5 ms·
"I wonder which will become self-aware first -- Wolfram Alpha, or Stephen Wolfram."
by karcass 11y ago
"I wonder which will become self-aware first -- Wolfram Alpha, or Stephen Wolfram."
- mayoff 11y agoAttributed to Casey Muratori by http://chrishecker.com/Kurt_G%C3%B6del_is_Laughing_His_Ass_Off_Right_Now http://chrishecker.com/Kurt_G%C3%B6del_is_Laughing_His_Ass_O... - “Does anyone want to bet as to which will gain self-awareness first: Wolfram Alpha or Wolfram, Stephen?”
- DonHopkins 11y agoThe Donald Trump of the computer industry.
- tfgg 11y agoI once went to a talk by Wolfram to an audience of academics which he finished by saying that if he managed to find the theory of everything (which he seemed to think was a possibility), he probably wouldn't bother telling people, since theoretical physicists wouldn't understand it.
- rndn 11y agoI'm not sure I get it. Is that a dig at how computationalism is met with skepticism among theoretical physicists?
- s_kilk 11y agoMore likely a dig at Wolframs gargantuan ego.
- thanatropism 11y agoBut isn't this the ultimate point of "science studies" (broadly put) since the days of Kuhn, Lakatos, Latour and so on? I mean, Wolfram's bizarre confirmation bias about discrete automata is (apparently) apparent to the computer-y people because we've seen discrete automata and have goofed with all sorts of complexity-generating simple formalisms (L-systems, genetic algorithms, ...) that are impressive for giggles (and some industrial applications) but don't amount to a kind of Kurzweilian Transcendence. ... but we're not all mathy enough to pick apart what string/brane theorists or even orthodox quantum gravitationists are doing and say with (possibly misguided) confidence that it's no hope for a theory of everything. The people who do are continental philosophers who tend to get laughed out of the room, often because they have silly overarching theories (Zizek has a couple of points about quantum physics, but then, he thinks psychoanalysis explains human history) that must be relentlessly mocked.
- sedachv 11y ago> The people who do are continental philosophers who tend to get laughed out of the room And for good reason. For example, philosophers (Zizek included) raved about Badiou's Number and Numbers. It is a nice history of the approaches to formalizing the concept of number, but there is no philosophy there. As soon as Badiou or Derrida or any other continental philosophers try to do anything else with mathematics it just becomes a grossly inappropriate and confusing analogy.
- xmonkee 11y ago>he thinks psychoanalysis explains human history The kind of theoritical psychoanalysis Zizek talks about is not really classic psychoanalysis at all. Even Marxism at the lowest level is a theory of psychology.
- zamalek 11y agoI think Stephen may be confusing communication with understanding. True genius inspiration can be hard or even impossible to communicate as languages are an imperfect representation of what happens in our minds, especially the "genius mind." Not that it excuses his sentiment at all. Seemingly too arrogant to take the time to contemplate himself in an honest light.
- mikerichards 11y agoI wonder if he would have the balls to say that if Feynman was still around?
- kjak 11y agoFor what it's worth, Feynman was on Wolfram's dissertation committee http://thesis.library.caltech.edu/2597/ http://thesis.library.caltech.edu/2597/