5 ms·

Remarkable how Wolfram can turn any occasion to a celebration of his own achievements and preoccupations.

by crux 10y ago

matthewmcg 10y ago
I agree, especially when you compare with the humility in Danny Hillis' account: http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine... "In retrospect I realize that in almost everything that we worked on together, we were both amateurs. In digital physics, neural networks, even parallel computing, we never really knew what we were doing. But the things that we studied were so new that no one else knew exactly what they were doing either. It was amateurs who made the progress." That being said, Wolfram does have enough interesting stuff to say that I'll forgive his occasional bit of self promotion.
tzs 10y ago
It was a talk on Wolfram's personal experiences with Feynman so of course it prominently featured Wolfram's interests since those are the areas in which he has personal experience with Feynman.
bpchaps 10y ago
Maybe he's getting better, though! ;) Compared to his similar articles about Ramanujan and Minsky: sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' ramanujan.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsky.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 11 me 22 his 45 he 51 i sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' feynman.txt| tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 8 me 17 his 45 i 55 he
Myrmornis 10y ago
Strange, I thought that was a nice, personable and non-egotistical piece of writing by Wolfram.
gjm11 10y ago
I thought it was better than average in that respect. But I think general HN consensus is that it would be better if discussion of Wolfram's writings about other people weren't always dominated by talking about Wolfram's ego, resplendently magnificent though it is.

Remarkable how Wolfram can turn any occasion to a celebration of his own achievements and preoccupations.

by crux 10y ago

Remarkable how Wolfram can turn any occasion to a celebration of his own achievements and preoccupations.

I agree, especially when you compare with the humility in Danny Hillis' account: http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine... "In retrospect I realize that in almost everything that we worked on together, we were both amateurs. In digital physics, neural networks, even parallel computing, we never really knew what we were doing. But the things that we studied were so new that no one else knew exactly what they were doing either. It was amateurs who made the progress." That being said, Wolfram does have enough interesting stuff to say that I'll forgive his occasional bit of self promotion.

tzs 10y ago

It was a talk on Wolfram's personal experiences with Feynman so of course it prominently featured Wolfram's interests since those are the areas in which he has personal experience with Feynman.

bpchaps 10y ago

Maybe he's getting better, though! ;) Compared to his similar articles about Ramanujan and Minsky: sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' ramanujan.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsky.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 11 me 22 his 45 he 51 i sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' feynman.txt| tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 8 me 17 his 45 i 55 he

Myrmornis 10y ago

Strange, I thought that was a nice, personable and non-egotistical piece of writing by Wolfram.

gjm11 10y ago

I thought it was better than average in that respect. But I think general HN consensus is that it would be better if discussion of Wolfram's writings about other people weren't always dominated by talking about Wolfram's ego, resplendently magnificent though it is.