3 ms·
Stephen Wolfram is well known in the industry as being a pompous, self-indulgent man. There was an old joke I heard which went: > Q: How do you know if Stephen
by Zhyl 7y ago
Stephen Wolfram is well known in the industry as being a pompous, self-indulgent man. There was an old joke I heard which went:
> Q: How do you know if Stephen Wolfram invented something?
> A: He'll tell you.
I saw a TED talk by Conrad Wolfram about using Mathematica as an educational tool [1]. I went to one of my tutorials and tried to discuss it with the Professor (we were encouraged to bring up basically anything we'd seen or encountered in our first few weeks of uni). His response was "I don't think we need to worry about what Conrad Wolfram is saying."
By all accounts, Stephen and Conrad Wolfram are clever men. It is without a doubt that Mathematica is an extraordinary piece of software. Many people here will have benefitted from Wolfram Alpha and will have used Mathematica either in an academic context or in an engineering context.
Stephen Wolfram, however, is not Christ, even though he likes to think so.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg
- tannhauser23 7y agoThat may be true, but science is full of pompous, self-indulgent men who make brilliant discoveries. Of course, science is also littered with cranks who make grandiose claims of discovery - especially in physics. Curious to hear what people who actually study this stuff think about this supposedly discovery.
- JackFr 7y agoThe thing is, Wolfram earned his stripes as a very competent physics prodigy, and is clearly very, very smart. But as far as I can tell, no one studies this stuff except him and hist acolytes and I think few established physicists would be inclined too, so it's very difficult to evaluate his ideas. Is he a crank? For a classic definition of crank, no. Does this work represent a clearer understanding of physics than we had prior, or is it an interesting diversion? Harder question, but one has to assume, probably diversion. On the other hand if time travel or teleportation IS ever invented, my money is that it will be Wolfram.