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

331–340 of 376 posts

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

#331

Post by john567 »

adastra22 wrote: post #310
john567 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no. It doesn't say how to progress from one state to another. It just tells us how numbers relate to each other. This isn't perfect but something like, math express things while computation progresses things. You could argue that a particular mathematical framework is computational but I'm just trying to exemplify a distinction.

I don't think this is an accurate take on math. Beyond the fact that a lot of math fields deal explicitly with state updates (e.g. discrete math), there is also the constructionist framework for mathematical foundations which removes "non-computational" theorems like that law of the excluded middle. When you do this you get a form of math where all proofs are necessarily computational and there is a viable direct tra…

Can we at least agree that programming and math are different things?

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

#332

Post by OOvsuOO »

goldenkey wrote: post #191
saberience wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like a comment generated by Wolfram's version of GPT3 trained only on his own writing.

Ram is Wolf. Wolf is Life. Life is Wolf Ram. - Michael GPT-3 Scott

Only a real human would understand the tone. And I received it.

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

#333

Post by morelisp »

pmayrgundter wrote: post #236
morelisp wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those who support Wolfram typically are busy doing research and don't care about commenting Who is doing NKS-based research these days?

That's a reasonable question.. I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping. It might be possible to go through GitHub and find the number of Mathematica projects and then categorize them to get an approximation. Also, this is very tenuous, but I see a lot of similarity between Wolfram's automata (not this new work) and Lattice Boltzmann methods. Both have been around since the 70s/8…

> I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping.

Mathematica predates any kind of statement of NKS by over a decade (and SMP nearly a decade before that). Moreover, I don't see any evidence Mathematica is becoming more "NKS-y" over time; it's a usual sort of moribund enterprise tooling, just for a highly selective enterprise. I don't see any real connection, other than some possible post-hoc handwaving.

Coming from the other side, Mathematica's relevance to modern physics seems at a 10-20 year nadir. (E.g. from what I can tell it missed the boat entirely on the data-crunching nature of many modern experiments, and its proprietary nature makes it difficult to integrate into increasingly-complex pipelines.) So if NKS - a theory of physics - is being researched, it's either having little success or it's not related to Mathematica use.

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

#334

Post by morelisp »

spindle wrote: post #175
morelisp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling him delusional or a fraud is Wittengtein’s Ruler in action: It says far more about you than it does about him. Do you think it's impossible for him to be a skilled mathematician and delusional? Do you think smart, successful business owners are incapable of committing fraud? The interminable negative reactions to anything Wolfram does are boring , but the counter-impulse to "he's done good math, so this can…

You might like to make a top-level comment about this. I think some of the people who see excessive negativity in attitudes towards Wolfram don't know about the plagiarism.

If nothing else has by now, I don't think a new top-level comment will inform them.

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

#335

Post by [deleted] »

disqard wrote: post #317
comboy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend his Lex Friedman interviews on youtube. I've been reading and listening to Wolfram for some time and Lex manages to somehow get the most out of him. The ego is annoying and personally I don't think that New Kind of Science is very high in information density (may be my ignorance), but Wolfram definitely has many many great insights to offer if you are able to just ignore the remarks about him being the fi…

I hadn't heard of the Intellectual Dark Web until just now. Thank you!

[deleted]

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

#339

Post by adastra22 »

john567 wrote: post #331
adastra22 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is an accurate take on math. Beyond the fact that a lot of math fields deal explicitly with state updates (e.g. discrete math), there is also the constructionist framework for mathematical foundations which removes "non-computational" theorems like that law of the excluded middle. When you do this you get a form of math where all proofs are necessarily computational and there is a viable direct tra…

Can we at least agree that programming and math are different things?

No, because the Church-Turing thesis.

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

#340

Post by motoboi »

gammarator wrote: post #270
motoboi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you are not familiar with his early career as a physicist, publishing in the field since he was 15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram#Early_career

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.
Post reply on HN