Charitably, I think that makes his apparent ‘arrogance’ better understood as something like a ‘literary convention’, especially given the plausibility of him having ‘independently re-discovered’ some of the particular results he reports.
I’ve noticed comments about similar things on Andrew Gelman’s blog and now I think I need to actually make a significant update towards ‘something is wrong with Stephen Wolfram’, tho I’m still not sure what the underlying issue is.
Do you have any links about that case (“Wolfram Research Inc v. Cook”) specifically? I’d think it’s possible that there was some reasonable reason for the lawsuit, but overall, on priors, I’d guess it’s just bad (if not terrible).
If you google the case name, you’ll find some discussions of from early on, and Shalizi covered Cook’s lawsuit & other lawsuits in the essay already linked. Unfortunately, most of the discussion has long since linkrotted but I remember at the time it being well known inside the small CA community, and I doubt oldtimers will have forgotten Wolfram’s behavior even if it no longer comes up much.
(Disclosure: I have met Wolfram, and he was enjoyable to talk to, or perhaps I should say, listen to, and I liked the Wolfram I met—but nothing was at stake, and I think I should not like the Wolfram I met in other contexts so much. Perhaps he has mellowed with age.)
I suspect that Wolfram just wanted to reveal the relevant proof himself, first, in his book NKS (A New Kind of Science), and that Matthew Cook probably was contractually obligated to allow Wolfram to do that.
Given that the two parties settled, and that Cook published his paper about his proof in Wolfram’s own journal (Complex Systems), two years after NKS was published, seems to mostly confirm my suspicions.
Is it customary to sue over literary conventions?
Oof – that looks really bad!
I’ve noticed comments about similar things on Andrew Gelman’s blog and now I think I need to actually make a significant update towards ‘something is wrong with Stephen Wolfram’, tho I’m still not sure what the underlying issue is.
Do you have any links about that case (“Wolfram Research Inc v. Cook”) specifically? I’d think it’s possible that there was some reasonable reason for the lawsuit, but overall, on priors, I’d guess it’s just bad (if not terrible).
If you google the case name, you’ll find some discussions of from early on, and Shalizi covered Cook’s lawsuit & other lawsuits in the essay already linked. Unfortunately, most of the discussion has long since linkrotted but I remember at the time it being well known inside the small CA community, and I doubt oldtimers will have forgotten Wolfram’s behavior even if it no longer comes up much.
(Disclosure: I have met Wolfram, and he was enjoyable to talk to, or perhaps I should say, listen to, and I liked the Wolfram I met—but nothing was at stake, and I think I should not like the Wolfram I met in other contexts so much. Perhaps he has mellowed with age.)
I now think it is plausible that Wolfram sued “over literary conventions”:
Wolfram Research v Cook—LessWrong
I suspect that Wolfram just wanted to reveal the relevant proof himself, first, in his book NKS (A New Kind of Science), and that Matthew Cook probably was contractually obligated to allow Wolfram to do that.
Given that the two parties settled, and that Cook published his paper about his proof in Wolfram’s own journal (Complex Systems), two years after NKS was published, seems to mostly confirm my suspicions.