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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

To understand the state of Wolfram Alpha, you have to understand the guy behind it.

Wolfram Alpha was a pet project of Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica. He had grand visions for it. And for the first few years, it seemed like he was doubling down on it.

But then he got bored and started tackling a bigger problem: his own solution to the "theory of everything" problem -- something that has eluded the world's best physicists for decades.

But he was confident that he could best them all. Because he created Mathematica.

The scientific community wasn't having it:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic...

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I'm not sure you intend it, but your comment kind of makes Wolfram sounds like some sort of crank.

He's a leading thinker obsessively interested in this idea that everything around us is the product of a simple, fundamental ruleset.

He's sitting on the bleeding edge of human knowledge where, honestly, everyone is at risk of being full of shit. Scientific consensus isn't really any kind of indicator of future breakthroughs.

To each their own - let Wolfram be Wolfram.

His work is very interesting, and much of it novel, but it's the way he presents it that makes him a crank. Claiming he has a grand unified theory of physics and all that.

They don’t make him sound like a crank, but like a narcissist, which Wolfram definitely is. Not that it’s really a bad thing, most lang devs are a little narcissistic in my experience. Comes with the territory. But the guy named his language after himself. No one does that! Creating a language is already a very ego-driven endeavor, but naming it after yourself is next-level egoist.

He is both a crank and an innovator, and comments regarding his crankery are perfectly appropriate.

I think his "new kind of science" needs to be singled out from Wolfram alpha and Mathematica as especially crank-ish. It appears to be an attempt at a grand foundational philosophical statement, but it doesn't interact with pre-existing literature that covers similar territory, conveys ideas with pictures and informal statements without robust definitions, doesn't have an underlying bedrock of concepts or uniform vocabulary, and doesn't have the focus or clarity of purpose to rise to the level of being right or wrong. And it nevertheless maintains a grandiose tone of establishing an entirely new domain of science

It's not necessarily wrong, but it is unfortunately very vague and concerningly childish, even though I think it does have some meaningful things to say. It's a very fair example in favor of crankery.

He has done some exciting work, but he hasn't done any physics in ages. If you don't (by choice or ability) do the work to prove your ideas, you can't expect anyone else to. If he wants to revolutionize physics, he can't leave that to others. That attitude is a defining characteristic of a crank.

Cranks can do good work, but when they get out of their depth and don't realize it, blaming everyone else, that's when they become cranks.

I like Wolfram, and I think there are some interesting and fundamental insights in among the relentless self promotion, but ANKOS is a painful read, even though I find cellular automata a fascinating model.

For those interested in hearing about his theory/work, Sean Carroll (theoretical physicist) did a very long podcast with him about it.

I'd highly recommend Sean's podcast in general for those interested in physics topics and prefer a more technical discussion that the usual physics podcasts.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/07/12/155-...

> But he was confident that he could best them all. Because he created Mathematica.

That's unkind, and that's definitely not what he says.

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