
(just to be clear: there is nothing good or bad with having a high or low need for harmony)
I love Stephen Wolfram so much that I may even consider him a role model. I understand the need for the masses to have people ideas that are obviously practical. Stephen Wolfram is more of an explore. And he is documenting phenomena that I don't see any one else doing because everyone else is so teleological. I think we need to give a break to researchers doing this original non teleological research. I don't underst…
He comes off as very arrogant. Also, on more than one occasion he's tried to pass off others work as his own. The best of example of this is when he said he invented the field of cellular automata.
Source?
I love Stephen Wolfram so much that I may even consider him a role model. I understand the need for the masses to have people ideas that are obviously practical. Stephen Wolfram is more of an explore. And he is documenting phenomena that I don't see any one else doing because everyone else is so teleological. I think we need to give a break to researchers doing this original non teleological research. I don't underst…
He comes off as very arrogant. Also, on more than one occasion he's tried to pass off others work as his own. The best of example of this is when he said he invented the field of cellular automata.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39456628
(He does come across as arrogant, because he probably is, but his arrogance doesn't extend so far as to include this a claim that he invented something that he’s acknowledged were discussed before his birth.)