4 ms·

This is the feeling I have every time I read Wolfram's writing. It seems deep when first approached, but is ultimately a superficial rewording of established kn

by frob 4y ago

This is the feeling I have every time I read Wolfram's writing. It seems deep when first approached, but is ultimately a superficial rewording of established knowledge.

Swizec 4y ago
After listening to a podcast where he explains his approach in more depth, I think the value is in that he [tries to] construct the ideas from scratch. That they sound like “superficial rewording” is, I think, great evidence that the knowledge is either fundamentally true or the best humans can do. It’s like when avionics use independent systems to make decisions. If all the systems agree, they’re probably right. The value is in independent parallel construction of the same result.
- diego898 4y ago
  Thank you for this. I don’t see many generous readings of Wolframs writings. HN is very dismissive of almost everything of his that ever makes the front page. As someone who doesn’t know enough to really know if he’s right or wrong, it’s hard to fully believe the HN view that he’s a transparent Charleston (and easy to spot at that) considering his history. It’s helpful to see a “positive” read of him and gives me more to think about so thank you! Can you link/mention the podcast?
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    I don’t see many generous readings of Wolframs writings. HN is very dismissive of almost everything of his that ever makes the front page. This sounds like the scepticism here is unfair. You need to consider that if somebody establishes a reputation for using their reasonably well-known (and justifiably respected) position as an academic software developer to publicise dubious and grandiose scientific theories to gullible techies and pop-sci readers, rather than submitting them to be evaluated by experts through the normal scientific process, it seems pretty miniscule beer in comparison to have some pushback in threads like this.
  - nautilius 4y ago
    He was recently on Tim Ferris and discussed his ideas.
  - User23 4y ago
    It’s not that hard to understand why the lisp guy who became a billionaire by making m-expressions work, but kept the tech proprietary, is resented by many here. Who else has ever achieved that level of success on the back of a programming language, let alone a Lisp? Our host here is the only one in the same ballpark and his success was more on the application side. Arc is no Wolfram language.
    - frob 4y ago
      Honestly, this is the first time I've ever heard of m-expressions. I know of Wolfram from Mathematica and he has HUGE credit in my mind for building that.
dang 4y ago
Please let's try to avoid the predictable thing that people have been reflexively saying about Wolfram for as long as this site has existed (and at least a decade before that too). Maybe he deserves it, maybe not, but anything so predictable has extremely low signal and therefore is off topic for this site. Think of this as a stretch exercise for HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20wolfram&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34658960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34658960.)
- ajb 4y ago
  Wolfram's attitude isn't just a personality issue, it actually violates the norms of science, which exist for good reason. When Wolfram writes a long screed about his own genius as an introduction to his work that's a claim to intellectual authority. Scientific work isn't supposed to be evaluated based on the authority of its author, because that's not a good guide to whether it is valid. As I understand it (I haven't personally checked) Wolfram doesn't submit any of his stuff to peer review either.
  - 2b3a51 4y ago
    As another poster put it perhaps Dr Wolfram has chosen to work outside the community recently. The early cellular automata papers were published in peer reviewed journals, and the OA contains an anecdote about the external refereeing of one short paper. I read the early autobiographical material as just an older man recording his experiences. A memoir perhaps rather than a review paper. Your post has me thinking about 'independent scientists' more generally. Some defy characterisation as their work is just outside normal categories. An example could be George Spencer-Brown with his Laws of Form, a book that appeared as a complete and dense argument. Spencer-Brown was a colourful character to say the least. Others are sort of 'semi-detached' and do publish papers in mainstream academic journals and do collaborate. Julian Barbour would be my example here. I would imagine that a fair amount of self-confidence is needed (along with resources) to work in this way.
  - dang 4y ago

by frob 4y ago

This is the feeling I have every time I read Wolfram's writing. It seems deep when first approached, but is ultimately a superficial rewording of established knowledge.

Swizec 4y ago

After listening to a podcast where he explains his approach in more depth, I think the value is in that he [tries to] construct the ideas from scratch. That they sound like “superficial rewording” is, I think, great evidence that the knowledge is either fundamentally true or the best humans can do. It’s like when avionics use independent systems to make decisions. If all the systems agree, they’re probably right. The value is in independent parallel construction of the same result.

diego898 4y ago
Thank you for this. I don’t see many generous readings of Wolframs writings. HN is very dismissive of almost everything of his that ever makes the front page. As someone who doesn’t know enough to really know if he’s right or wrong, it’s hard to fully believe the HN view that he’s a transparent Charleston (and easy to spot at that) considering his history. It’s helpful to see a “positive” read of him and gives me more to think about so thank you! Can you link/mention the podcast?
- mellosouls 4y ago
  I don’t see many generous readings of Wolframs writings. HN is very dismissive of almost everything of his that ever makes the front page. This sounds like the scepticism here is unfair. You need to consider that if somebody establishes a reputation for using their reasonably well-known (and justifiably respected) position as an academic software developer to publicise dubious and grandiose scientific theories to gullible techies and pop-sci readers, rather than submitting them to be evaluated by experts through the normal scientific process, it seems pretty miniscule beer in comparison to have some pushback in threads like this.
- nautilius 4y ago
  He was recently on Tim Ferris and discussed his ideas.
- User23 4y ago
  It’s not that hard to understand why the lisp guy who became a billionaire by making m-expressions work, but kept the tech proprietary, is resented by many here. Who else has ever achieved that level of success on the back of a programming language, let alone a Lisp? Our host here is the only one in the same ballpark and his success was more on the application side. Arc is no Wolfram language.
  - frob 4y ago
    Honestly, this is the first time I've ever heard of m-expressions. I know of Wolfram from Mathematica and he has HUGE credit in my mind for building that.

dang 4y ago

Please let's try to avoid the predictable thing that people have been reflexively saying about Wolfram for as long as this site has existed (and at least a decade before that too). Maybe he deserves it, maybe not, but anything so predictable has extremely low signal and therefore is off topic for this site. Think of this as a stretch exercise for HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20wolfram&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34658960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34658960.)

ajb 4y ago
Wolfram's attitude isn't just a personality issue, it actually violates the norms of science, which exist for good reason. When Wolfram writes a long screed about his own genius as an introduction to his work that's a claim to intellectual authority. Scientific work isn't supposed to be evaluated based on the authority of its author, because that's not a good guide to whether it is valid. As I understand it (I haven't personally checked) Wolfram doesn't submit any of his stuff to peer review either.
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  As another poster put it perhaps Dr Wolfram has chosen to work outside the community recently. The early cellular automata papers were published in peer reviewed journals, and the OA contains an anecdote about the external refereeing of one short paper. I read the early autobiographical material as just an older man recording his experiences. A memoir perhaps rather than a review paper. Your post has me thinking about 'independent scientists' more generally. Some defy characterisation as their work is just outside normal categories. An example could be George Spencer-Brown with his Laws of Form, a book that appeared as a complete and dense argument. Spencer-Brown was a colourful character to say the least. Others are sort of 'semi-detached' and do publish papers in mainstream academic journals and do collaborate. Julian Barbour would be my example here. I would imagine that a fair amount of self-confidence is needed (along with resources) to work in this way.
- dang 4y ago