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It's a problem when someone is claiming that a technique Solves the Big Problems when it clearly doesn't. Maybe it will one day, and no one is saying it's not
by TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
It's a problem when someone is claiming that a technique Solves the Big Problems when it clearly doesn't.
Maybe it will one day, and no one is saying it's not an interesting avenue to explore.
But making grandiose claims is not doing science. Making novel falsifiable concrete predictions is science, and Wolfram hasn't made enough of those to justify the extreme self-regard.
- spindle 5y agoI strongly agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but: > making grandiose claims is not doing science. Making novel falsifiable concrete predictions is science It seems to me that making grandiose claims is absolutely essential to science every now and then. A good example is when Einstein made the grandiose (and unfalsifiable) claim that the mathematical theory of relativity already worked out by Lorentz and Poincare and whoever was best seen as the denial of the existence of simultaneity etc., a claim which obviously turned out to be very fruitful since it lead to General Relativity. However (and this is one reason I so strongly argee with the spirit of what you're saying), (a) there isn't room for very much of this stuff, (b) Einstein was much better at it than Wolfram is, and (c) Einstein was listened to because at the same time (ha ha) as he was making grandiose claims he was making unarguably gobsmacking breakthroughs in atomic theory and quantum mechanics.
- aj7 5y agoI think it is fair to assert that if maybe one day it will solve big problems, that it should have solved a little problem already. Quantum mechanics rapidly gained credibility because once its formalism became established, it was easy to show how classical mechanics came out of it in a limit.