[Emutopia]

I watched the entire Stephen Wolfram episode and that's the problem.

In several verifiable ways Stephen Wolfram is a genius that has produced great work. (Wolfram Alpha + cellular atomota).

However his communication style in his book 'A New Science' and the Lex Friedman podcast make it clear he optimises for a wow response from his audience more than concise and conclusive communication. For example his notion of 'computational irreducibility' is equivalent with the word 'reality' but sounds a lot fancier and revelatory without adding substance.

When people claim to be authorities they must be held to an extremely high standard. Stephen Wolfram talks at length, but also has substantial accomplishment behind him. Lex Friedman wants to be an authority but fails to demonstrate critical thinking, In previous episodes iv seen him consider how a new perspective was consistent with flat-earth beliefs.

TL:DR; Lex demonsttates little evidence of critical/scientific reasoning, but seems to believe lots of pseudo-scientific nonsense.

I wanted to hear more perspectives on this, and it seems like many people agree