A Short Talk about Richard Feynman (2005)
stephenwolfram.com
stephenwolfram.com
http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...
But one of them never misses an opportunity to obnoxiously shove this fact in his reader's face at least three times per page of text using A New Kind of Bragging.
It doesn't directly bother me that Wolfram is an egotist, I don't have to deal with him on a personal level, so why should I care? But he fancies himself a writer (among other things) and I do think his constant need to insert himself and his past accomplishments continually (even when his subject is ostensibly something else) detracts a great deal from his writing and thus it is fair game to call him out for it.
Oh, Wolfram...
Some self-promotional aspects aside, this was a pretty interesting write-up about the personal side of Feynman.
One quote of his from this article stands out: "peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." I'd be very interested to know what he would have thought about the current state of academia and scientific research.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science [2] http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
It's a difficult problem. Universities have limited funding, and want to attract professors that get lots of grants to self finance their own research. To get lots of grants, you need to publish lots of high impact papers. To publish lots of papers quickly, you need a lot of PhD students to supervise, and you need to work in a hot and rapidly moving field. This leads to professors acting as glorified managers who spend all their time churning out grants, and spend an incredibly tiny fraction of their time working on their own science.
And here is Wolfram, a burned out prodigy busy managing a commercial company and doing classic Cargo Cult science part time with little respect from peers and with a seminal work called New "Kind" Of Science. He should be thankful that he actually met living and breathing Feynman and even had opportunity to work with him (although Feynman never seem to have mentioned Wolfram anywhere). Instead he goes on to put quotes likes these whose only purpose seems to show how limited Feynman was and how Wolfram didn't had those limitations:
What mattered to him was the process of finding it. And he was often quite competitive about it.
Really Wolfram? Where is your Nobel prize? Oh, I know you are waiting for the one on new "kind" of science.
Some scientists (myself probably included) are driven by the ambition to build grand intellectual edifices. I think Feynman—at least in the years I knew him—was much more driven by the pure pleasure of actually doing the science.
No Mr. Wolfram. You are driven by egoistic desire to leave your name everywhere and people worshiping you for your intellect on their knees.
And he was a great calculator. All around perhaps the best human calculator there's ever been.
Yeah, he calculated some of the greatest mysteries in known physics.
The ego of Wolfram dribbles all over:
And one day he calls me and says: "OK, Wolfram, I can't crack it. I think you're onto something." Which was very encouraging.
And it was nice of him to write such nice things about me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpjwotips7E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE
I must say I in general don't understand the hate a lot of people have for Wolfram, he clearly is a bit narcissistic, but what he writes and says is always otherwise genuinely interesting, even if not as earth shattering as he would like. Certainly his work is not cargo cult science, he did genuinely advance the research in cellular automata, and he even did some lasting minor contribution to physics in his early days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram#Particle_physic...
I think there is a kind of idealized scientist that nerds want to look up to. A great sense of humility, a clear sense of purpose, an unwavering commitment to reason and rationality. Yet I can think of no famous scientist that actually fits that mold.
Another poster brings up Kanye West, someone that people seethe over that he isn't humble enough.
I read in the parent's comment a sense of great frustration, that somehow Wolfram isn't being sufficiently reverent to someone who they clearly idolize. I can almost see spittle forming at the corners of their mouth. It makes me a little sad.
Wolfram certainly doesn't do himself any favors by reinforcing the narrative that he has a big ego, and always working in a reference to his book (which I think this essay is much more appropriate for then how he shoe-horns it into his other writing).
But I get it. People don't like it when you toot your own horn. Although if I spent ten years writing a giant science tome I'd probably want to bring it up all the time as well. I suspect Wolfram is aware of this perception of him (I think I've actually read him mention it before). I kind of hope he ignores it though.
> But I get it. People don't like it when you toot your own horn
You have a point. But often enough people do not like it (only) when others toot their horn. They have no qualms about tooting their own horn (usually under some notion of "promoting yourself").
I can only speak for myself here, but hate is definitely the wrong word. In fact, I actually greatly admire his work and value the insight offered in his writings. Mathematica was also a pretty valuable tool for me while I was in grad school.
At the same time, consider for a moment his self-description in the Mathematica documentation & in his books (http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v5_2/book/section-0.1.1, , http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521643147/ref=sib_dp_pt#rea... [scroll to the back cover]):
> 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.
I'm sorry, but there is no scientist or mathematician who should feel comfortable writing or approving that sort of un-objective self-evaluation.
It read to me as a respectful, amusing trip down memory lane. No agenda.
On a more substantive note, it's actually absolutely amazing what Feynmann managed to pull off using 'just' calculus. Especially if you read the Feynmann lectures, when it comes to integrals and calculus, he had unmatched mastery and understanding. I've never really stopped to think about that before now.
The last quote you list is the one that annoyed me (and it launches the bulk of the article) -- oh, this isn't an article about Feynman, it's yet another piece of self-promotion. Up until then it seemed kind of interesting.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand-ord...
"You know, it's funny. For all Feynman's independence, he was surprisingly diligent. I remember once he was preparing some fairly minor conference talk. He was quite concerned about it. I said, "You're a great speaker; what are you worrying about?" He said, "Yes, everyone thinks I'm a great speaker. So that means they expect more from me."
It reminds me of Daniel Chambliss' findings in "The Mundanity of Excellence":
"Swimmers like Lundquist, who train at competition-level intensity, therefore have an advantage: arriving at a meet, they are already accustomed to doing turns correctly, taking legal starts, doing a proper warmup, and being aggressive from the outset of the competition. If each day of the season is approached with a seriousness of purpose, then the big meet will not come as a shock.
Feynman's diligence was not at all surprising. We cultivate this idea of eccentric geniuses. But it's precisely the diligence- to little details, over years and decades- that makes all the difference.
- http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excell...
> It did have some limits, though. I think he never really believed it applied to human affairs, for example. Like when we were both consulting for Thinking Machines in Boston, I would always be jumping up and down about how if the management of the company didn't do this or that, they would fail. He would just say: "Why don't you let these people run their company; we can't figure out this kind of stuff." Sadly, the company did in the end fail. But that's another story.
I don't believe that tech/computers/science is the end all of improving human existence. But sometimes, the systems we construct are machines, in the worst way. I wonder if what Feynman meant that they could "figure it out", but it was either beneath them, or, Feynman was wise/cynical enough to know that that their kind of individual intellect had no real power in that realm of political and collective human affairs.
In a way, it's nice that a genius is introspective enough to know that intellect and cleverness, especially by individuals alone, can't be efficiently applied to the business concerns that frustrated Wolfram. On the other hand, many of us below Feynman's knack and energy for problem-solving would say the same thing about the physics that he did get around to working out.