5 ms·

Every mention of Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book deserves a link to Cosma Shalizi's epic take-down of a review ("A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania an

Every mention of Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book deserves a link to Cosma Shalizi's epic take-down of a review ("A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity"): http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ (EDIT) The gist: "As the saying goes, there is much here that is new and true, but what is true is not new, and what is new is not true; and some of it is even old and false, or at least utterly unsupported."

apo 9y ago
Let me try to sum up. On the one hand, we have a large number of true but commonplace ideas, especially about how simple rules can lead to complex outcomes, and about the virtues of toy models. On the other hand, we have a large mass of dubious speculations (many of them also unoriginal). We have, finally, a single new result of mathematical importance, which is not actually the author's. Everything is presented as the inspired fruit of a lonely genius, delivering startling insights in isolation from a blinkered and philistine scientific community. We have been this way before. I had no idea this review existed, but it captures many of my reactions to the book when I first tried to read it many years ago. I distinctly remember the lack of discussion of previous work, lack of specific citations to the academic literature, and the garbled way in which scientific fields I had some knowledge of were explained. The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before. A "new kind of science", perhaps?
DubiousPusher 9y ago
> Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book Ego-trip indeed. There's little I find more gag inducing than someone discussing their own writing as if it's elevated cannon apart from themselves. > But with every passing year I feel I understand more about what the book is really about — and why it’s important. You don't say Mr. Wolfram
yters 9y ago
The guy might be a crank, but I don't think that is the real reason for vitriol. His views are the most plausible version of materialism, but they are so obviously wrong that it casts materialism in the same crank light. So, the materialist establishment works hard to distance themselves from him.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I think a good part of the vitriol stems from Wolfram taking open credit for other people's work.
  - xrange 9y ago
    Is there a particularly egregious example that we can link to (since the book is on line)? Or maybe someone has an annotated version which has better references to prior work? https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/ https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Rule 110. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scientific-credit-where-its-due/171481.article https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scientific-credit-... Apologies for the link quality.
  - yters 9y ago
    Steve Jobs did that more than most, so did Thomas Edison, yet we venerate them for doing so. There must be a different reason people dislike Wolfram. He's obviously a brilliant guy, his premises make a lot of sense and he's been much more successful business wise than most mathematicians. I'd think he'd be a poster child for HN, not an object of hate.
riffraff 9y ago
somehow I thought you were linking to the famous "A New Kind of Review", which I cannot currently find on Amazon anymore, but is reported here[0]. The incipit "I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review" is, AFAICT, NKS in a nutshell. [0] http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html
ChuckMcM 9y ago
That is an epic review. I slogged through about a third of the book and then skimmed the rest. I waited until there was a copy at the library because I knew it was getting poor reviews, and I was glad I had. That said, I shared Wolfram's amazement at how amazingly complex behaviors emerged from simple sets of rules. And I too pondered how something like DNA combined with a set of simple rules could result in a fully functional human when those rules were repeatedly applied. But I have yet to deduce any way in which I might reason from simple rules to a coordinated complex system, or to predict the system such rules would produce. In some ways it felt to me like applying Riemann sums to solve an integration and never being able to get past that algorithmic solution to the next step which is Calculus proper. It is interesting to read from the author's perspective that after 35 years of thinking about it he hasn't come up with any way bridge that gap either.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > something like DNA combined with a set of simple rules could result in a fully functional human when those rules were repeatedly applied. It's worth noting that the more we learn about DNA, the more it seems that the rules governing gene regulation and expression are anything but simple. [0] At one point, it was believed that the Human Genome Project would sequence our genome, and from there it would be relatively straightforward to "read" all the genes and figure out how to cure genetic diseases. Now, twenty-ish years later, that view seems naive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression#Regulation_of_gene_expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression#Regulation_of_... - for a very brief overview
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    I don't disagree, Wolfram would suggest that the rules of gene expression arise from a still simpler set of more fundamental rules :-) And that, in a nutshell, is his entire thesis. If you keep following it down, and uncover the rules underneath the rules, then you reach the last irreducible set of rules. And then somehow that understanding will let you deduce something else or something. (that was were I fell off the train, trying to figure out the second part)

apo 9y ago

Let me try to sum up. On the one hand, we have a large number of true but commonplace ideas, especially about how simple rules can lead to complex outcomes, and about the virtues of toy models. On the other hand, we have a large mass of dubious speculations (many of them also unoriginal). We have, finally, a single new result of mathematical importance, which is not actually the author's. Everything is presented as the inspired fruit of a lonely genius, delivering startling insights in isolation from a blinkered and philistine scientific community. We have been this way before. I had no idea this review existed, but it captures many of my reactions to the book when I first tried to read it many years ago. I distinctly remember the lack of discussion of previous work, lack of specific citations to the academic literature, and the garbled way in which scientific fields I had some knowledge of were explained. The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before.

coldtea 9y ago
>The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before. A "new kind of science", perhaps?

DubiousPusher 9y ago

> Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book Ego-trip indeed. There's little I find more gag inducing than someone discussing their own writing as if it's elevated cannon apart from themselves. > But with every passing year I feel I understand more about what the book is really about — and why it’s important. You don't say Mr. Wolfram

yters 9y ago

The guy might be a crank, but I don't think that is the real reason for vitriol. His views are the most plausible version of materialism, but they are so obviously wrong that it casts materialism in the same crank light. So, the materialist establishment works hard to distance themselves from him.

jacquesm 9y ago
I think a good part of the vitriol stems from Wolfram taking open credit for other people's work.
- xrange 9y ago
  Is there a particularly egregious example that we can link to (since the book is on line)? Or maybe someone has an annotated version which has better references to prior work? https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/ https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Rule 110. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scientific-credit-where-its-due/171481.article https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scientific-credit-... Apologies for the link quality.
- yters 9y ago
  Steve Jobs did that more than most, so did Thomas Edison, yet we venerate them for doing so. There must be a different reason people dislike Wolfram. He's obviously a brilliant guy, his premises make a lot of sense and he's been much more successful business wise than most mathematicians. I'd think he'd be a poster child for HN, not an object of hate.

riffraff 9y ago

somehow I thought you were linking to the famous "A New Kind of Review", which I cannot currently find on Amazon anymore, but is reported here[0]. The incipit "I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review" is, AFAICT, NKS in a nutshell. [0] http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html

ChuckMcM 9y ago

That is an epic review. I slogged through about a third of the book and then skimmed the rest. I waited until there was a copy at the library because I knew it was getting poor reviews, and I was glad I had. That said, I shared Wolfram's amazement at how amazingly complex behaviors emerged from simple sets of rules. And I too pondered how something like DNA combined with a set of simple rules could result in a fully functional human when those rules were repeatedly applied. But I have yet to deduce any way in which I might reason from simple rules to a coordinated complex system, or to predict the system such rules would produce. In some ways it felt to me like applying Riemann sums to solve an integration and never being able to get past that algorithmic solution to the next step which is Calculus proper. It is interesting to read from the author's perspective that after 35 years of thinking about it he hasn't come up with any way bridge that gap either.

ForHackernews 9y ago
> something like DNA combined with a set of simple rules could result in a fully functional human when those rules were repeatedly applied. It's worth noting that the more we learn about DNA, the more it seems that the rules governing gene regulation and expression are anything but simple. [0] At one point, it was believed that the Human Genome Project would sequence our genome, and from there it would be relatively straightforward to "read" all the genes and figure out how to cure genetic diseases. Now, twenty-ish years later, that view seems naive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression#Regulation_of_gene_expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression#Regulation_of_... - for a very brief overview
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  I don't disagree, Wolfram would suggest that the rules of gene expression arise from a still simpler set of more fundamental rules :-) And that, in a nutshell, is his entire thesis. If you keep following it down, and uncover the rules underneath the rules, then you reach the last irreducible set of rules. And then somehow that understanding will let you deduce something else or something. (that was were I fell off the train, trying to figure out the second part)