5 ms·

What’s HN’s opinion of Stephen Wolfram? Is he legit? Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading?

reader5000 8y ago
NKoS is definitely worth reading especially if you have "boolean" in your username. And it's mostly pictures anyway.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
He was a child genius, known as a bit too egotistical today, but he has made genuine contributions to the field. NKOS has a nice narrative at least, and might be worth reading as a pop sci work, but isn't very scientifically noteworthy in itself.
- danbr 8y ago
  I met him at a talk about a year ago, I would agree he is somewhat egotistical, but he didn’t come off as arrogant - which was interesting.
rsync 8y ago
He is the creator of Mathematica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Mathematica I would consider that legitimacy.
- lenticular 8y ago
  Mathematica is literally the worst PL I've ever used, especially since you effectively have to use their built-in editor that doesn't even have multiple undo. Of course, it is the least-worst symbolic system out there currently. But, it's not like lisp wouldn't have developed similar capabilities if Mathematica didn't come around.
  - blihp 8y ago
    You mean like Macsyma, now Maxima, where he probably got some early ideas from?
    - sedachv 8y ago
      Mathematica (SMP) started out as a Macsyma clone. Here is a anecdote of how Wolfram went about this with his usual humility: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/BUxXH76CYdc/IunywkAxufMJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/BUxXH76CYdc/I...
      - blihp 8y ago
        That's a more direct way of making my point ;-) I don't recall seeing that Pitman post before... good stuff. Interesting to see that Wolfram always had his <cough> confidence.
  - techgipper 8y ago
    It's had multiple undo in notebooks (quite more than "an editor") for a while, and you can run it from a command line or use an IDE. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/program/wolframscript.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/program/wolframsc...
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    I mean, I wouldn't make a website with it, but for computational/mathematical code I'd choose Mathematica and its editor over a Lisp language any day, even if it's just for the syntax (though it most certainly is not). Some of us actually find it easier to understand and write math when it looks like math and not just a wall of parentheses or ASCII art.
    - lispm 8y ago
      That's why basically all Lisp systems in that area (Macsyma, Maxima, Axiom, REDUCE, ...) provide non-lisp syntax programming.
  - 8y ago
- throway88989898 8y ago
  Mathematica should be open source
4thaccount 8y ago
Mathematica is good software (I posted on it here recently). A New Kind of Science is part of where Wolfram gets his bad rap...just read the Amazon reviews to get an idea.
vortico 8y ago
More like "A New Kind of Science".
dflock 8y ago
I think the answers are, essentially: > Is he legit? Yes - but he's amazingly full of himself and incredibly self-serving. > Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading? Not really, no.
mlevental 8y ago
on NKOS: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Thank you! That's a great review - long, well-informed, savage yet trying to be fair; totally accurate as far as I could tell, although the criticisms seemed far weaker in places. Lots of good links too. ... 168 other long reviews by Cosma Shalizi on that site, and a lot of other stuff. I hadn't heard the name before, thanks again.
hirundo 8y ago
I thought A New Kind of Science was wonderful. It's a deep dive into cellular automata by a very creative, systematic and productive mind. He doesn't succeed in remaking physics with these models, but he does succeed in demonstrating that the natural world is full of vast computational potential that emerges everywhere from simple interactions. It's a vision of an awesomely fecund ordinary reality.
- dmos62 8y ago
  I loved the book as well. I found it exceptionally well written, researched. The content was eye-opening and the author was . This is the first I notice that there's so much discontent with it. I'm not sure where it's coming from. Edit: actually, I'm understating things. I found not only his central ideas very noteworthy, but how he managed to portray the historical development of mainstream science as largely random (as opposed to the, now silly, idea I may have had that today's science is somehow "optimal") was great and a positive influence on my outlooks, I'd say.
  - Retra 8y ago
    I think a lot of the discontent is that (reportedly, I have not read it) he seems to present the material as 1. largely his original work, and 2. revolutionary, while the ideas may be interesting and well presented, neither of those things are actually true.
maxander 8y ago
NKOS is probably the (or at least one of the) defining works on cellular automata and the thought around/behind them, at least when it was written. It will likely be as interesting as that sounds to you.
duado 8y ago
He’s like a Mozart who thinks he’s better than Bach.
- macawfish 8y ago
  Lol good analogy, although Mozart had a sense of humor going for him
mehrdadn 8y ago
Well, he started Wolfram Research. You should try their products if you haven't. If you have, just try to imagine how you'd make something like Wolfram Mathematica or Wolfram Alpha.
Ono-Sendai 8y ago
I liked a ANKOS, especially the chapter about physics.
- pokolovsky 8y ago
  Me too, and I wonder how many people have actually read ANKOS.
sedachv 8y ago
> Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading? The best thing about ANKOS were the footnotes. The footnotes/appendices could have made a good popular book on the history and relationship of computation and physics, except for all of the gag-reflex-inducing Mathematica self-promotion. Here is an example from the first footnote I clicked on just now: "But in the so-called lambda calculus of Alonzo Church from around 1930 what were instead used were pure functions... of just the kind now familiar from Mathematica." https://wolframscience.com/nks/notes-11-12--lambda-calculus/ https://wolframscience.com/nks/notes-11-12--lambda-calculus/ The whole book is full of things like that.

NKoS is definitely worth reading especially if you have "boolean" in your username. And it's mostly pictures anyway.

He was a child genius, known as a bit too egotistical today, but he has made genuine contributions to the field. NKOS has a nice narrative at least, and might be worth reading as a pop sci work, but isn't very scientifically noteworthy in itself.

danbr 8y ago
I met him at a talk about a year ago, I would agree he is somewhat egotistical, but he didn’t come off as arrogant - which was interesting.

rsync 8y ago

He is the creator of Mathematica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Mathematica I would consider that legitimacy.

lenticular 8y ago
Mathematica is literally the worst PL I've ever used, especially since you effectively have to use their built-in editor that doesn't even have multiple undo. Of course, it is the least-worst symbolic system out there currently. But, it's not like lisp wouldn't have developed similar capabilities if Mathematica didn't come around.
- blihp 8y ago
  You mean like Macsyma, now Maxima, where he probably got some early ideas from?
  - sedachv 8y ago
    Mathematica (SMP) started out as a Macsyma clone. Here is a anecdote of how Wolfram went about this with his usual humility: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/BUxXH76CYdc/IunywkAxufMJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/BUxXH76CYdc/I...
    - blihp 8y ago
      That's a more direct way of making my point ;-) I don't recall seeing that Pitman post before... good stuff. Interesting to see that Wolfram always had his <cough> confidence.
- techgipper 8y ago
  It's had multiple undo in notebooks (quite more than "an editor") for a while, and you can run it from a command line or use an IDE. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/program/wolframscript.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/program/wolframsc...
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  I mean, I wouldn't make a website with it, but for computational/mathematical code I'd choose Mathematica and its editor over a Lisp language any day, even if it's just for the syntax (though it most certainly is not). Some of us actually find it easier to understand and write math when it looks like math and not just a wall of parentheses or ASCII art.
  - lispm 8y ago
    That's why basically all Lisp systems in that area (Macsyma, Maxima, Axiom, REDUCE, ...) provide non-lisp syntax programming.
- 8y ago
throway88989898 8y ago
Mathematica should be open source

4thaccount 8y ago

Mathematica is good software (I posted on it here recently). A New Kind of Science is part of where Wolfram gets his bad rap...just read the Amazon reviews to get an idea.

vortico 8y ago

More like "A New Kind of Science".

dflock 8y ago

I think the answers are, essentially: > Is he legit? Yes - but he's amazingly full of himself and incredibly self-serving. > Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading? Not really, no.

mlevental 8y ago

on NKOS: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yesenadam 8y ago
Thank you! That's a great review - long, well-informed, savage yet trying to be fair; totally accurate as far as I could tell, although the criticisms seemed far weaker in places. Lots of good links too. ... 168 other long reviews by Cosma Shalizi on that site, and a lot of other stuff. I hadn't heard the name before, thanks again.

hirundo 8y ago

I thought A New Kind of Science was wonderful. It's a deep dive into cellular automata by a very creative, systematic and productive mind. He doesn't succeed in remaking physics with these models, but he does succeed in demonstrating that the natural world is full of vast computational potential that emerges everywhere from simple interactions. It's a vision of an awesomely fecund ordinary reality.

dmos62 8y ago
I loved the book as well. I found it exceptionally well written, researched. The content was eye-opening and the author was . This is the first I notice that there's so much discontent with it. I'm not sure where it's coming from. Edit: actually, I'm understating things. I found not only his central ideas very noteworthy, but how he managed to portray the historical development of mainstream science as largely random (as opposed to the, now silly, idea I may have had that today's science is somehow "optimal") was great and a positive influence on my outlooks, I'd say.
- Retra 8y ago
  I think a lot of the discontent is that (reportedly, I have not read it) he seems to present the material as 1. largely his original work, and 2. revolutionary, while the ideas may be interesting and well presented, neither of those things are actually true.

maxander 8y ago

NKOS is probably the (or at least one of the) defining works on cellular automata and the thought around/behind them, at least when it was written. It will likely be as interesting as that sounds to you.

duado 8y ago

He’s like a Mozart who thinks he’s better than Bach.

macawfish 8y ago
Lol good analogy, although Mozart had a sense of humor going for him

mehrdadn 8y ago

Well, he started Wolfram Research. You should try their products if you haven't. If you have, just try to imagine how you'd make something like Wolfram Mathematica or Wolfram Alpha.

Ono-Sendai 8y ago

I liked a ANKOS, especially the chapter about physics.

pokolovsky 8y ago
Me too, and I wonder how many people have actually read ANKOS.

sedachv 8y ago

> Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading? The best thing about ANKOS were the footnotes. The footnotes/appendices could have made a good popular book on the history and relationship of computation and physics, except for all of the gag-reflex-inducing Mathematica self-promotion. Here is an example from the first footnote I clicked on just now: "But in the so-called lambda calculus of Alonzo Church from around 1930 what were instead used were pure functions... of just the kind now familiar from Mathematica." https://wolframscience.com/nks/notes-11-12--lambda-calculus/ https://wolframscience.com/nks/notes-11-12--lambda-calculus/ The whole book is full of things like that.