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Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

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Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#171

Post by theaussiestew »

iancmceachern wrote: post #160
ska wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that Wolfram has stepped on enough toes that he earns takes like this. He's an interesting character, and rare in that is his both obviously very intelligent, and yet not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is. I suspect he's the sort of person who can't stand the idea that he is not the smartest guy in the room - in perception or reality. He may well have constructed his career as an "outsider" t…

Totally, that whole writeup about his daily routine with that "portable" computer. He wasn't self aware enough to get outside his own nonesense.

What was wrong with that? Seemed pretty interesting as an alternative to working in doors.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#172

Post by xetplan »

thefaux wrote: post #71
Mistletoe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feynman never needed to tell you how smart he was, it just flowed out naturally as he talked about things in his beautiful clear way.

Disagree on Feynman. He seemed extraordinarily invested in showing off and self-mythologizing.

Murray Gell-Mann said exactly this. He basically got tired of working with him because everything about his personality was to generate stories and mythologies about himself.

To me, this whole idea shows what a fool the average man is.

As if we all know so much about Richard Feynman compared to Murray Gell-Mann because of what a great scientist Richard Feynman was. When OBVIOUSLY, the reason is because of the degree Feynman self promoted himself compared to other scientists.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#173

Post by martinky24 »

perrygeo wrote: post #133
martinky24 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'm gonna need a source cited on that one lmao. Absolutely no way.

Well it's an employee-owned company. Your data is as good as mine. You assert that Wolfram's work is worth less than $1billion. You're quite emphatic about that fact. Let's just do some back-of-the-napkin math to assess if your premise has any validity. Mathematica has been around for over 40 years. It has 1600+ employees. Tell me, how could a private company make payroll for 1600 top earners without hundreds of mill…

It does not have 1600+ employees. It's in the couple hundreds. Again, source, I worked there.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#174

Post by iancmceachern »

theaussiestew wrote: post #171
iancmceachern wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, that whole writeup about his daily routine with that "portable" computer. He wasn't self aware enough to get outside his own nonesense.

What was wrong with that? Seemed pretty interesting as an alternative to working in doors.

For reference here is the piece:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

My view- put the work down and take a darn walk.

This is not the behavior of a man in balance, or someone who is truly "here".

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#175

Post by lukan »

iancmceachern wrote: post #174
theaussiestew wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was wrong with that? Seemed pretty interesting as an alternative to working in doors.

For reference here is the piece: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod... My view- put the work down and take a darn walk. This is not the behavior of a man in balance, or someone who is truly "here".

That is a long articld, what exactly do you mean?

I mean, he certainly does not seem in balance, because he is very full of himself. But his working setup is interesting.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#176

Post by leto_ii »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #166
leto_ii wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taleb has math chops, what are you talking about? He's also quite a bit less self-aggrandizing. Otoh, they do seem to like reach other, which in my book does cast some doubt on taleb's ability to judge people...

What math chops does taleb have? The same ones as any options trader, as far as I can tell.

Ok, the guy is not some Fields medalist, so it depends what you mean by math chops, but here are a few of his papers published in respectable journals that have non negligible math content:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784... (free at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.01370.pdf)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784... (free at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1791.pdf)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784... (free at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04722.pdf)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0921-x

There are plenty more btw, these were the ones that I could find in more prestigious journals.

if you follow him on Twitter you'll see that he also does quite a bit of recreational maths too.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#177

Post by iancmceachern »

lukan wrote: post #175
iancmceachern wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference here is the piece: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod... My view- put the work down and take a darn walk. This is not the behavior of a man in balance, or someone who is truly "here".

That is a long articld, what exactly do you mean? I mean, he certainly does not seem in balance, because he is very full of himself. But his working setup is interesting.

I mean his working setup is not interesting, and not even the basic standard.

For $500 on amazon one can get a decent sit stand desk (not the thing that sets on a desk, that's not nearly as ergonomic), a under desk treadmill or stair stepper, several monitors and a stand. It would be better than his setup.

To me, this blog post is a microcosm of his broader work.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#179

Post by cafard »

falcor84 wrote: post #162
sriram_malhar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knuth's literate programming notably differs from notebooks in that it was designed to write explanations meant for humans, which meant that the author could present the code in chunks in the narrative sequence; the code did not have to be in execution order, unlike notebooks.

>the code did not have to be in execution order I'm not clear on this. Is it not just about having the function definitions in an arbitrary order just like all of us mortals do? Is there anything special about the code structure that Knuth proposes?

Part of the motivation might have been that he set up WEB for Pascal, which does enforce an order of declarations. Once he started working more with C, perhaps there was less reason; but he found that he enjoyed working in that manner. I haven't looked at anything released in that format for years, though.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#180

Post by FPGAhacker »

jcgrillo wrote: post #64
FPGAhacker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something wrong there? I’m sorry if I’m being dense.

Attempting to goad a critical reviewer into engaging in some sort of comments-section "public debate" (assuming that somehow the public discussion would change the reviewer's mind) a _decade_ after the fact? That behavior is, in a word, insufferable. EDIT: Also, "I know it was a challenge to review a book of its size..." comes off as insinuating that (1) the book is somehow "grand" and (2) maybe the reviewer didn't "…

I remember when it came out because a friend was excited about it. As I recall it’s a pretty large book.

Edit: just under 1200 pages on Amazon. I never got into it because I couldn’t figure out what the big revelation was supposed to be. It would take some serious dedication to go through such a large book for the sake of an unfavorable review.

I take wolfram’s words at face value.

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