Thanks! I just read another Aaronson paper recently – his ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ – and thought it was fantastic. (I’ve been following his blog for awhile now.)
I definitely appreciate, not even having (yet) read the paper to which you linked, that Wolfram might not be entirely up-to-date with the frontier of computation complexity. (I’m pretty sure he knows some, if not a lot, of the major less-recent results.)
Wolfram’s also something of a ‘quantum computing’ skeptic, which I think satisfyingly explains why he doesn’t discuss it much in NKS or elsewhere. (He also does somewhat explain his skepticism, and that he is skeptical of it, in NKS (IIRC).)
I can also understand and sympathize with experts not being impressed with the book, or his work generally. But Robin Hanson has expressed similar complaints about the reception of his own work, and interdisciplinary work more widely, and I think those complaints are valid and (sadly) true.
I don’t personally model academia as (effectively) producing truth or even insight as a particularly high priority.
Thanks! I just read another Aaronson paper recently – his ‘computation complexity for philosophers’ – and thought it was fantastic. (I’ve been following his blog for awhile now.)
I definitely appreciate, not even having (yet) read the paper to which you linked, that Wolfram might not be entirely up-to-date with the frontier of computation complexity. (I’m pretty sure he knows some, if not a lot, of the major less-recent results.)
Wolfram’s also something of a ‘quantum computing’ skeptic, which I think satisfyingly explains why he doesn’t discuss it much in NKS or elsewhere. (He also does somewhat explain his skepticism, and that he is skeptical of it, in NKS (IIRC).)
I can also understand and sympathize with experts not being impressed with the book, or his work generally. But Robin Hanson has expressed similar complaints about the reception of his own work, and interdisciplinary work more widely, and I think those complaints are valid and (sadly) true.
I don’t personally model academia as (effectively) producing truth or even insight as a particularly high priority.