> Can someone elaborate as to why Wolfram’s insufferable?
My own belief, based on work I did in the 1980s, is that it’s actually an intrinsic youthful genius phenomenon—analogous to the insufferability one sees in my rule 34 cellular automaton.
I have a lot of respect for the man despite his personality problems. He knew what he wanted at a young age and pursued it with determination and persistence and achieved it. Mathematica and the business he built to support it are both great accomplishments. I'm sometimes surprised he's not more popular on HN than he is.
I mention all that so it won't seem too mean-spirited when I repeat this:
I've heard a joke, "Which will achieve self-awareness first, Wolfram or Wolfram Alpha?"
He's a great man, but flawed by too-great appreciation of his own greatness.
He’s one of the great minds of his generation but his insecurity complex is so severe that he constantly needs to boast about himself and his achievements to an extent that is unbecoming even in a professional athlete. Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. Even in this eulogy to a dead friend he is content marketing Mathematica’s numerical precision.
> Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example.
There are a couple transcribed lectures of his on amazon, one of them "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition", they are short and deep and I find them very interesting, I read them maybe a couple years ago... somehow within that little context I was so entranced by the underlying concepts and material which just clicked with me, that this aspect of Wolfram's personality completely escaped me... My partner tried to read them and immediately picked up on it, now identified - I find everything I read from him slightly tainted. I've yet to pluck up the courage to read NKS, i'm worried I will not be able to get through it.
It's a shame because I believe some of the work he has produced and ideas he has explored to be a truly fundamental and under-explored part of nature, hopefully enough of us will appreciate that without letting his personality get in the way.
NKS has a lot of very interesting bits of information, ideas and experiments. Some of it is truly novel. At least, I think some are truly novel, because there are also quite a few ideas that aren't novel, but he doesn't mention that fact or cite anyone. And he kind of speaks down about biology and other sciences, about things they are supposedly not researching, except they do.
It would have been a much nicer book if he had connected his ideas in universality, fundamental computing, math, physics and biology, to the rest of those fields. He mentions many of these connections/theories, but does not cite them or even attribute them to their respective fields of science.
Otherwise if you can read past all that, it's super interesting. It just leaves me with the inclination that, if I want to find out more about these new subjects, I'd be best of starting out looking for information not by Wolfram, if only just to get a good view/idea of the field right now, since Wolfram isn't citing anyone, but others probably are.
Are you including the extensive notes in the book when you claim that he doesn't mention any connections nor cite any existing research? I think he wrote the main book much like a textbook, i.e. a straightforward presentation of the ideas, and not like a typical academic publication. IIRC, the extensive notes do mention many connections and include a lot of citations.
The entire book is available online for free. Here's the first section of the notes:
... but, after looking at some more sections of the notes, I think now I remembered very much incorrectly – there are in fact very few citations or specific references. There are, in my opinion, very many connections noted tho.
In developing the ideas described in this book I have looked at many thousands of books, papers and websites—and have interacted with hundreds of people (see page xiii). But rather than trying to give a huge list of specific references, I have instead included in these notes historical information tracing key contributions. From the names of concepts and people that I mention, it is straightforward to do web or database searches that give a vastly more complete picture of available references than could possibly fit in a book of manageable size—or than could be created correctly without immense scholarship. Note that while most current works of science tend to refer mainly just to very recent material, this book often refers to material that is centuries or even millennia old—in some ways more in the tradition of fields like philosophy.
If you can overlook his immodesty, or choose to ignore it, I think you might enjoy reading NKS. It's very interesting, even if you don't agree that he deserves all of the accolades he claims he's owed.
>(Confusingly enough, with typical “machine precision” computer arithmetic, this doesn’t work correctly, because even though one “runs out of precision”, the IEEE Floating Point standard says to keep on delivering digits, even though they are completely wrong. Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language gets it right.)
The man can't help but promote himself. He worded this in a way that makes it look to a lay person like he invented arbitrary precision arithmetic, but in a way that is still technically correct. It's like he's actively trying to peddle something to people who don't know any better.
> makes it look to a lay person like he invented arbitrary precision arithmetic
I think that's pretty uncharitable. If what you claimed were true, particularly of his intentions, I'd expect him to have written something like "Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language got it right.".
But then I can't imagine a layperson having any idea what almost any of the sentence you quoted means anyways so your point seems pretty moot.
For anyone that already understands or is at least familiar with 'machine precision', 'floating point numbers', or 'arbitrary precision' (computer arithmetic), I'd think his claim that "Wolfram Language gets it right" would seem to be a pretty innocuous plug. Yes, the man regularly promotes the products of the company that bears his name on his own blog. I think it's fine.
Out of all the ways he could get his point across, you think he just landed within a hamming distance of 2 of a misleading one on accident?
>But then I can't imagine a layperson having any idea what almost any of the sentence you quoted means anyways so your point seems pretty moot.
You're not being honest here. If you can't imagine it, it is because you're not trying. People walk away with impressions, even if they don't retain the facts. He always writes to give an impression, not to give facts. Facts are always the cover for the impression.
Here's another example from the article:
>But what is actually going on in a phase transition? I think the clearest way to see this is by looking at an analog in cellular automata.
Is he being honest here? Is this actually the best way to understand a phase transition? And is this cellular automata the one he should be using?
Of course! It's His Holy Cellular Automata. It must be introduced, even if only in passing.
Yeah, "it's fine." He knows what he knows, and you can't fault someone for speaking to what they know. But it is a grating and self-serving stylistic choice, and it does undermine his message. But if you're an investor or someone looking for a savior to worship or a bandwagon to jump on, he's certainly got all the answers for you.
> You're not being honest here. If you can't imagine it, it is because you're not trying.
I was being honest. Please don't tell me I'm lying; assume good faith. I still claim that his wording 'Wolfram Language gets it right' versus 'Wolfram Language got it right' would leave a layperson with the impression different than what you claim.
I could be wrong. I'd be willing to make a (nominal) bet about the outcome of a reasonable proxy if you're interested in testing our disagreement. I'm not claiming near-certainty tho. I don't think you're 'definitely' or 'obviously' wrong.
For the second example, I think his cellular automata is a pretty good way to see a phase transition. I'm also interpreting his claim pretty charitably, e.g. not that it's literally the clearest way for anyone to see, let alone understand generally, for whatever reference class of 'people' would possibly be the best definition to use in this case. I think you're splitting hairs pretty finely here.
I do agree that his writing style is "grating and self-serving". There's lots of evidence that that's the case, just in the comments on this post alone. I think part of that interpretation is warranted and valid. I think another, significant, tho lesser part is confirmation bias.
Stephen Wolfram definitely doesn't have all the answers for me, or likely anyone. I'm pretty confused why you wrote the last sentence in your reply to me. I think my comment was pretty anodyne. You seem to have pretty strong feelings about it.
I'm also unsure why you'd think an "investor" would be particularly interested in him or his companies. Wolram basically sells enterprise software and related services. It doesn't seem like a likely undervalued opportunity for significant growth.
I'm also unsure why you think anyone would "worship" him as a "savior". I don't regardless.
I'm happy enough to wish him and anyone that's jumped on his bandwagon well tho. I think he's got a very good point about the likely benefits of engaging in what I'd call 'exploratory computational discovery', as he describes in NKS. Yes, he uses much stronger and strident language to describe the same thing, and I think the magnitude of his claims are too large, but I do think his point is underrated, even significantly. I'm more skeptical of how much low hanging fruit there's likely to be from applying methods like what he advocates, but not radically so.
pro.
Used to refer to an indefinitely specified person; one.
The word is ambiguous, but don't ask me to "assume good faith" when you're choosing the more offensive or questionable interpretation of my words over the most fitting one.
In any case, this issue is not important enough for me to be spending any more time on it, so if you don't understand me, we'll just have to live with that.
If the only reason Wolfram is writing about Feigenbaum in the first place is because it promotes his product, that makes it seem even more self-serving.
This guy manages to, within three sentences, turn a eulogy into a diss of IEEE floating point calculations, only to boast about how his shitty proprietary math toolbox does arbitrary precision better.
Just one of many grating examples of how he communicates. He's a genius though, so he has that going for him...
There's a place, a time, and a style for everything though.
Were he to include a WolframAlpha link to a working snippet, and mention that you need true decimals, because IEEE floats won't cut it would have probably conveyed the same without what the other commenters perceive as useless boasting.
Not being wrong doesn't absolve you from being deceptive. ("Save up to $1000!") A scientist doesn't hide the truth in fine print and technicalities, they expose it.
My own belief, based on work I did in the 1980s, is that it’s actually an intrinsic youthful genius phenomenon—analogous to the insufferability one sees in my rule 34 cellular automaton.