| > 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. |
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.