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The thing I found after reading it, in regards to your list of criticisms - is that for the last two, Wolfram spent what felt like every other page (it wasn't l
by cr0sh 9y ago
The thing I found after reading it, in regards to your list of criticisms - is that for the last two, Wolfram spent what felt like every other page (it wasn't literally that, but it was very, very often) expounding upon how the material wasn't new, and that he wasn't being original with it, and as far as credit is concerned - did any of these people bother to go to the back of the book and look at the HUGE pile of "footnotes" (they are printed much smaller, because there are so damn many that to print them at the same size would mean to print at least one or two more books the same size as the main text!).
I honestly tend to wonder if the people who are complaining about the book actually bothered to read it in its entirety, and understand the information and ideas being conveyed? So far, I'm not convinced they have, but I'm willing to change my mind if someone can point to a review or argument against it that holds up. The only one I've seen espoused by anyone (and was mentioned by a commenter here) is that the book doesn't actually do any "science" - but if you read the book, you would understand that this is an impossibility based on the premise of the work.
- xrange 9y ago>I honestly tend to wonder if the people who are complaining about the book actually bothered to read it in its entirety, and understand the information and ideas being conveyed? I've always wondered if there was a psychological component to it -- as in certain personality types get personally offended by Wolfram's prose. I'm certainly curious if there would be any correlation between liking/disliking the book and some sort of Meyers-Briggs type personality assessment. Maybe it is an INTJ vs. INTP type of thing?
- qubex 9y agoI'm an INTJ and I... ...have been excited by computational thinking ever since I read The Computational Beauty Of Nature whilst in High School in 1998 ...am an avid Mathematica user ...found Wolfram's arguments pretty trite and obvious, couched in self-aggrandising hand-waving ...found the book's prose style to be absolutely maddening ...slogged through the whole damned tome (footnotes included) in a desperate attempt to extract some insight from it