[covidacct]

Maybe. I doubt it, though. There has always been substantial cross-talk between CS/information theory and Physics. Even through the 1990s it was difficult to be a computer scientist without eventually coming into contact with a non-trivial number of physicists. Especially in industrial research labs. Bell Labs, PARC, and IBM Research were full of physicists. Bell Labs and PARC are dead, but AFAIK IBM Research still has a bunch of physicists and the newer kids on the block (Google Research, FAIR, Deepmind, Microsoft Research, Intel, AMD) also have a share of physicists.

Besides, Stephen's approach here is to ignore 15-20 years of research from various CS sub-communities; his best case scenario is spending a decade reinventing that wheel. The problem with cross-talk that isn't "humble on both sides" is that it's either a) a waste of time because one side's ideas aren't that important, or else b) a waste of time because one side has to reinvent the other wise.

[gfodor]

I really think that cross-domain concepts are almost the only way to make huge leaps, so that's a precondition in my mind for any advancement. Check.

In terms of "humility on both sides", it's such a common theme that this oft-cited assumption is taken as truth. Some of the greatest minds who had the most impact in our history were also insufferable assholes, who were stubborn and would not yield until people were forced to reckon with their ideas. Is this me defending Wolfram's ideas? No. But it's me defending the idea that "humility and civility" as a prerequisite for scientific advancement seems false, and in fact, in stagnant fields, the need for a disruptive personality who happens to be right may be perhaps the only real way out of the rut.

[covidacct]

Sure. The problem here is that exactly the ideas he's proposing to explore have already been explored. I've slightly edited my previous comment to point this out.

The problem, in the very particular case of this blog post, is that the cost for lacking intellectual humility is spending time reinventing other people's wheels. And those wheels won't get him as far as he thinks they will. We know because they've already been built by others.

[gfodor]

That makes sense. I can't assess your argument given my lack of understanding. In my own experience though, deriving things from first principles, even if they've been re-invented countless other times, is a good way to build up the intellectual super structures necessary to think new thoughts.

I think we should separate:

- Wolfram acting as though he thought of the ideas first

- Wolfram being underinformed so as to undermine his own progress

People typically get bent out of shape on the former, which is in evidence, and is a problem of politics. The latter, we can't prove or disprove unless you see him drawing significant conclusions that are falsifiable via current understanding. If that is the case, then I'll yield. But I suspect Wolfram may be more well read than he lets on, but for whatever reason, has a dysfunctional personality trait where he sees his own wrangling with ideas already put forth as a form of authorship, when he incorporates it into his long chain of analysis that he's been doing for decades. A potential analogy is one of "re-branding" - but in this case it's re-branding as part of an internal narrative, one where in the final chapter, Wolfram sees himself as the grand author of the unified theory. In that mental model, each idea he draws from is not one he cobbles together into a unified form, but instead, ideas he incorporates and reinterprets in his own bespoke system and methods, leading him to forget that the core ideas are not his own. (I'm definitely reaching here, but trying to to highlight how the two things above could be in fact very materially divergent and consistent with the evidence.)

[mnemonicsloth]

You say:

> Wolfram [is] acting as though he thought of the ideas first.

This is called plagiarism. Independent reinvention is no defense if you keep on acting as though you had the idea first. He has already been informed many times that parts of his work are not original, and his behavior doesn't change.

And he knows it, on some level. He made the decision to communicate his "discoveries" in press releases and self-published books. He knows he's not subjecting himself to peer review. He may know, on some level, that his work couldn't pass it. He sued one of his employees to prevent him (the employee) from publishing a proof that Wolfram claimed he had discovered in his book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110

I understand what you're up to in trying to invent a psychology that explains his bad behavior, but at some point you have to withdraw empathy and think pragmatically about consequences. Wolfram's actions are already more than sufficient to disgrace an ordinary academic. He's damaged at least one career that we know of. He tries to pass himself off as a visionary scientist only he never delivers. If he wasn't independently wealthy no one would be listening to him at all. But non-experts do listen, which is precisely why speaking up against pseudoscience is part of every real scientist's professional responsibilities. Rather than spin these theories, it would be a better use of your time to send Stephen some email urging him to stick to working on Mathematica.

[jeegsy]

> He sued one of his employees to prevent him (the employee) from publishing a proof that Wolfram claimed he had discovered in his book.

The wikipedia article claims that Wolfram conjectured rule 110 in 1985 many years before Cook. Out of curiosity, do you have any info that disputes this?

[mnemonicsloth]

I've read Wolfram's Wikipedia page. It doesn't contain a single word about the controversy that surrounds him and that is in evidence in this discussion thread. On the page for his book, A New Kind of Science, all the allegations of academic dishonesty, which to working scientists is probably more important than the contents of his work -- assigning credit for discoveries is how they get paid, after all -- has been compressed down to a single paragraph at the very end. And that paragraph contradicts itself on a sentence-by-sentence basis, first blaming Wolfram, then excusing him, then blaming him again and so on. So it seems that someone has been pretty successful -- more successful than not -- at erasing criticism of Wolfram from his Wikipedia presence. Therefore, I think Wikipedia's claim that he invented rule 110 in 1985 is highly suspect.

That doesn't matter much, though. Academics have a lot of ways to deal with priority disputes. Sometimes they author a paper together. Sometimes they each publish separately in the same issue of one journal. That's what happened when Darwin and Wallis simultaneously developed the theory of evolution. Sometimes, if the first discoverer was much earlier than the second, the second author might publish the work, and make a public statement in the paper saying the first author was first. This is what happened when Claude Shannon invented information theory only to learn that Norbert Wiener had done the same thing twenty years before. If Wolfram had documentation of his claim, some compromise could probably have been worked out.

Instead, it's a matter of public record that he sued Cook, alleging that the knowledge that Cook had done the work was a trade secret of Wolfram Research. I said before that scientists get paid by correctly being assigned credit for their discoveries. Suing to prevent a scientist from taking credit for their research is like armed robbery. There had been some grumbling before, but this was the moment when scientists recognized that Stephen Wolfram was Not A Real Scientist Anymore.

[89u034q5t]

What if sometimes reinventing the wheel is in fact the efficient procedure and "humility" has nothing to do with it? Simultaneous discoveries and rediscoveries are something rather common. Rather than getting familiarized with some literature and, consequently, getting also tangled with the problems peculiar to how the literature has developed, maybe a fresh start from a different approach is sometimes preferable.

What specific literature are you referring to?

[philipov]

Yes, for example, it took Lagrange reinventing classical mechanics using the principle of least action to put physics in a spot where quantum mechanics and general relativity could be seen.

[Koshkin]

To be fair, both quantum mechanics and general relativity were first "seen" without the aid of the Lagrangian. (Not to dismiss its role in later developments.)