Isn’t it also arrogance on the part of the professional physics community that working on his theories is considered “career suicide” just because he wrote it in an unconventional format? Not saying Wolfram is blameless here, just that it seems sort of silly for that to be such a sticking point.
I think the problem is that Wolfram wrote things up in a manner indistinguishable from a perpetual-motion-believer-who-actually-can-write-well’s treatise. Maybe it’s instead legit, but to discover that you have to spend a lot of translation effort, translation effort that Wolfram was supposed to have done himself in digestible chunks rather than telling N=lots of people to each do it themselves, and it’s not even clear there is something at the heart because (last time I checked which was a couple years ago) no physics-knowledgable people who dived in seemed to come up and say “ah, yep, it’s legit, there’s real insight and truth here beyond cataloging really cool computational phenomena”.
I have seen
I don’t have sufficient technical background to really judge the output of this physics work itself but it stills seem (at least) very intriguing!
this sentiment a ton, and also stuff like
Folks. I do not live under a rock. Have I heard of Stephen Wolfram’s physics project? How could I not given that his PR people rammed it down my inbox. Why do I not comment on it? I looked at it and don’t think it’s interesting, that’s why. Now please move on.
[...] I spent two days reading the stuff, trying to make sense of it. I eventually wrote some questions to the Wolfram folks and have since waited for a reply. Why do you think I have to waste my time on some guys’ self-promotion?
this from folks who do have sufficient technical background.
I happen to think there probably are lots of really import insights to be had, and also that most or all of the ones that Wolfram has had so far are equivalent to existing results in existing branches of mathematics, and he’d realize that himself if he did try to break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks, but all of that’s off of my intuition, not expertise.
I think it’s fine if someone else does the work to “break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks” for the benefit of other academics.
My naive outsider impression of physics is that, at least on the theoretical side, basically no one really knows what the promising avenues to pursue might be.
Having just read his post about the writing of the book (NKS), I’m hopeful that he will, eventually, publish a ‘bibliography’ that does a better job of translating the book, and its voluminous notes, into a form that’s ‘more accessible’ to the relevant academics.
Isn’t it also arrogance on the part of the professional physics community that working on his theories is considered “career suicide” just because he wrote it in an unconventional format? Not saying Wolfram is blameless here, just that it seems sort of silly for that to be such a sticking point.
I think the problem is that Wolfram wrote things up in a manner indistinguishable from a perpetual-motion-believer-who-actually-can-write-well’s treatise. Maybe it’s instead legit, but to discover that you have to spend a lot of translation effort, translation effort that Wolfram was supposed to have done himself in digestible chunks rather than telling N=lots of people to each do it themselves, and it’s not even clear there is something at the heart because (last time I checked which was a couple years ago) no physics-knowledgable people who dived in seemed to come up and say “ah, yep, it’s legit, there’s real insight and truth here beyond cataloging really cool computational phenomena”.
I have seen
this sentiment a ton, and also stuff like
-- Sabine Hossenfelder (https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1252124072512757761)
this from folks who do have sufficient technical background.
I happen to think there probably are lots of really import insights to be had, and also that most or all of the ones that Wolfram has had so far are equivalent to existing results in existing branches of mathematics, and he’d realize that himself if he did try to break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks, but all of that’s off of my intuition, not expertise.
I think it’s fine if someone else does the work to “break his work down into actually digestible concrete chunks” for the benefit of other academics.
My naive outsider impression of physics is that, at least on the theoretical side, basically no one really knows what the promising avenues to pursue might be.
Having just read his post about the writing of the book (NKS), I’m hopeful that he will, eventually, publish a ‘bibliography’ that does a better job of translating the book, and its voluminous notes, into a form that’s ‘more accessible’ to the relevant academics.