Some of the stuff Wolfram worked on was neat, but I really don't care for the self-aggrandizing tone of everything he writes. He comes off as having a nasty superiority complex.
Steve Jobs also uses words like "revolutionary" and "magical" when talking about his own work. Why can't Stephen Wolfram get a pass?
Personally I appreciate that Stephen Wolfram tries to talk about his work in a larger context and using terms that even a layperson can understand, rather than hiding behind specialist jargon and the false modesty of a traditional expert persona.
He may not be right about computational program-space mining becoming a trillion-dollar industry, but he's brave enough to frame his long-term enthusiasm in these terms. What's the worst that can happen? If it eventually turned out that he was right, he'd certainly be remembered. If he's wrong, no big deal -- it doesn't take anything away from his accomplishments as a programmer and CEO.
Agreed. I remember hearing a quote when his search engine, WolframAlpha, came out: "I wonder which will become self aware first. WolframAlpha or Wolfram, Stephen".
A phd in particle physics (even from caltech) can be as meaningless as journalism from yale/harvard. Entire careers have been based on strings ...which is famously not even wrong.
As in every profession, there are lots of "artists". Some also have substance though: ie. Feynman was like Dali: some neat stuff (teaching) and some less neat1, to still make a living.
1 ,,Please send my notes back'' -- Stückelberg (not the painter), as his worst enemy used to joke (back) to him
I disagree: you definitely have to be able to understand lots of complicated stuff to get a PhD in astrophysics from a place like Caltech. And even if string theory isn't physics (i.e., doesn't make testable predictions) it still is a kind of math or at least inspires a lot of math.
Notice of joint stipulation and join stipulation re plaintiff Wolfram Research Inc.’s motion to compel the production of documents from California Institute of Technology.
