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My unpopular opinion is that Stephen Wolfram doesn't get enough credit. Yes, he has a large ego, but he remains one of the most remarkable people in science tod

My unpopular opinion is that Stephen Wolfram doesn't get enough credit. Yes, he has a large ego, but he remains one of the most remarkable people in science today.

getaclue 7y ago
unpopular by whom?
api 7y ago
I agree. It's a tough one because his ego is so huge he's often accused of taking credit for other peoples' work. My impression from reading through A New Kind of Science is that it wasn't some plot by him to take credit for the whole of CA research but that his ego just kind of caused him to write in such a way as to give that impression. All personalities aside, I feel like the core thesis of this and other books on CAs, fractals, computational physics, etc., are sort of like the edges of some higher scientific theory that we don't yet understand. The entire universe looks like a big fractal with structures repeating with some variation at different scales, and we don't "get" this beyond hand-wavey pure speculation that starts sounding like New Age babble. I wonder if we're just at the edge of being smart enough to grasp this higher order of understanding and if we did we'd have among other things a unified theory of physics. It makes me think of what chimpanzees might feel when we try to teach them language and basic mathematics. They can almost get it. Maybe there are beings out there that "get it" and they're out there doing things that to us would be indistinguishable from magic.
- galaxyLogic 7y ago
  What is a "CA"? I tried googling it but seems there are many CAs. Which CA are you all talking about?
  - cma 7y ago
    Cellular Automata
    - galaxyLogic 7y ago
      Thanks
scottlocklin 7y ago
Can you state in a few lines what you think he should get more credit for? He's an interesting guy, a good businessman, and I enjoy reading his anecdotes, but I kinda figure he gets about the right amount of credit for his achievements. If you mean "new kind of science" for example -I think he got about what he deserved on that.
- tlb 7y ago
  You shouldn't judge the value of conjectures until you know whether they're true or not. Right now, we have no computable model for physics. NKS conjectures that some particular types of CA could compute our universe. If this turns out to be true, it'll be huge.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    I dunno, I think it's pretty easy to judge the value of not easily testable wacky conjectures. I don't think much of Penrose's idea that brains are quantum gravitic computers either, and that is vastly more close to being testable, and Penrose's achievements and track record in actual science are also vastly more impressive. Putting that aside; computer guys seem to think "computability" is important in physics. I don't. The strong Church Turing thesis is an ideological idea, not a physical one. In fact, it is an ideological idea with very little evidence in its favor either in computer science or in the world of matter.
    - tlb 7y ago
      The conjecture that our universe is isomorphic to a CA is absolutely testable. When we find a CA that behaves just like the universe, we'll know it's true. If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. Computable physics would be extremely useful. Even with coarse approximations you can only integrate the Schrödinger equation among hundreds of particles. So you can't do accurate computational biochemistry except maybe one small molecule at a time.
      - 7y ago

My unpopular opinion is that Stephen Wolfram doesn't get enough credit. Yes, he has a large ego, but he remains one of the most remarkable people in science today.

getaclue 7y ago

unpopular by whom?

api 7y ago

I agree. It's a tough one because his ego is so huge he's often accused of taking credit for other peoples' work. My impression from reading through A New Kind of Science is that it wasn't some plot by him to take credit for the whole of CA research but that his ego just kind of caused him to write in such a way as to give that impression. All personalities aside, I feel like the core thesis of this and other books on CAs, fractals, computational physics, etc., are sort of like the edges of some higher scientific theory that we don't yet understand. The entire universe looks like a big fractal with structures repeating with some variation at different scales, and we don't "get" this beyond hand-wavey pure speculation that starts sounding like New Age babble. I wonder if we're just at the edge of being smart enough to grasp this higher order of understanding and if we did we'd have among other things a unified theory of physics. It makes me think of what chimpanzees might feel when we try to teach them language and basic mathematics. They can almost get it. Maybe there are beings out there that "get it" and they're out there doing things that to us would be indistinguishable from magic.

galaxyLogic 7y ago
What is a "CA"? I tried googling it but seems there are many CAs. Which CA are you all talking about?
- cma 7y ago
  Cellular Automata
  - galaxyLogic 7y ago
    Thanks

scottlocklin 7y ago

Can you state in a few lines what you think he should get more credit for? He's an interesting guy, a good businessman, and I enjoy reading his anecdotes, but I kinda figure he gets about the right amount of credit for his achievements. If you mean "new kind of science" for example -I think he got about what he deserved on that.

tlb 7y ago
You shouldn't judge the value of conjectures until you know whether they're true or not. Right now, we have no computable model for physics. NKS conjectures that some particular types of CA could compute our universe. If this turns out to be true, it'll be huge.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I dunno, I think it's pretty easy to judge the value of not easily testable wacky conjectures. I don't think much of Penrose's idea that brains are quantum gravitic computers either, and that is vastly more close to being testable, and Penrose's achievements and track record in actual science are also vastly more impressive. Putting that aside; computer guys seem to think "computability" is important in physics. I don't. The strong Church Turing thesis is an ideological idea, not a physical one. In fact, it is an ideological idea with very little evidence in its favor either in computer science or in the world of matter.
  - tlb 7y ago
    The conjecture that our universe is isomorphic to a CA is absolutely testable. When we find a CA that behaves just like the universe, we'll know it's true. If we find a completely different way of computing it that doesn't map to a CA, we'll know it's false. Computable physics would be extremely useful. Even with coarse approximations you can only integrate the Schrödinger equation among hundreds of particles. So you can't do accurate computational biochemistry except maybe one small molecule at a time.
    - 7y ago