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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

It's attempting to come up with a new way to model observable physical phenomena. If that's not science, then neither are Feynman diagrams, complex numbers or even calculus.

Whether it will prove useful like the above models still remains to be seen, but calling it "not science" seems ahistoric. Let's see if they can evolve the theory to the point where it can make novel predictions. If it never makes one, then the model is not useful. If it makes one but is proven wrong, then at least it will be wrong (rather than "not even wrong"). If it makes one and is proven right, then we will have made a big leap forward in our understanding of the universe.

I'm ok with either of these outcomes, but I don't get why anyone would want this thought experiment stopped before one of them is reached.

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When you work in a research institute, you get used of receiving messages of people thinking they have a new theoritical model explaining physics. But that's not how science works. When you're a scientist you work on a specific topic of a specific branch of a specific science. Then you publish your work in one of the mainstream revue of your field. Then if your work is interesting, other scientists use your article to gain more comprehension and as a base of their own work. Rarely but sometimes your work is so fundamental that it can be used in other fields.

But you simply don't just say that you're revolutioning physics, biology, economy and the rest. A truly revolutionary work is deemed revolutionary not by yourself but by the other scientists and the impact on the field.

And Wolfram is not some kind of ermite lost in the middle of Siberia. He knows how that work and he has the credentials and the money to publish where he wants.

Note also that nobody is doing anything to stop him to do what he wants.

Universities and science academies are full of guys loudly announcing their revolutions. Wolfram uses his own money for it - I respect that.

Wolfram is saying that the new multicomputational paradigm that, he is heavily intellectually invested in and paying for the R&D himself, MIGHT revolutionize physics biology economy and the rest. This blog post is about scaling up the efforts, by founding an institute, to see if this new paradigm can actually deliver.

So weird for the hackernews audience to hate on this mans idea's so much. Its worth a shot no?

Elon Musk is often hailed a hero for paradigm shifting to reusable rockets and wanting to use this to colonize mars. But try and do a paradigm shift in physics, out of pocket, and the haters come out in droves.

I say let the man have a go at it. We might learn something!

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