3 ms·

I have trouble reconciling the insanely impressive pre-mid-80s Wolfram with the post-80s Wolfram. All his productions before a certain time are touched with bri

I have trouble reconciling the insanely impressive pre-mid-80s Wolfram with the post-80s Wolfram. All his productions before a certain time are touched with brilliance and a preternatural orderliness of mind (including Mathematica, which was a groundbreaking and beautiful piece of software). Then he started making pictures of cellular automata.

nabla9 4y ago
ego + no high quality feedback -> intellectual doom Guy is trapped inside his own mind and can't get out. Even independent researchers need scientific community to spar with. If you can't explain your thought simply to your peers (followers don't count) maybe you are lost. Same thing with Erik Weinstein. Left academia early to do something else, became rich. When he finally published the outline of the great thing he had been working for decades, someone easily spotted the errors and that was it.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  Yeah he never talks about his theory anymore. Amazing how sudden that went from 100 to 0. Same for him applying gauge theory to the CPI, which also went splat and never to be spoken of again. The reality is, these concepts have engendered a significant and dense literature .The odds of being an outsider and just upending it are close to nil, even if you are brilliant. Sure Einstein did, how often does that happen?
  - nabla9 4y ago
    Einstein was not isolated or outsider genius. He was a young physicist who didn't get academic position. Einstein's best friend Marcel Grossmann was a mathematician specializing in differential geometry and tensor calculus. Those were exactly the tools he needed for his breakthrough. Grossmann was important facilitator for Einstein. There were others. "Olympia Academy" and his wife for example.
svnt 4y ago
I think he mistakenly decided, reinforced by a lot of outside feedback, that he alone was personally responsible for his ability to respond to and record brilliant ideas. He failed to recognize that he was primarily exceptional in his preparation for, and early participation in, a brilliant collective of individuals. When he left the collective, his limited individual capacity left him chasing instead of leading.
daxfohl 4y ago
Newton added "indigo" to the rainbow because of an occult belief in numerology and a divine purpose of the number 7. We all have our faults.
- passion__desire 4y ago
  Searching for Indigo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyyg8pkDL74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyyg8pkDL74 Oliver Sacks experienced Indigo on ahem some substances.
zem 4y ago
the cellular automata per se are not the problem; there is definitely a field of physics studying the properties of CA systems and whether they can be used to derive physical laws. the problem is that wolfram is trying to develop some grand theory of everything by himself in the form of a stone tablet brought down from a mountain, rather than running his ideas by other scientists for peer review and pushback, which is how you get cranks.

nabla9 4y ago

ego + no high quality feedback -> intellectual doom Guy is trapped inside his own mind and can't get out. Even independent researchers need scientific community to spar with. If you can't explain your thought simply to your peers (followers don't count) maybe you are lost. Same thing with Erik Weinstein. Left academia early to do something else, became rich. When he finally published the outline of the great thing he had been working for decades, someone easily spotted the errors and that was it.

paulpauper 4y ago
Yeah he never talks about his theory anymore. Amazing how sudden that went from 100 to 0. Same for him applying gauge theory to the CPI, which also went splat and never to be spoken of again. The reality is, these concepts have engendered a significant and dense literature .The odds of being an outsider and just upending it are close to nil, even if you are brilliant. Sure Einstein did, how often does that happen?
- nabla9 4y ago
  Einstein was not isolated or outsider genius. He was a young physicist who didn't get academic position. Einstein's best friend Marcel Grossmann was a mathematician specializing in differential geometry and tensor calculus. Those were exactly the tools he needed for his breakthrough. Grossmann was important facilitator for Einstein. There were others. "Olympia Academy" and his wife for example.

svnt 4y ago

I think he mistakenly decided, reinforced by a lot of outside feedback, that he alone was personally responsible for his ability to respond to and record brilliant ideas. He failed to recognize that he was primarily exceptional in his preparation for, and early participation in, a brilliant collective of individuals. When he left the collective, his limited individual capacity left him chasing instead of leading.

daxfohl 4y ago

Newton added "indigo" to the rainbow because of an occult belief in numerology and a divine purpose of the number 7. We all have our faults.

passion__desire 4y ago
Searching for Indigo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyyg8pkDL74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyyg8pkDL74 Oliver Sacks experienced Indigo on ahem some substances.

zem 4y ago

the cellular automata per se are not the problem; there is definitely a field of physics studying the properties of CA systems and whether they can be used to derive physical laws. the problem is that wolfram is trying to develop some grand theory of everything by himself in the form of a stone tablet brought down from a mountain, rather than running his ideas by other scientists for peer review and pushback, which is how you get cranks.