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Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watch

Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy discussion could look like: Wolfram didn’t believe black holes were real for the longest time, or at least, had some skepticism about that. One could’ve had a reasonable debate, pointing out where he may have erred (up until he changed his mind). Like a proper scientist does. But vilifying him for wanting to create a research institute is absurd. I have never seen such petty anger at the idea of doing more scientific research. He’s done a fantastic job creating a new model for understanding reality, some of which suggest interesting physical structures underlying our Universe. He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity. And he’s laying the groundwork for understanding the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes. It’s fantastic stuff. The great Richard Feynman himself frequently collaborated with Wolfram and talked about Rule 30, the foundational insight that spurred Wolfram to create a New Kind of Science. Calling him delusional or a fraud is Wittengtein’s Ruler in action: It says far more about you than it does about him. I always click on a Wolfram thread, and occasionally you do get interesting insights and even informed disagreements, but this is just disgraceful to be honest. There’s true evil in the world. Truly despicable sins. Calibrate your outrage towards that. If you disagree with Wolfram, read his work, steelman it, and show where it’s wrong in a way worthy of scientific skepticism and empiricism. Otherwise you’re worse than what you think he is.

throwaway81523 5y ago
> show where it’s wrong Do you know the expression "not even wrong"?
- m12k 5y ago
  They're trying to come up with a new way of modelling the foundations of physics. In order to be "even wrong", they need to make falsifiable predictions. As far as I can tell, they're not at (or claiming to be at) that level of maturity of the model, they seem to be slowly working toward feature parity with existing models. Whether they ever achieve that remains to be seen. Whether they manage to coalesce all this into a single coherent theory remains to be seen. Whether they manage to make novel, falsifiable predictions or not remains to be seen. And if they do, whether these predictions will be falsified or not also remains to be seen. Long story short, I don't see why being "not even wrong" at this phase is some great sin.
  - posix_me_less 5y ago
    It's an old reference, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    "Not even wrong, but still making all these grand claims about revolutionizing everything" is a bit worse than just "not even wrong", though. I mean, take quantum loop gravity. It might revolutionize, not everything, but quite a bit. Last I checked, it was as the same stage - not mature enough to make actual predictions. But it was touting itself as "there might be something here, and if there is, it could be really important", not as "we hold the secrets to everything". I guess what I'm looking for is "under promise, over deliver". When you over promise your scientific theory, it stops looking like science and starts looking like marketing. That's... you know what a code smell is? That's a science smell. The more it looks like marketing, the more skeptical I am of it as science.
yetihehe 5y ago
There was once a book, "100 Authors Against Einstein"[0]. Expect opposition against everything you do. Those who are against are just typically more vocal than those who don't know yet. Those who support Wolfram typically are busy doing research and don't care about commenting, they have better things to do than answer every naysayer 1v1. I'm in the "we'll see" camp, but I don't like naysayers. [0] https://archive.org/details/HundertAutorenGegenEinstein https://archive.org/details/HundertAutorenGegenEinstein
- morelisp 5y ago
  > Those who support Wolfram typically are busy doing research and don't care about commenting Who is doing NKS-based research these days?
  - pmayrgundter 5y ago
    That's a reasonable question.. I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping. It might be possible to go through GitHub and find the number of Mathematica projects and then categorize them to get an approximation. Also, this is very tenuous, but I see a lot of similarity between Wolfram's automata (not this new work) and Lattice Boltzmann methods. Both have been around since the 70s/80s and it makes me wonder a little about primacy but a lot about where he's gotten to with all this. Very intriguing
    - morelisp 5y ago
      > I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping. Mathematica predates any kind of statement of NKS by over a decade (and SMP nearly a decade before that). Moreover, I don't see any evidence Mathematica is becoming more "NKS-y" over time; it's a usual sort of moribund enterprise tooling, just for a highly selective enterprise. I don't see any real connection, other than some possible post-hoc handwaving. Coming from the other side, Mathematica's relevance to modern physics seems at a 10-20 year nadir. (E.g. from what I can tell it missed the boat entirely on the data-crunching nature of many modern experiments, and its proprietary nature makes it difficult to integrate into increasingly-complex pipelines.) So if NKS - a theory of physics - is being researched, it's either having little success or it's not related to Mathematica use.
WithinReason 5y ago
I'm also surprised by the extreme negativity. This work is something that nerds like me should be interested in! It's basically a generalisation of physics: So far physics was assuming a mathematical foundation for the universe. It makes perfect sense to ask if it can be generalised and look for a procedural foundation. It's shocking to me that only Wolfram's company is pursuing such a logical alternative. And in my opinion his multiway graph approach is an elegant generalisation of what a procedural foundation could be like by trying to maximally reduce the assumptions made in the basic rule set (it's not a cellular automaton, even though everyone seems to be assuming it is)
BluSyn 5y ago
Innovation largely comes from contrarians. If HN is polarized on a topic, to me that just signals it's probably worth MORE attention, not less. From that perspective, overwhelming negative comments are a useful data point.
SirHound 5y ago
Well put. He might be right, he's more likely wrong (and that's not a judgement on the quality of the ideas). But bottom line is we will never get anywhere without thinkers like him.
qwerty456127 5y ago
The web/media representation of Stephen Wolfram somehow seems (I never had a chance to know him personally so I have no idea if he even creates such an impression, let alone actually does) like he has a "huge ego". Whenever someone produces such an impression (which can often be an unfortunate coincidence, I wouldn't expect popular ideas about people to be reliably related to their actual characters), "egos" of all the other people ignite in trying to demonstrate they are "more huge". All the reason and meaningful discussion is lost at this point, no matter how clever and educated the people involved are and what they actually achieved/contributed. By the way I wish more people would create research institutes so there would be more free competition and less bureaucracy in research. There are many talented people who could do some useful/interesting research but ~80% of them probably won't manage with all the obstacles on the path to actual research (including the obstacles which effectively filter subjects and other parameters of research to what's trending in Nature).
- claytongulick 5y ago
  I've met him twice, personally. He was very kind, humble and approachable. So very much smarter than I'll ever be, yet I never once got the feeling he was looking down on me.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing this. I always imagined him this way but a confirmation by who met him personally produces a nice feeling. By the way an idea just hit me: Stephen Wolfram probably has a great understanding of how does popular image of a person evolves and lives loosely dependent on their real selves: to me it feels like it's a lot like the cellular automata he described in "A New Kind of Science". We can hardly produce a reliable and concise quantification of popular sentiment surrounding a person but if we could the mechanics would probably be similar.
- needlefish 5y ago
  I honestly think it is that his academic accomplishments in youth combined with the work he has done since is just triggering to people who have their identity wrapped up in being the smart kid. Since he names his companies after himself, knocking him for being "egotistical" is an easy attack to feel better about oneself for not having a PhD from Caltech at 20 with Feynman advising. I have listened to hours of him on Lex Fridman and he doesn't come off as egotistical or arrogant in the least.
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thebeastie 5y ago
It’s possible that Wolfram has some latent narcissism, and this is what people don’t enjoy. Perhaps they are even jealous. I don’t make that speculation based on any “petty” aspects of his personality or communication, but rather the sweeping and self sufficient way he develops his theories. If he’s doing valuable science, I for one would like to cheer him on.
morelisp 5y ago
> Calling him delusional or a fraud is Wittengtein’s Ruler in action: It says far more about you than it does about him. Do you think it's impossible for him to be a skilled mathematician and delusional? Do you think smart, successful business owners are incapable of committing fraud? The interminable negative reactions to anything Wolfram does are boring, but the counter-impulse to "he's done good math, so this can't be a fraud" is outright dangerous. > But vilifying him for wanting to create a research institute is absurd. I think many noted plagiarists trying to open a research institute would get a similar response.
- spindle 5y ago
  You might like to make a top-level comment about this. I think some of the people who see excessive negativity in attitudes towards Wolfram don't know about the plagiarism.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    If nothing else has by now, I don't think a new top-level comment will inform them.
poulpy123 5y ago
Well this blog article is crackpot science. It doesn't matter that Wolfram created Mathematica or that he was a good scientist before. There are many examples of good scientists, even Nobel prizes, that became crackpot scientists. Science simply doesn't work like that.
- m12k 5y ago
  It's attempting to come up with a new way to model observable physical phenomena. If that's not science, then neither are Feynman diagrams, complex numbers or even calculus. Whether it will prove useful like the above models still remains to be seen, but calling it "not science" seems ahistoric. Let's see if they can evolve the theory to the point where it can make novel predictions. If it never makes one, then the model is not useful. If it makes one but is proven wrong, then at least it will be wrong (rather than "not even wrong"). If it makes one and is proven right, then we will have made a big leap forward in our understanding of the universe. I'm ok with either of these outcomes, but I don't get why anyone would want this thought experiment stopped before one of them is reached.
  - poulpy123 5y ago
    When you work in a research institute, you get used of receiving messages of people thinking they have a new theoritical model explaining physics. But that's not how science works. When you're a scientist you work on a specific topic of a specific branch of a specific science. Then you publish your work in one of the mainstream revue of your field. Then if your work is interesting, other scientists use your article to gain more comprehension and as a base of their own work. Rarely but sometimes your work is so fundamental that it can be used in other fields. But you simply don't just say that you're revolutioning physics, biology, economy and the rest. A truly revolutionary work is deemed revolutionary not by yourself but by the other scientists and the impact on the field. And Wolfram is not some kind of ermite lost in the middle of Siberia. He knows how that work and he has the credentials and the money to publish where he wants.
    - poulpy123 5y ago
gradschool 5y ago
> Richard Feynman himself frequently collaborated with Wolfram By way of a historical note relevant to the current topic, there was a funny exchange between Wolfram and Feynman recorded in the collection of Feynman's letters edited by his daughter. Wolfram started a letter with "Dear Feynman", I imagine because English public school boys don't use first names that much, and floated the idea of starting a scientific institute. Feynman replied in a letter starting "Dear Wolfram" that Wolfram was unlikely to succeed in any leadership capacity because he regards normal people as "stupid fools", and therefore should stick to academic work. Feynman's daughter added the editorial comment that Feynman was disproved by Wolfram's subsequent entrepreneurial success.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  The letters can be found here: https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a-young-stephen-wolfram-1985-d572dc360c18?gi=b37414601345 https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a... Also worth reading Feyman's recommendation letter at the bottom
- daniel-thompson 5y ago
  What the letter from Feynman to Wolfram^ actually said was: > You say you want to create your own environment - but you will not be doing that: you will create (perhaps!) an environment that you might like to work in - but you will not be working in this environment - you will be administrating it - and the administration environment is not what you seek - is it? You won't enjoy administrating people because you won't succeed in it. > You don't understand "ordinary people". To you they are "stupid fools" - so you will not tolerate them or treat their foibles with tolerance or patience - but will drive yourself wild (or they will drive you wild) trying to deal with them in an effective way. I've never worked for SW but judging by e.g. the employee comments for WR on Glassdoor^, this seems pretty on-the-nose to me. ^ https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a-young-stephen-wolfram-1985-d572dc360c18 https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a... ^ https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-Reviews-E14501.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-Reviews-E...
- anamax 5y ago
wildmanx 5y ago
He is not just "creating a research institute". He basically claims to have solved all of science. Case in point: Yesterday he streamed a "History of Science and Technology Q&A" session. [1] Is it about the history of science and technology? No! It's a sales pitch for his new institute! As if he is the singularity that all of science and technology have culminated in. So obviously when talking about history of science and technology all you need to talk about is cellular automata and Stephen Wolfram's role in it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMFxPWzVU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMFxPWzVU8 Watch it, it's enlightening.
- Pilottwave 5y ago
  >Stephen Wolfram hosts a live and unscripted Ask Me Anything about the history of science and technology for all ages. I dont get why people wanna frame wolfram so badly as a negative arrogant actor. He is answering viewer questions, his subscriber audience is ofcourse asking certain wolfram physics related questions. Timestamps: 00:00 Start stream 1:49 SW begins talking and introduces Wolfram Institute 22:58 Do you have a sense of the skills that an incoming fellow to the Wolfram Institute will have? What would effective preparation for Institute-type work be? 29:23 What is the emerald functionality that was mentioned for biological/cellular computational explorations? 32:55 and what about around the world overseas and in other countries? 33:05 You get some wonderful things out of pursuing science just for the sake of it. There are pejorative terms for this, like 'fishing trips' and 'stamp collecting', but such pursuits led to PCR technology just because someone was curious about thermophile bacteria 44:53 activity overseas & in other countries in regards to outreach programs in cooperation with education systems...you were mentioning some campaigns you had going on 51:03 Will there be more active development on the computational capabilities of Wolfram Mathematica with the Wolfram Institute? 52:53 British physics is more Geometry guild vs American physics is more Group theory and particle physics Guild 54:08 What is your opinion about experimental mathematics and its relationship with classical "mainstream" mathematics? 1:17:05 I often hear that science needs philosophy to justify it. What are some historical examples of this? 1:32:27 i think in a lot of places in history the role of academic pursuit was that a philosopher's role, but academic pursuit has attained a large amount of "division of labor" 1:34:22 Philosophy and Mathematical logic are starting to overlap more. Tarskis Semantics relates Formal logic to topology just like math and computer langauges 1:36:22 Are there inherently philosophical ideas (i.e. cannot be turned into a scientific one like the question of motion)? Can we distinguish them outright without knowing future scientific development?
underdeserver 5y ago
My problem with Wolfram is that every time I hear him talk or read him, I end up spending 15-20 minutes and come out the other end confused. I studied physics in my undergrad, I have a graduate degree in math, I've shipped large features on planet-scale systems. I'm no genius, certainly nowhere close to Dr. Wolfram, but I don't think I'm far from your average HN reader in reading comprehension ability. I've read 35 paragraphs in a post about founding a research institute and I don't know what was said there that couldn't have been conveyed in two or three paragraphs instead. It is my default opinion that people who use lot word when few word do trick do so to cover up the fact that they have very little content of actual value. That might not be the case with Wolfram, who has quite a track record, but to me the burden of proof is still on him.
- m12k 5y ago
  Try reading his one year update instead[1] "But now this deflection is not in physical space but in branchial space. The fundamental underlying mathematical structure is the same in both cases. But the interpretation in terms of traditional physics is different. And in what to me is a singularly beautiful result of our models it turns out that what gives the Einstein equations in physical space gives the Feynman path integral in branchial space. Or in other words, quantum mechanics is the same as general relativity, except in branchial space rather than physical space." Most of this stuff is mind-bending to me the same way statistical quantum mechanics, information theory or higher-dimensional physics are. But I always come away from reading about it with a feeling of "there could be something here, and I'm glad someone is exploring it further" https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys...
  - underdeserver 5y ago
    It sure sounds promising. Lots of things do. This is why we have peer review and standard publishing practices.
    - Spinnaker_ 5y ago
mayankkaizen 5y ago
I try to read everything Wolfram has written and generally finds his writings quite enjoyable. After reading lots of hsi writings, I noticed one thing which I don't like. It seems like he always tries to belittle other giants (albeit in indirect ways) and project himself as an ultimate intellectual. Even in one of his writing about Feynman, he tried to show that even Feynman sometimed couldn't match his genius. Nevertheless, I still do enjoy his writings.
- emteycz 5y ago
  Maybe he simply can't escape his impostor syndrome. It's not always nefarious.
tsimionescu 5y ago
> He’s done a fantastic job creating a new model for understanding reality, some of which suggest interesting physical structures underlying our Universe. He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity. > And he’s laying the groundwork for understanding the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes. It’s fantastic stuff. What are you basing this on? This is the key point: so far, he has only vaguely gestured to such a model, built a whole mathematical tower around it, and is now claiming that this is directly applicable in vastly different domains. If this were a random forum poster saying it, it would smell to high heavens of someone who has no idea what they're speaking about noticing vague similarities between domains and hand waving a mathematical framework that would explain those similarities into being. This being Stephen Wolfram, he definitely knows something about those domains, but I still think it's almost impossible for his claims to be right. At the very best, he has come up with a powerful mathematical abstraction, perhaps akin to Category Theory: something which can be used to model and relate extremely different phenomena, and allow insights from one domain to be used in another; but which typically doesn't in itself create much knowledge directly. Edit: to be clear, this would be an extraordinary achievement in itself. But it wouldn't "revolutionize science". Otherwise, when you claim your model can be used equally well in the foundations of physics, economics, pure mathematics, evolutionary biology, computer science and chemistry - it's entirely on you to first prove this absolutely extraordinary claim. Making it with a gentle wave of the hand towards the future and then asking for money to get there raises all possible red flags.
d--b 5y ago
Oh come on! We call him delusional cause he has lost all humility. He is utterly convinced that he discovered the underlying mechanism of literally everything from physics to eceonomics. Delusion of grandeur is a well-known psychological condition, and no matter what you think of the science, it's hard to argue that Wolfram doesn't have it. Why can't he just say: "hey I've got this idea, it's crazy, but you know what? I am going to pursue it and see where it leads, anyone wants to join?" Noone would be annoyed by that. Whether being delusional affects the way you work, I would tend to think so, but you can think otherwise...
- xtiansimon 5y ago
  How does his ego effect anyone who doesn’t work for him? I read most of the announcement and he’s promising research papers and lecture/teaching materials. That’s good, no? Wolfram’s over the top next level ego, to be sure. But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    >But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac. Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.
    - fristechill 5y ago
      Humility before the truth is vital but not necessarily humility as expressed in one's public statements. Indeed psychoticism was identified by the psychologist Hans Eysenck as one of the traits of genius, including scientific genius. Psychoticism is a package which includes associative thinking, creativity, disagreeableness, lack of empathy, antisocial nature, introversion, coldness, aggression, high self-esteem. The problem is that most people are afraid of giving offence, of being ostracised by their colleagues and so on, and so they self-censor their original thoughts and never create anything fundamentally new and important. So it's unsurprising that most of the great scientists in history had very difficult personalities (Faraday may have been an exception). I think the optimal approach is to study and benefit from the work of geniuses but have as little to do with them personally as possible. Leave them alone to their work. Of course the fact that someone has a difficult personality does not mean he is a great thinker. However science has a mechanism for dealing with that via the publication system, where ideas that are wrong are eventually criticised and ultimately forgotten.
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
There is a quote (written 20 years ago) about Wolfram that sums up why people feel that way towards him, > There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories. Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.
- eternalban 5y ago
  A true prodigy then.
abetusk 5y ago
I agree that Wolfram gets a lot of unnecessary hate by people online and the scientific community and that Wolfram has a lot of interesting things to say but I also see why the community at large bashes on him so regularly. Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory. I often find that I have to really work to find the content in what Wolfram says after wading through what sounds like marketing. I'm often wondering why Wolfram just doesn't talk about the research or ideas he's trying to push instead of trying to tell me why I need to know it's really important. To me, Wolfram treats science and discovery as a kind of business opportunity while pretending it's for the greater good. Open source, peer review, transparency, etc. all give way to his "strong man" personality. Not to fall afoul of Wittgenstein's ruler, I think Wolfram got right the principle of Turing Machine Equivalence. The idea that Turing machine completeness is the norm, rather than the exception, is something that I think people at large don't really understand or accept (and which I think is correct and profound). I will point out that there's work to be done here in trying to prove TME for other 1D cellular automata, not just rule 110, to further cement this point in these toy systems. A fundamental thing that I think Wolfram got wrong is that something fundamentally new needs to supplant scientific discovery and mathematics. Often times discrete systems turn into continuous systems, and vice versa, so throwing out everything and starting over seems counterproductive. I'm in favor of bringing computational tools, both symbolic and numerical, in helping discovery but this is already happening. I also don't understand how this can be done if scientific discovery and tooling isn't democratized in the way that open source focuses on. I think framing Wolfram solely in terms of his marketing for Mathematica and his ANKoS book is overly reductive but I also think it perverts his research, the way he presents his research and explains a lot of why people can come away with that feeling that he's a con artist.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory Not making a comparison in terms of contributions to science. But the same could be said about Newton and a host of other great (mostly) men of history. One of the most useful emotional filters I've learned to drop is the predisposition against zealous enthusiasm. Automatically dismissing it is as reductive as immediately submitting to it.
leephillips 5y ago
“new model for understanding reality...the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes...” Is there any evidence whatsoever that he’s accomplished these things? He’s been at this for decades. Is there any prediction of any natural phenomenon? Did he predict a new elementary particle? Can he predict the flow of water through a pipe? Is there a quantitative connection with anything in the physical world, aside from pretty pictures generated by a computer? In other words, is this any kind of science?
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven Ramwolf is the lone iconoclast raving about D-branes.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.
    - posix_me_less 5y ago
      > makes some predictions and is relativistically correct. Many of which are obviously wrong. We do not observe 11-dimensional world.
    - dudeinjapan 5y ago
      String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)
      - dudeinjapan 5y ago
pwr-electronics 5y ago
Yeah, I don't get it. He's a guy who runs a business to support his hobby, both pretty harmless. Bonus points for creating and sharing enjoyable and useful things and ideas. I'll debate his ideas, but I'm not gonna tell him what to do with his life.
al2o3cr 5y ago
There’s true evil in the world. Truly despicable sins. Calibrate your outrage towards that. Holy whataboutism, Batman. Funny how "focus on true evil in the world" doesn't apply to stanning rich weirdos on HN...
thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
tomrod 5y ago
Holy moly, thank you thank you thank you for putting into words how I've been feeling about these perennial negging on Wolfram. Dude and company has done some amazing things.
deleted 5y ago
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pmayrgundter 5y ago
Haters gonna hate. I rolled my eyes when I saw this link posted with hundreds of comments, ofc not because of Wolfram but because it's been this reaction for 20 years. People demand mediocrity and are furious when they don't get it.* Projection is a real thing. What's cool about Wolfram is his priority is his work, not peoples' opinions of his work. I know he cares, and sometimes maybe it affects his stance, but he's not letting it stop him from exploring. He's a hero. *Mediocrity in the outgroup. When ingroup it carries prestige for you by association
- kemayo 5y ago
  > People demand mediocrity and are furious when they don't get it. Remember that people have different preferences. Those objecting to Wolfram tend to be those who appreciate a "quiet confidence" style, which lets your work stand for itself rather than needing you to function as its hype man. To such people, Wolfram's general presentation style reads as puffery-covering-mediocrity -- someone who truly had what he claims wouldn't need to spend so much time talking themself up. (Note that the major point made across much of the criticism of his new science here is, approximately, "I'll believe it when I see it".) Of course, opinions vary. There are others who think that someone who's great should promote themselves as much as their work deserves, and to them Wolfram is perfectly reasonable. If you want an example of this divide outside of the science field, look at Trump. Depending on your own preferences, and for similar presentational reasons as Wolfram, he either reads as a tough and competent man or as wildly insecure.
  - pmayrgundter 5y ago
    Basically agreed, but isn't that preference usually context dependent? People like to let the work stand for itself.. that feels like it's from a cloistered environment where everyone is tenured and respected and get their fair time to present their work and get its due attention. Which is fine and dandy and I'm glad we have that. There's also people who are not in that environment who sometimes have something important to say and will definitely be ignored if they follow the same rules. To follow your analogy.. was what Trump had to say actually important? Maybe some of it, but mostly it was all hot air, misleading, demonstrably false and occasionally dangerous. As OP is pointing out, Wolfram is none of those things.
eternityforest 5y ago
The problem is nobody understands even very basic physics. The public has to rely entirely on personality and comments from people who seem to be respected, but the actual physics itself is a complete black box. We can't read his work, we are years of study away from that point. All people are going to do is shut up(My preferred option), immediately dismiss it because some other physicist did, or heap praise on it because it's "Far out and groovy and must be good if those dirty no good mainstream people hate it". And people often aren't that good at shutting their mouths....
thwayunion 5y ago
IMO all of the comments about Wolfram as a topic are low quality, including this one. The topic of the post is the "Wolfram Institute". I'm happy to see more investment in R&D, period. Good on Wolfram. I will probably never seek out a job at the Wolfram Institute because I believe the title is true -- there is an abundance of scientific opportunity. Working on Wolfram's agenda would not be the best use of my time, in part because the Wolfram Institute likely won't have the resources or interest to exploit the scientific opportunities about which I'm most excited. This is less a reflection on Wolfram than on the state of the world. Theoretical Physics of the sort Wolfram was imbued in his early career had its moment half a century ago, but has not produced fruit in a long time. I doubt that will change -- in part because even if all the stated problems were solved... so what? Similarly, computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s and are now approaching a plateau. There are exciting opportunities in the life sciences, in robotics, and in AI. But the Wolfram Institute would be a bad place to work on those things, and in particular likely does not have the funding or expertise to do ground-breaking work in the life sciences. I'm sure there are many who disagree with me, and I hope they find the Wolfram Institute to be a happy and productive place to do meaningful work.
- posix_me_less 5y ago
  > computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s What do you mean?
  - thwayunion 5y ago
    Computer algebra systems and so on in particular. The sort of stuff Wolfram made is fortune on. I also think "pure software" entering adulthood. The peak might last decades to come, but it's definitely not 1990 or 2010 anymore. CS still has lots of exciting things in the fire, but most of them involve more than "pure software". If that makes sense.
sixQuarks 5y ago
Very well put. You can replace Wolfram with Elon Musk and the same comment applies beautifully
lallysingh 5y ago
Part of it is that his writing is unclear. Not the technical parts, but generally. It's long and full of clauses and often a few sentence fragments shoved together with dashes. It's just taxing to read his prose. Combined with some bravado and deep technical jargon, the reader is forgivably resentful of the entire experience.
wuschel 5y ago
> He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity. Quote you please elaborate on that? Or perhaps quote a piece of work that refers to your statement? Thank you :)
tom-thistime 5y ago
If you want to talk about Wolfram's physics, please do.
wolftrumpram 5y ago
Chris2048 5y ago
It's not very useful to post some top-level like this addressed to "some low-quality comments". Can you point out the post to which you are referring?
jahewson 5y ago
I'd cut Stephen Wolfram some slack if he published his work in a peer reviewed journal - like a proper scientist does.
wenc 5y ago
Exactly. Why can’t we focus on the ideas and not the person? (Unless the person is relevant to the idea but in most cases this is not true). Everyone is so eager to pile on. It lowers the quality of the discussion.
narratorr 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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throwaway81523 5y ago

> show where it’s wrong Do you know the expression "not even wrong"?

m12k 5y ago
They're trying to come up with a new way of modelling the foundations of physics. In order to be "even wrong", they need to make falsifiable predictions. As far as I can tell, they're not at (or claiming to be at) that level of maturity of the model, they seem to be slowly working toward feature parity with existing models. Whether they ever achieve that remains to be seen. Whether they manage to coalesce all this into a single coherent theory remains to be seen. Whether they manage to make novel, falsifiable predictions or not remains to be seen. And if they do, whether these predictions will be falsified or not also remains to be seen. Long story short, I don't see why being "not even wrong" at this phase is some great sin.
- posix_me_less 5y ago
  It's an old reference, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  "Not even wrong, but still making all these grand claims about revolutionizing everything" is a bit worse than just "not even wrong", though. I mean, take quantum loop gravity. It might revolutionize, not everything, but quite a bit. Last I checked, it was as the same stage - not mature enough to make actual predictions. But it was touting itself as "there might be something here, and if there is, it could be really important", not as "we hold the secrets to everything". I guess what I'm looking for is "under promise, over deliver". When you over promise your scientific theory, it stops looking like science and starts looking like marketing. That's... you know what a code smell is? That's a science smell. The more it looks like marketing, the more skeptical I am of it as science.

yetihehe 5y ago

There was once a book, "100 Authors Against Einstein"[0]. Expect opposition against everything you do. Those who are against are just typically more vocal than those who don't know yet. Those who support Wolfram typically are busy doing research and don't care about commenting, they have better things to do than answer every naysayer 1v1. I'm in the "we'll see" camp, but I don't like naysayers. [0] https://archive.org/details/HundertAutorenGegenEinstein https://archive.org/details/HundertAutorenGegenEinstein

morelisp 5y ago
> Those who support Wolfram typically are busy doing research and don't care about commenting Who is doing NKS-based research these days?
- pmayrgundter 5y ago
  That's a reasonable question.. I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping. It might be possible to go through GitHub and find the number of Mathematica projects and then categorize them to get an approximation. Also, this is very tenuous, but I see a lot of similarity between Wolfram's automata (not this new work) and Lattice Boltzmann methods. Both have been around since the 70s/80s and it makes me wonder a little about primacy but a lot about where he's gotten to with all this. Very intriguing
  - morelisp 5y ago
    > I think it's worth considering the users of Mathematica as near or overlapping. Mathematica predates any kind of statement of NKS by over a decade (and SMP nearly a decade before that). Moreover, I don't see any evidence Mathematica is becoming more "NKS-y" over time; it's a usual sort of moribund enterprise tooling, just for a highly selective enterprise. I don't see any real connection, other than some possible post-hoc handwaving. Coming from the other side, Mathematica's relevance to modern physics seems at a 10-20 year nadir. (E.g. from what I can tell it missed the boat entirely on the data-crunching nature of many modern experiments, and its proprietary nature makes it difficult to integrate into increasingly-complex pipelines.) So if NKS - a theory of physics - is being researched, it's either having little success or it's not related to Mathematica use.

WithinReason 5y ago

I'm also surprised by the extreme negativity. This work is something that nerds like me should be interested in! It's basically a generalisation of physics: So far physics was assuming a mathematical foundation for the universe. It makes perfect sense to ask if it can be generalised and look for a procedural foundation. It's shocking to me that only Wolfram's company is pursuing such a logical alternative. And in my opinion his multiway graph approach is an elegant generalisation of what a procedural foundation could be like by trying to maximally reduce the assumptions made in the basic rule set (it's not a cellular automaton, even though everyone seems to be assuming it is)

BluSyn 5y ago

Innovation largely comes from contrarians. If HN is polarized on a topic, to me that just signals it's probably worth MORE attention, not less. From that perspective, overwhelming negative comments are a useful data point.

SirHound 5y ago

Well put. He might be right, he's more likely wrong (and that's not a judgement on the quality of the ideas). But bottom line is we will never get anywhere without thinkers like him.

qwerty456127 5y ago

The web/media representation of Stephen Wolfram somehow seems (I never had a chance to know him personally so I have no idea if he even creates such an impression, let alone actually does) like he has a "huge ego". Whenever someone produces such an impression (which can often be an unfortunate coincidence, I wouldn't expect popular ideas about people to be reliably related to their actual characters), "egos" of all the other people ignite in trying to demonstrate they are "more huge". All the reason and meaningful discussion is lost at this point, no matter how clever and educated the people involved are and what they actually achieved/contributed. By the way I wish more people would create research institutes so there would be more free competition and less bureaucracy in research. There are many talented people who could do some useful/interesting research but ~80% of them probably won't manage with all the obstacles on the path to actual research (including the obstacles which effectively filter subjects and other parameters of research to what's trending in Nature).

claytongulick 5y ago
I've met him twice, personally. He was very kind, humble and approachable. So very much smarter than I'll ever be, yet I never once got the feeling he was looking down on me.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing this. I always imagined him this way but a confirmation by who met him personally produces a nice feeling. By the way an idea just hit me: Stephen Wolfram probably has a great understanding of how does popular image of a person evolves and lives loosely dependent on their real selves: to me it feels like it's a lot like the cellular automata he described in "A New Kind of Science". We can hardly produce a reliable and concise quantification of popular sentiment surrounding a person but if we could the mechanics would probably be similar.
needlefish 5y ago
I honestly think it is that his academic accomplishments in youth combined with the work he has done since is just triggering to people who have their identity wrapped up in being the smart kid. Since he names his companies after himself, knocking him for being "egotistical" is an easy attack to feel better about oneself for not having a PhD from Caltech at 20 with Feynman advising. I have listened to hours of him on Lex Fridman and he doesn't come off as egotistical or arrogant in the least.

deleted 5y ago

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thebeastie 5y ago

It’s possible that Wolfram has some latent narcissism, and this is what people don’t enjoy. Perhaps they are even jealous. I don’t make that speculation based on any “petty” aspects of his personality or communication, but rather the sweeping and self sufficient way he develops his theories. If he’s doing valuable science, I for one would like to cheer him on.

morelisp 5y ago

> Calling him delusional or a fraud is Wittengtein’s Ruler in action: It says far more about you than it does about him. Do you think it's impossible for him to be a skilled mathematician and delusional? Do you think smart, successful business owners are incapable of committing fraud? The interminable negative reactions to anything Wolfram does are boring, but the counter-impulse to "he's done good math, so this can't be a fraud" is outright dangerous. > But vilifying him for wanting to create a research institute is absurd. I think many noted plagiarists trying to open a research institute would get a similar response.

spindle 5y ago
You might like to make a top-level comment about this. I think some of the people who see excessive negativity in attitudes towards Wolfram don't know about the plagiarism.
- morelisp 5y ago
  If nothing else has by now, I don't think a new top-level comment will inform them.

poulpy123 5y ago

Well this blog article is crackpot science. It doesn't matter that Wolfram created Mathematica or that he was a good scientist before. There are many examples of good scientists, even Nobel prizes, that became crackpot scientists. Science simply doesn't work like that.

m12k 5y ago
It's attempting to come up with a new way to model observable physical phenomena. If that's not science, then neither are Feynman diagrams, complex numbers or even calculus. Whether it will prove useful like the above models still remains to be seen, but calling it "not science" seems ahistoric. Let's see if they can evolve the theory to the point where it can make novel predictions. If it never makes one, then the model is not useful. If it makes one but is proven wrong, then at least it will be wrong (rather than "not even wrong"). If it makes one and is proven right, then we will have made a big leap forward in our understanding of the universe. I'm ok with either of these outcomes, but I don't get why anyone would want this thought experiment stopped before one of them is reached.
- poulpy123 5y ago
  When you work in a research institute, you get used of receiving messages of people thinking they have a new theoritical model explaining physics. But that's not how science works. When you're a scientist you work on a specific topic of a specific branch of a specific science. Then you publish your work in one of the mainstream revue of your field. Then if your work is interesting, other scientists use your article to gain more comprehension and as a base of their own work. Rarely but sometimes your work is so fundamental that it can be used in other fields. But you simply don't just say that you're revolutioning physics, biology, economy and the rest. A truly revolutionary work is deemed revolutionary not by yourself but by the other scientists and the impact on the field. And Wolfram is not some kind of ermite lost in the middle of Siberia. He knows how that work and he has the credentials and the money to publish where he wants.
  - poulpy123 5y ago

gradschool 5y ago

> Richard Feynman himself frequently collaborated with Wolfram By way of a historical note relevant to the current topic, there was a funny exchange between Wolfram and Feynman recorded in the collection of Feynman's letters edited by his daughter. Wolfram started a letter with "Dear Feynman", I imagine because English public school boys don't use first names that much, and floated the idea of starting a scientific institute. Feynman replied in a letter starting "Dear Wolfram" that Wolfram was unlikely to succeed in any leadership capacity because he regards normal people as "stupid fools", and therefore should stick to academic work. Feynman's daughter added the editorial comment that Feynman was disproved by Wolfram's subsequent entrepreneurial success.

WithinReason 5y ago
The letters can be found here: https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a-young-stephen-wolfram-1985-d572dc360c18?gi=b37414601345 https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a... Also worth reading Feyman's recommendation letter at the bottom
daniel-thompson 5y ago
What the letter from Feynman to Wolfram^ actually said was: > You say you want to create your own environment - but you will not be doing that: you will create (perhaps!) an environment that you might like to work in - but you will not be working in this environment - you will be administrating it - and the administration environment is not what you seek - is it? You won't enjoy administrating people because you won't succeed in it. > You don't understand "ordinary people". To you they are "stupid fools" - so you will not tolerate them or treat their foibles with tolerance or patience - but will drive yourself wild (or they will drive you wild) trying to deal with them in an effective way. I've never worked for SW but judging by e.g. the employee comments for WR on Glassdoor^, this seems pretty on-the-nose to me. ^ https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a-young-stephen-wolfram-1985-d572dc360c18 https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynmans-advice-to-a... ^ https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-Reviews-E14501.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wolfram-Research-Reviews-E...
anamax 5y ago

wildmanx 5y ago

He is not just "creating a research institute". He basically claims to have solved all of science. Case in point: Yesterday he streamed a "History of Science and Technology Q&A" session. [1] Is it about the history of science and technology? No! It's a sales pitch for his new institute! As if he is the singularity that all of science and technology have culminated in. So obviously when talking about history of science and technology all you need to talk about is cellular automata and Stephen Wolfram's role in it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMFxPWzVU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMFxPWzVU8 Watch it, it's enlightening.

Pilottwave 5y ago
>Stephen Wolfram hosts a live and unscripted Ask Me Anything about the history of science and technology for all ages. I dont get why people wanna frame wolfram so badly as a negative arrogant actor. He is answering viewer questions, his subscriber audience is ofcourse asking certain wolfram physics related questions. Timestamps: 00:00 Start stream 1:49 SW begins talking and introduces Wolfram Institute 22:58 Do you have a sense of the skills that an incoming fellow to the Wolfram Institute will have? What would effective preparation for Institute-type work be? 29:23 What is the emerald functionality that was mentioned for biological/cellular computational explorations? 32:55 and what about around the world overseas and in other countries? 33:05 You get some wonderful things out of pursuing science just for the sake of it. There are pejorative terms for this, like 'fishing trips' and 'stamp collecting', but such pursuits led to PCR technology just because someone was curious about thermophile bacteria 44:53 activity overseas & in other countries in regards to outreach programs in cooperation with education systems...you were mentioning some campaigns you had going on 51:03 Will there be more active development on the computational capabilities of Wolfram Mathematica with the Wolfram Institute? 52:53 British physics is more Geometry guild vs American physics is more Group theory and particle physics Guild 54:08 What is your opinion about experimental mathematics and its relationship with classical "mainstream" mathematics? 1:17:05 I often hear that science needs philosophy to justify it. What are some historical examples of this? 1:32:27 i think in a lot of places in history the role of academic pursuit was that a philosopher's role, but academic pursuit has attained a large amount of "division of labor" 1:34:22 Philosophy and Mathematical logic are starting to overlap more. Tarskis Semantics relates Formal logic to topology just like math and computer langauges 1:36:22 Are there inherently philosophical ideas (i.e. cannot be turned into a scientific one like the question of motion)? Can we distinguish them outright without knowing future scientific development?

underdeserver 5y ago

My problem with Wolfram is that every time I hear him talk or read him, I end up spending 15-20 minutes and come out the other end confused. I studied physics in my undergrad, I have a graduate degree in math, I've shipped large features on planet-scale systems. I'm no genius, certainly nowhere close to Dr. Wolfram, but I don't think I'm far from your average HN reader in reading comprehension ability. I've read 35 paragraphs in a post about founding a research institute and I don't know what was said there that couldn't have been conveyed in two or three paragraphs instead. It is my default opinion that people who use lot word when few word do trick do so to cover up the fact that they have very little content of actual value. That might not be the case with Wolfram, who has quite a track record, but to me the burden of proof is still on him.

m12k 5y ago
Try reading his one year update instead[1] "But now this deflection is not in physical space but in branchial space. The fundamental underlying mathematical structure is the same in both cases. But the interpretation in terms of traditional physics is different. And in what to me is a singularly beautiful result of our models it turns out that what gives the Einstein equations in physical space gives the Feynman path integral in branchial space. Or in other words, quantum mechanics is the same as general relativity, except in branchial space rather than physical space." Most of this stuff is mind-bending to me the same way statistical quantum mechanics, information theory or higher-dimensional physics are. But I always come away from reading about it with a feeling of "there could be something here, and I'm glad someone is exploring it further" https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys...
- underdeserver 5y ago
  It sure sounds promising. Lots of things do. This is why we have peer review and standard publishing practices.
  - Spinnaker_ 5y ago

mayankkaizen 5y ago

I try to read everything Wolfram has written and generally finds his writings quite enjoyable. After reading lots of hsi writings, I noticed one thing which I don't like. It seems like he always tries to belittle other giants (albeit in indirect ways) and project himself as an ultimate intellectual. Even in one of his writing about Feynman, he tried to show that even Feynman sometimed couldn't match his genius. Nevertheless, I still do enjoy his writings.

emteycz 5y ago
Maybe he simply can't escape his impostor syndrome. It's not always nefarious.

tsimionescu 5y ago

> He’s done a fantastic job creating a new model for understanding reality, some of which suggest interesting physical structures underlying our Universe. He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity. > And he’s laying the groundwork for understanding the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes. It’s fantastic stuff. What are you basing this on? This is the key point: so far, he has only vaguely gestured to such a model, built a whole mathematical tower around it, and is now claiming that this is directly applicable in vastly different domains. If this were a random forum poster saying it, it would smell to high heavens of someone who has no idea what they're speaking about noticing vague similarities between domains and hand waving a mathematical framework that would explain those similarities into being. This being Stephen Wolfram, he definitely knows something about those domains, but I still think it's almost impossible for his claims to be right. At the very best, he has come up with a powerful mathematical abstraction, perhaps akin to Category Theory: something which can be used to model and relate extremely different phenomena, and allow insights from one domain to be used in another; but which typically doesn't in itself create much knowledge directly. Edit: to be clear, this would be an extraordinary achievement in itself. But it wouldn't "revolutionize science". Otherwise, when you claim your model can be used equally well in the foundations of physics, economics, pure mathematics, evolutionary biology, computer science and chemistry - it's entirely on you to first prove this absolutely extraordinary claim. Making it with a gentle wave of the hand towards the future and then asking for money to get there raises all possible red flags.

d--b 5y ago

Oh come on! We call him delusional cause he has lost all humility. He is utterly convinced that he discovered the underlying mechanism of literally everything from physics to eceonomics. Delusion of grandeur is a well-known psychological condition, and no matter what you think of the science, it's hard to argue that Wolfram doesn't have it. Why can't he just say: "hey I've got this idea, it's crazy, but you know what? I am going to pursue it and see where it leads, anyone wants to join?" Noone would be annoyed by that. Whether being delusional affects the way you work, I would tend to think so, but you can think otherwise...

xtiansimon 5y ago
How does his ego effect anyone who doesn’t work for him? I read most of the announcement and he’s promising research papers and lecture/teaching materials. That’s good, no? Wolfram’s over the top next level ego, to be sure. But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac. Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.
  - fristechill 5y ago
    Humility before the truth is vital but not necessarily humility as expressed in one's public statements. Indeed psychoticism was identified by the psychologist Hans Eysenck as one of the traits of genius, including scientific genius. Psychoticism is a package which includes associative thinking, creativity, disagreeableness, lack of empathy, antisocial nature, introversion, coldness, aggression, high self-esteem. The problem is that most people are afraid of giving offence, of being ostracised by their colleagues and so on, and so they self-censor their original thoughts and never create anything fundamentally new and important. So it's unsurprising that most of the great scientists in history had very difficult personalities (Faraday may have been an exception). I think the optimal approach is to study and benefit from the work of geniuses but have as little to do with them personally as possible. Leave them alone to their work. Of course the fact that someone has a difficult personality does not mean he is a great thinker. However science has a mechanism for dealing with that via the publication system, where ideas that are wrong are eventually criticised and ultimately forgotten.

LudwigNagasena 5y ago

There is a quote (written 20 years ago) about Wolfram that sums up why people feel that way towards him, > There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories. Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.

eternalban 5y ago
A true prodigy then.

abetusk 5y ago

I agree that Wolfram gets a lot of unnecessary hate by people online and the scientific community and that Wolfram has a lot of interesting things to say but I also see why the community at large bashes on him so regularly. Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory. I often find that I have to really work to find the content in what Wolfram says after wading through what sounds like marketing. I'm often wondering why Wolfram just doesn't talk about the research or ideas he's trying to push instead of trying to tell me why I need to know it's really important. To me, Wolfram treats science and discovery as a kind of business opportunity while pretending it's for the greater good. Open source, peer review, transparency, etc. all give way to his "strong man" personality. Not to fall afoul of Wittgenstein's ruler, I think Wolfram got right the principle of Turing Machine Equivalence. The idea that Turing machine completeness is the norm, rather than the exception, is something that I think people at large don't really understand or accept (and which I think is correct and profound). I will point out that there's work to be done here in trying to prove TME for other 1D cellular automata, not just rule 110, to further cement this point in these toy systems. A fundamental thing that I think Wolfram got wrong is that something fundamentally new needs to supplant scientific discovery and mathematics. Often times discrete systems turn into continuous systems, and vice versa, so throwing out everything and starting over seems counterproductive. I'm in favor of bringing computational tools, both symbolic and numerical, in helping discovery but this is already happening. I also don't understand how this can be done if scientific discovery and tooling isn't democratized in the way that open source focuses on. I think framing Wolfram solely in terms of his marketing for Mathematica and his ANKoS book is overly reductive but I also think it perverts his research, the way he presents his research and explains a lot of why people can come away with that feeling that he's a con artist.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Wolfram is arrogant, self centered and self congratulatory Not making a comparison in terms of contributions to science. But the same could be said about Newton and a host of other great (mostly) men of history. One of the most useful emotional filters I've learned to drop is the predisposition against zealous enthusiasm. Automatically dismissing it is as reductive as immediately submitting to it.

leephillips 5y ago

“new model for understanding reality...the meta-rules that undergird not just our Universe, but all possible Universes...” Is there any evidence whatsoever that he’s accomplished these things? He’s been at this for decades. Is there any prediction of any natural phenomenon? Did he predict a new elementary particle? Can he predict the flow of water through a pipe? Is there a quantitative connection with anything in the physical world, aside from pretty pictures generated by a computer? In other words, is this any kind of science?

dudeinjapan 5y ago
You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven Ramwolf is the lone iconoclast raving about D-branes.
- leephillips 5y ago
  People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.
  - posix_me_less 5y ago
    > makes some predictions and is relativistically correct. Many of which are obviously wrong. We do not observe 11-dimensional world.
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)
    - dudeinjapan 5y ago

pwr-electronics 5y ago

Yeah, I don't get it. He's a guy who runs a business to support his hobby, both pretty harmless. Bonus points for creating and sharing enjoyable and useful things and ideas. I'll debate his ideas, but I'm not gonna tell him what to do with his life.

al2o3cr 5y ago

There’s true evil in the world. Truly despicable sins. Calibrate your outrage towards that. Holy whataboutism, Batman. Funny how "focus on true evil in the world" doesn't apply to stanning rich weirdos on HN...

thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago

tomrod 5y ago

Holy moly, thank you thank you thank you for putting into words how I've been feeling about these perennial negging on Wolfram. Dude and company has done some amazing things.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pmayrgundter 5y ago

Haters gonna hate. I rolled my eyes when I saw this link posted with hundreds of comments, ofc not because of Wolfram but because it's been this reaction for 20 years. People demand mediocrity and are furious when they don't get it.* Projection is a real thing. What's cool about Wolfram is his priority is his work, not peoples' opinions of his work. I know he cares, and sometimes maybe it affects his stance, but he's not letting it stop him from exploring. He's a hero. *Mediocrity in the outgroup. When ingroup it carries prestige for you by association

kemayo 5y ago
> People demand mediocrity and are furious when they don't get it. Remember that people have different preferences. Those objecting to Wolfram tend to be those who appreciate a "quiet confidence" style, which lets your work stand for itself rather than needing you to function as its hype man. To such people, Wolfram's general presentation style reads as puffery-covering-mediocrity -- someone who truly had what he claims wouldn't need to spend so much time talking themself up. (Note that the major point made across much of the criticism of his new science here is, approximately, "I'll believe it when I see it".) Of course, opinions vary. There are others who think that someone who's great should promote themselves as much as their work deserves, and to them Wolfram is perfectly reasonable. If you want an example of this divide outside of the science field, look at Trump. Depending on your own preferences, and for similar presentational reasons as Wolfram, he either reads as a tough and competent man or as wildly insecure.
- pmayrgundter 5y ago
  Basically agreed, but isn't that preference usually context dependent? People like to let the work stand for itself.. that feels like it's from a cloistered environment where everyone is tenured and respected and get their fair time to present their work and get its due attention. Which is fine and dandy and I'm glad we have that. There's also people who are not in that environment who sometimes have something important to say and will definitely be ignored if they follow the same rules. To follow your analogy.. was what Trump had to say actually important? Maybe some of it, but mostly it was all hot air, misleading, demonstrably false and occasionally dangerous. As OP is pointing out, Wolfram is none of those things.

eternityforest 5y ago

The problem is nobody understands even very basic physics. The public has to rely entirely on personality and comments from people who seem to be respected, but the actual physics itself is a complete black box. We can't read his work, we are years of study away from that point. All people are going to do is shut up(My preferred option), immediately dismiss it because some other physicist did, or heap praise on it because it's "Far out and groovy and must be good if those dirty no good mainstream people hate it". And people often aren't that good at shutting their mouths....

thwayunion 5y ago

IMO all of the comments about Wolfram as a topic are low quality, including this one. The topic of the post is the "Wolfram Institute". I'm happy to see more investment in R&D, period. Good on Wolfram. I will probably never seek out a job at the Wolfram Institute because I believe the title is true -- there is an abundance of scientific opportunity. Working on Wolfram's agenda would not be the best use of my time, in part because the Wolfram Institute likely won't have the resources or interest to exploit the scientific opportunities about which I'm most excited. This is less a reflection on Wolfram than on the state of the world. Theoretical Physics of the sort Wolfram was imbued in his early career had its moment half a century ago, but has not produced fruit in a long time. I doubt that will change -- in part because even if all the stated problems were solved... so what? Similarly, computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s and are now approaching a plateau. There are exciting opportunities in the life sciences, in robotics, and in AI. But the Wolfram Institute would be a bad place to work on those things, and in particular likely does not have the funding or expertise to do ground-breaking work in the life sciences. I'm sure there are many who disagree with me, and I hope they find the Wolfram Institute to be a happy and productive place to do meaningful work.

posix_me_less 5y ago
> computation systems seem to have hit a fevered pitch in the 2010s What do you mean?
- thwayunion 5y ago
  Computer algebra systems and so on in particular. The sort of stuff Wolfram made is fortune on. I also think "pure software" entering adulthood. The peak might last decades to come, but it's definitely not 1990 or 2010 anymore. CS still has lots of exciting things in the fire, but most of them involve more than "pure software". If that makes sense.

sixQuarks 5y ago

Very well put. You can replace Wolfram with Elon Musk and the same comment applies beautifully

lallysingh 5y ago

Part of it is that his writing is unclear. Not the technical parts, but generally. It's long and full of clauses and often a few sentence fragments shoved together with dashes. It's just taxing to read his prose. Combined with some bravado and deep technical jargon, the reader is forgivably resentful of the entire experience.

wuschel 5y ago

> He’s changed my understanding of evolution completely with his insights on computational irreducibility and complexity. Quote you please elaborate on that? Or perhaps quote a piece of work that refers to your statement? Thank you :)

tom-thistime 5y ago

If you want to talk about Wolfram's physics, please do.

wolftrumpram 5y ago

Chris2048 5y ago

It's not very useful to post some top-level like this addressed to "some low-quality comments". Can you point out the post to which you are referring?

jahewson 5y ago

I'd cut Stephen Wolfram some slack if he published his work in a peer reviewed journal - like a proper scientist does.

wenc 5y ago

Exactly. Why can’t we focus on the ideas and not the person? (Unless the person is relevant to the idea but in most cases this is not true). Everyone is so eager to pile on. It lowers the quality of the discussion.

narratorr 5y ago

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