5 ms·

Most of the criticism Stephen gets seems fair. Clearly the guy is a megalomaniac. That being said his ideas are interesting and he is also clearly a genius(just

Most of the criticism Stephen gets seems fair. Clearly the guy is a megalomaniac. That being said his ideas are interesting and he is also clearly a genius(just maybe not to the degree he thinks himself) and I’m happy he’s working on his crazy ideas. I think they’re interesting, and although I wouldn’t bet on it, if he comes up with a predictive theory of everything all the better.

baddox 6y ago
Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. I know this is taken as gospel around here, but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Is it just that he wrote a book about ideas he thinks are very important and interesting?
- WhitneyLand 6y ago
  No, it’s not just that he wrote a book with ideas. He has at least one recent interview where it’s pointed out to him that some of the power of what he’s touting has been known in different forms for decades by some formidable people like John Conway et al. He replied something to the effect of oh John never saw this stuff coming. Whether that’s true or not the way he’s so quickly and casually dismissed people like that, that have made relevant contributions to his work is a red flag for me. P.s. normally Conway’s work wouldn’t overlap centrally with a theory of everything but it’s more relevant given Wolfram’s approach.
- mkl 6y ago
  Glassdoor provides some insight: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-management-Reviews-EI_IE14501.0,16_KH17,35.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-m...
  - stared 6y ago
    From one of these: "An interferring CEO who thinks he knows everything and any project can completed by one engineer in 2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's really complicated [...] If you do have to work with Stephen Wolfram, may god help you. 30 years ago, he was a genius with ideas ahead of his time and he managed to productize them. Today, he is still a genius with ideas that would have been ahead of their time 20 years ago. He is failing to lead this company to the future, and his main method of leading is screaming like a toddler who is told they can't go to the beach during a hurricane. If you are in upper management or project management, you will have to meet with him multiple times per week. In these meetings he will ask for updates on features and products he invented a week ago and be angry they are not ready to be pushed to production yet. After he finishes loudly complaining about how slow and bad everyone is, then he'll go on to request entirely new things that he expects to get immediately. Priorities are never clear, and when you try to get him to guide you, he he has no idea what he actually wants other than "everything". His irrationality and personal attacks drive people to tears." Maybe I am overly harsh, but to me, it sounds like Steve Jobs minus being actually at the frontier of innovation.
    - neuronic 6y ago
      Steve Jobs always sounded like his actions as CEO were based on reason, despite being harsh and interfering (let's leave the whole fruitarian-cancer thing out for a second). To me it made the impression that he could at least reason as to what exactly upset him and why it mattered. Wolfram just sounds like a very intelligent but childish and insensitive leader with bursts of anger because reality doesn't follow his way.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    The ego which is almost essential for success in business makes it almost impossible to succeed in science.
    - bhouston 6y ago
      He does not generally sound like an amazing CEO either.
      - Trasmatta 6y ago
        Reading Glassdoor reviews, he sounds like one of the worst CEOs ever. Why anyone would tolerate working for him is mind boggling.
    - Rayhem 6y ago
      I don't know what's lead you to conclude this; science is absolutely filled with insecure egomaniacs.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. (...) but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Unless you are going to work for him, it is largely irrelevant whether he's a megalomaniac or not. He's a person that has produced very interesting and useful work (e.g., mathematica). You can take the good things about him and forget about his pompous/annoying stuff.
- AgentMatt 6y ago
  Here [1] is a comment on Wolfram's 2002 book which includes a section about his choice of style (go to `Why everybody doesn't get it`), talking about the culturally expected extreme humbleness of scientists, and the impact of that humbleness on clarity of communication. A plausible explanation for his being viewed as megalomaniac is a disapproval of a perceived lack of humbleness ("A good scientist ought to downplay their discoveries, make them seem like no big deal. He claims his discoveries are super important, so he's a baaaad guy"). Having been in your (supposed) position of coming across discussions about Wolfram, where the first things I read where judgments about Wolfram the person instead of his ideas, I arrived at the following conclusion after a while: I don't know and don't have the expertise to evaluate the correctness or value of his ideas to physics or science in general. I'm also not interested in "drama", I just want to learn cool stuff. So what I can do is actually read his work, keep an open mind with respect to his writing style, and see what, if anything, I get out of it. The result of that is that I occasionally read a blog post by him, or a random paragraph from NKS (which is available online), or watch one of his Q&A streams. [2] And from those, I get tremendous value. The ideas are often beautiful, clearly explained and visualized, and some have had a large impact of my thinking about both the universe and the mind. Not reading someone's work because of other peoples' judgment of that person just robs you of potential opportunities to learn something. [1] https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html [2] https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives&sort=time https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives...
  - hitekker 6y ago
    From the outside, your comment reads as "I like him, I identify with him, I won't question him."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lidHanteyk 6y ago
Whose ideas? His employee, as usual, came up with everything. Wolfram just put his name on Gorard's work, because that's what Wolfram does. Edit: Downvoters, got evidence? Here's Gorard's papers [0] [1], and Wolfram is clearly taking credit for this work upon which only Gorard's name appears. Gorard doesn't do themselves any favors, by name-dropping Wolfram constantly. Almost as if Wolfram employs Gorard and pressures them heavily to incorporate the name-dropping... [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.14810 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.14810 [1] https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...

baddox 6y ago

Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. I know this is taken as gospel around here, but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Is it just that he wrote a book about ideas he thinks are very important and interesting?

WhitneyLand 6y ago
No, it’s not just that he wrote a book with ideas. He has at least one recent interview where it’s pointed out to him that some of the power of what he’s touting has been known in different forms for decades by some formidable people like John Conway et al. He replied something to the effect of oh John never saw this stuff coming. Whether that’s true or not the way he’s so quickly and casually dismissed people like that, that have made relevant contributions to his work is a red flag for me. P.s. normally Conway’s work wouldn’t overlap centrally with a theory of everything but it’s more relevant given Wolfram’s approach.
mkl 6y ago
Glassdoor provides some insight: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-management-Reviews-EI_IE14501.0,16_KH17,35.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-project-m...
- stared 6y ago
  From one of these: "An interferring CEO who thinks he knows everything and any project can completed by one engineer in 2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's really complicated [...] If you do have to work with Stephen Wolfram, may god help you. 30 years ago, he was a genius with ideas ahead of his time and he managed to productize them. Today, he is still a genius with ideas that would have been ahead of their time 20 years ago. He is failing to lead this company to the future, and his main method of leading is screaming like a toddler who is told they can't go to the beach during a hurricane. If you are in upper management or project management, you will have to meet with him multiple times per week. In these meetings he will ask for updates on features and products he invented a week ago and be angry they are not ready to be pushed to production yet. After he finishes loudly complaining about how slow and bad everyone is, then he'll go on to request entirely new things that he expects to get immediately. Priorities are never clear, and when you try to get him to guide you, he he has no idea what he actually wants other than "everything". His irrationality and personal attacks drive people to tears." Maybe I am overly harsh, but to me, it sounds like Steve Jobs minus being actually at the frontier of innovation.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    Steve Jobs always sounded like his actions as CEO were based on reason, despite being harsh and interfering (let's leave the whole fruitarian-cancer thing out for a second). To me it made the impression that he could at least reason as to what exactly upset him and why it mattered. Wolfram just sounds like a very intelligent but childish and insensitive leader with bursts of anger because reality doesn't follow his way.
- cryptica 6y ago
  The ego which is almost essential for success in business makes it almost impossible to succeed in science.
  - bhouston 6y ago
    He does not generally sound like an amazing CEO either.
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      Reading Glassdoor reviews, he sounds like one of the worst CEOs ever. Why anyone would tolerate working for him is mind boggling.
  - Rayhem 6y ago
    I don't know what's lead you to conclude this; science is absolutely filled with insecure egomaniacs.
enriquto 6y ago
> Suppose I’m not familiar with him or am not convinced he’s a megalomaniac. (...) but what evidence would you present to convince me of that claim? Unless you are going to work for him, it is largely irrelevant whether he's a megalomaniac or not. He's a person that has produced very interesting and useful work (e.g., mathematica). You can take the good things about him and forget about his pompous/annoying stuff.
AgentMatt 6y ago
Here [1] is a comment on Wolfram's 2002 book which includes a section about his choice of style (go to `Why everybody doesn't get it`), talking about the culturally expected extreme humbleness of scientists, and the impact of that humbleness on clarity of communication. A plausible explanation for his being viewed as megalomaniac is a disapproval of a perceived lack of humbleness ("A good scientist ought to downplay their discoveries, make them seem like no big deal. He claims his discoveries are super important, so he's a baaaad guy"). Having been in your (supposed) position of coming across discussions about Wolfram, where the first things I read where judgments about Wolfram the person instead of his ideas, I arrived at the following conclusion after a while: I don't know and don't have the expertise to evaluate the correctness or value of his ideas to physics or science in general. I'm also not interested in "drama", I just want to learn cool stuff. So what I can do is actually read his work, keep an open mind with respect to his writing style, and see what, if anything, I get out of it. The result of that is that I occasionally read a blog post by him, or a random paragraph from NKS (which is available online), or watch one of his Q&A streams. [2] And from those, I get tremendous value. The ideas are often beautiful, clearly explained and visualized, and some have had a large impact of my thinking about both the universe and the mind. Not reading someone's work because of other peoples' judgment of that person just robs you of potential opportunities to learn something. [1] https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html [2] https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives&sort=time https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives...
- hitekker 6y ago
  From the outside, your comment reads as "I like him, I identify with him, I won't question him."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

lidHanteyk 6y ago

Whose ideas? His employee, as usual, came up with everything. Wolfram just put his name on Gorard's work, because that's what Wolfram does. Edit: Downvoters, got evidence? Here's Gorard's papers [0] [1], and Wolfram is clearly taking credit for this work upon which only Gorard's name appears. Gorard doesn't do themselves any favors, by name-dropping Wolfram constantly. Almost as if Wolfram employs Gorard and pressures them heavily to incorporate the name-dropping... [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.14810 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.14810 [1] https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/some-quantum-mechanical-properties-of-the-wolfram-model.pdf https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/wolframphysics/Documents/so...