4 ms·

Let us concede that in the last 20 years, the number of mentions of "I" in his writing has decreased, and there are more mentions of "We". As much as a cellula

by syats 4y ago

Let us concede that in the last 20 years, the number of mentions of "I" in his writing has decreased, and there are more mentions of "We". As much as a cellular automata, and computation in general, fan as I am, and after having read a fair amount of his work... I am still not convinced that Wolfram is not just a rich crack pot.

hyperpallium2 4y ago
Is he a genius or a crackpot? Yes.
tsimionescu 4y ago
To me that reads mostly like the royal "we", as in "We, Stephen Wolfram". Especially when saying things like "Wolfram Research has been geared towards making things we think up into products".
systemvoltage 4y ago
Let him do his thing, he supports many employees for a living, and does meaningful work occassionally. There are many people that are far more problematic for the society than Mr. Wolfram. He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Let him chill in peace.
- ginnungagap 4y ago
  > He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Reading posts from former employees and plagiarism accusations (look up Matthew Cook) suggests otherwise. I remember this being discussed on HN before as well, even though the search function is not bringing up anything.
  - mklarmann 4y ago
    I worked with Matthew Cook at ETH Zürich after he left wolfram for that reason. Cooks proof of the Turing completeness of the 110 rule [1] is in my opinion the only interesting piece in the new kind of science book. The dispute emerged from wolfram handling this not with science in mind, but capitalism. Putting an NDA on the publication of cook, to frame himself as the source. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110
recuter 4y ago
And what is wrong with that? Most of the internet is filled with poor crack pots, some of them are even here amongst us. I'd rather be a rich dick than a poor schmuck. Pee into the wind Sir Wolfram, godspeed! Doesn't seem super different to how most grant money is awarded.
evilotto 4y ago
He does have some genuinely good ideas. But they're not reinventing every field of science, technology, and knowledge every few months as his writing would have you believe. So, smarter than the average crackpot. But not "not a crackpot".
m12k 4y ago
As rich eccentrics go, I much prefer the ones trying to advance science (like Wolfram) or medicine (like Gates) to the ones just building more superyachts and lobbying corrupt politicians. I don't really understand the animosity toward Stephen Wolfram on HN - has he done something evil or been super rude to someone? Maybe he has a big ego, but I think that's probably true of a lot of - if not most - of the rich and/or influential people that are discussed on here, whether Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk or Stallman. It takes a certain hubris to think you can make a dent in the universe. Why is that if your hubris is to believe you can make a billion dollar startup, HN is all "you go girl!" but if someone wants to do theoretical physics, they really need to check their ego? I don't know if cellular automata as a foundation of physics will turn out to be a revolution or a dud. I do know that we've been looking for a unified theory of quantum gravity for many decades to no avail. If somebody is motivated to come at the thing from a new perspective, then more power to them. Are they likely to succeed? Of course not, statistically the vast majority of theories don't. But just working to provide new perspectives is a worthwhile goal, and I'm glad he's working on it.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  The issue is he makes a bunch of apparently empty claims about his hypergraph stuff being related to physics. The pictures are pretty and the hypergraph stuff is perhaps interesting in its own right, but with all the hand waving about QM and GR, I looked pretty hard a couple of years ago and couldn't find any explanation of the most familiar QM phenomena like the double slit experiment. It's almost like free association. I'd like to see this new theory solve one problem, and by that I don't mean an open research problem. I mean pick any homework problem from an introductory QM course and apply this stuff to it. As Feynman used to say, you have to get the numbers out. As far as I can tell, that hasn't happened.
  - dTal 4y ago
    Even that would prove nothing. Wolfram himself makes a pretty big deal about how cellular automata, being Turing-complete, can model anything. I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now, no problem. It only becomes interesting if it can make different, better predictions than our existing theories.

by syats 4y ago

hyperpallium2 4y ago

Is he a genius or a crackpot? Yes.

tsimionescu 4y ago

To me that reads mostly like the royal "we", as in "We, Stephen Wolfram". Especially when saying things like "Wolfram Research has been geared towards making things we think up into products".

systemvoltage 4y ago

Let him do his thing, he supports many employees for a living, and does meaningful work occassionally. There are many people that are far more problematic for the society than Mr. Wolfram. He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Let him chill in peace.

ginnungagap 4y ago
> He hasn't done any harm to anyone. Reading posts from former employees and plagiarism accusations (look up Matthew Cook) suggests otherwise. I remember this being discussed on HN before as well, even though the search function is not bringing up anything.
- mklarmann 4y ago
  I worked with Matthew Cook at ETH Zürich after he left wolfram for that reason. Cooks proof of the Turing completeness of the 110 rule [1] is in my opinion the only interesting piece in the new kind of science book. The dispute emerged from wolfram handling this not with science in mind, but capitalism. Putting an NDA on the publication of cook, to frame himself as the source. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110

recuter 4y ago

And what is wrong with that? Most of the internet is filled with poor crack pots, some of them are even here amongst us. I'd rather be a rich dick than a poor schmuck. Pee into the wind Sir Wolfram, godspeed! Doesn't seem super different to how most grant money is awarded.

evilotto 4y ago

He does have some genuinely good ideas. But they're not reinventing every field of science, technology, and knowledge every few months as his writing would have you believe. So, smarter than the average crackpot. But not "not a crackpot".

m12k 4y ago

As rich eccentrics go, I much prefer the ones trying to advance science (like Wolfram) or medicine (like Gates) to the ones just building more superyachts and lobbying corrupt politicians. I don't really understand the animosity toward Stephen Wolfram on HN - has he done something evil or been super rude to someone? Maybe he has a big ego, but I think that's probably true of a lot of - if not most - of the rich and/or influential people that are discussed on here, whether Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk or Stallman. It takes a certain hubris to think you can make a dent in the universe. Why is that if your hubris is to believe you can make a billion dollar startup, HN is all "you go girl!" but if someone wants to do theoretical physics, they really need to check their ego? I don't know if cellular automata as a foundation of physics will turn out to be a revolution or a dud. I do know that we've been looking for a unified theory of quantum gravity for many decades to no avail. If somebody is motivated to come at the thing from a new perspective, then more power to them. Are they likely to succeed? Of course not, statistically the vast majority of theories don't. But just working to provide new perspectives is a worthwhile goal, and I'm glad he's working on it.

throwaway81523 4y ago
The issue is he makes a bunch of apparently empty claims about his hypergraph stuff being related to physics. The pictures are pretty and the hypergraph stuff is perhaps interesting in its own right, but with all the hand waving about QM and GR, I looked pretty hard a couple of years ago and couldn't find any explanation of the most familiar QM phenomena like the double slit experiment. It's almost like free association. I'd like to see this new theory solve one problem, and by that I don't mean an open research problem. I mean pick any homework problem from an introductory QM course and apply this stuff to it. As Feynman used to say, you have to get the numbers out. As far as I can tell, that hasn't happened.
- dTal 4y ago
  Even that would prove nothing. Wolfram himself makes a pretty big deal about how cellular automata, being Turing-complete, can model anything. I can give you any number of cellular automata that model our current understanding of quantum physics right now, no problem. It only becomes interesting if it can make different, better predictions than our existing theories.