4 ms·
@dang Would you mind telling us what opinions about which famous people we are not allowed to express becacause they are too tropy? It would greatly help in the
by frob 4y ago
@dang Would you mind telling us what opinions about which famous people we are not allowed to express becacause they are too tropy? It would greatly help in the moderation of this site.
However, it could be that common opinions about authors are not tropes but warranted. In the first decade of my exposure to Stephen Wolfram, I was in awe of his intelligence. Mathematica is a wonderful tool and its step-by-step explanations of proofs are fantastic. I thought his approach to computational systems was mind-blowing.
Then I leaned more. I saw that much of his work was built on the backs of giants. His cellular automota are simplified versions of what Conroy worked on. Don't get me wrong, Wolfram formalized 1D automata in his own works, but it wasn't revolutionary. He didn't "discover" these features; he built upon the works of others.
My biggest critique of Wolfram is that he will come up with SOME new interpretation of a physical or computation phenomenon and claim that it is THE ONE TRUE INTEPERATION of how the world works. He feels like hubris personified.
But to simplify it, I think he is a smart person who often posts self-congratulatory things and I don't thing it's wrong to call him out when his writings are full of fluff.
- dang 4y agoNo, I can't give you a list of repetitive tropes. Suppose I missed one? I'll tell you one thing though: anytime someone uses the phrase "call him out", that's a sign the needle is in the red, or at least twitching to get there. The thing to realize is that even if you're 100% right, it doesn't make repetitive threads any less tedious. Avoiding tedium is more important than being right—at least on HN. No doubt other websites, with other mandates, have other priorities.