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 Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict

2830 Posts

Posted - 11/05/2012 :  15:30:40  Show Profile Send sailingsoul a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I found this very informative and possibly very useful if ever utilized by yourself. I wish I had this when I was taking Geometry or Trig' seeing how it does math too.

There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS

Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 11/05/2012 :  19:20:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Novelty app. I sucks at biology!


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2012 :  04:28:31   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Some of the comments at the YouTube page linked in the OP are quite hostile to Wolfram. They say he's egomaniacal, that he's claiming credit for inventing fractals and cellular automata, etc., and that essentially he's contributed nothing but incoherent hot air in his TED Talk.

I'd say about his TED presentation that he was a bit hard to follow, jumping from one dazzling topic to another. It may be that Wolfram is simply like that in his verbal communications, but he has created Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and seems bent upon expanding computational aides in powerful and creative ways. Maybe his skill set doesn't include perfect speech-making, but he's definitely on a roll with a vision for empowering even laymen with the ability to answer difficult questions. For that I greatly respect Wolfram.

Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict

2830 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2012 :  07:32:36   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send sailingsoul a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by HalfMooner

Some of the comments at the YouTube page linked in the OP are quite hostile to Wolfram. They say he's egomaniacal, that he's claiming credit for inventing fractals and cellular automata, etc., and that essentially he's contributed nothing but incoherent hot air in his TED Talk.
Maybe they just don't get it? I'm impressed by his (this) work. Sometimes less intelligent and productive people chose to condemn and ridicule anyone who exposes that difference to greatly. Possibly because it feeds the fantasy of their present nonexistent value to society.

There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2012 :  11:00:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Oh, the ego is there, check the first line of Mathematica documentation

"Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, and a well-known scientist. He is widely regarded as the most important innovator in technical computing today, as well as one of the world's most original research scientists."

http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v5_2/book/section-0.1.1

I can't really refute his accomplishments academically, I think he is legitimately very accomplished, but I'm not sure who's regarding him as the most important innovator (...) other than himself.

I do like Wolfram Alpha a lot, but I've found it's really only useful for math problems. It just doesn't understand much else very well if you deviate much at all from his examples. Mathematica is very popular and effective as well.

His whole position of conflating science with computation is a little troubling to me as well, and he does hype it tremendously, but I can't say I know enough about his approach to comment intelligently.

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus
Edited by - Machi4velli on 11/06/2012 11:02:25
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict

2830 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2012 :  17:20:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send sailingsoul a Private Message  Reply with Quote
[
Originally posted by Machi4velli

Oh, the ego is there, check the first line of Mathematica documentation

"Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, and a well-known scientist. He is widely regarded as the most important innovator in technical computing today, as well as one of the world's most original research scientists."

http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v5_2/book/section-0.1.1

I can't really refute his accomplishments academically, I think he is legitimately very accomplished, but I'm not sure who's regarding him as the most important innovator (...) other than himself.
Yes I agree the promotion is there.


I do like Wolfram Alpha a lot, but I've found it's really only useful for math problems. It just doesn't understand much else very well if you deviate much at all from his examples. Mathematica is very popular and effective as well.

His whole position of conflating science with computation is a little troubling to me as well, and he does hype it tremendously, but I can't say I know enough about his approach to comment intelligently.
After playing about with it a bit, I too can agree that the hype is high as to what it can really do beyond the math part. As far as understanding speech, it's not as stellar in practice. He was on NPR a few years ago, I think it was with Terry Gross on "fresh air" when it was first released. It must have been when this TED talk was done. My enthusiasm is not what it was after checking into it some more. Hay, it free! it's got that going for it.

There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2012 :  20:54:57   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
No calculus student will have to do their homework ever again! :)

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus
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ZOGMAN
New Member

1 Post

Posted - 11/22/2012 :  20:04:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send ZOGMAN a Private Message  Reply with Quote
The problem with Wolfram is that it is hard to trust a man with such a rampaging ego. Try reading " A New Kind of Science" in which he says that five hundred years of science and rational thought have been a waste of time, and that he, Stephan Wolfram, the second coming of Christ, has invented new forms of science and mathematics(hint: he didn't) that will lead us to a Grand Unified Theory. Would you suffer this man?

Check out the negative reviews of said book on Amazon, they're worth a few laughs.

That being said, I'm a big fan of WolframAlpha and Mathematica. They're definitely limited in some aspects, but with the proper input they are great. Given time I think they'll be great.
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ThorGoLucky
Snuggle Wolf

USA
1486 Posts

Posted - 11/23/2012 :  08:20:42   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit ThorGoLucky's Homepage Send ThorGoLucky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Energyscholar claims to work for WolframAlpha. I would think that would earn enough money to not have to live in a shack.
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williamj218
Spammer

USA
2 Posts

Posted - 12/05/2012 :  00:14:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send williamj218 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Nice review of the topic , I was looking to understand this matter further and found this information to be informative..
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[Spam deleted - Dave W.]
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