I don't know Wolfram either, but I have read reviews of A New Kind of Science by experts who are competent to judge, and they all say that the book is full of old ideas that Wolfram claims sole credit for. The only really impressive bit in it was a proof that was done by one of his research assistants. Wolfram sued the guy to keep him from publishing until the book came out. He's also sued other academics who have so much as dared to sniff around what he considers his territory. So, yeah, he's clumsily arrogant in ways that are especially odious to his academic peers, and he doesn't have the sort of ground breaking accomplishments that might incline people to overlook such things.
Is that a reason to hate the guy? No, I agree with you, don't be hatin'. It's unbecoming, and a waste of time. (Hecker's website is down, so I can't say if that's what he was doing.) If you really are defining yourself by who you hate, you are a pathetic individual who should be mocked yourself (but not hated). Wolfram is a brilliant, brilliant guy, and his company has written some pretty cool and impressive software, after all. What hast thou accomplished, O mocker?
But I don't believe in giving arrogant people the benefit of the doubt just because we don't have a couple hundred years of perspective on their ideas either. The number of people who warrant that kind of treatment can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they were almost always overlooked because they were out of the mainstream and were not able to get anyone to pay attention to their ideas. Wolfram has had no problem getting people to pay attention to his ideas, and while they are not exactly mainstream, they are in some well known tributaries. They aren't misunderstood or ignored, just unsubstantiated, or not new, or wrong, for the most part. There's not necessarily any shame in that. Science is hard. But when you add a massive ego....
A certain amount of arrogance can be a useful thing and a lot of really smart people are also arrogant, but I would be very careful about using it as a sign of people who are likely to have good ideas, or who deserve any sort of deference. There are much better things to go by, and much worse things to mock.
A certain amount of arrogance can be a useful thing and a lot of really smart people are also arrogant, but I would be very careful about using it as a sign of people who are likely to have good ideas, or who deserve any sort of deference. There are much better things to go by, and much worse things to mock.
How about we leaving mocking people to other folks, then? Quite frankly I could care less if Wolfram gets along with his scientific peers, is a genius, is an idiot, is nice to strangers, or kicks his dog around at night. Let's just assume he is an intelligent person acting as best he can. If one of us gets to know him, and thinks he has some kind of personality problem, then by all means take him out and have a talk.
This is not giving people the benefit of the doubt. Even if Wolfram is all the bad things people are saying here, it doesn't matter. If you can't find it in your heart to give somebody the benefit of the doubt, just treat them decently. Even arrogant jerks can be treated with respect.
Am I missing something here? Because it sounding a lot to me like you're making the case "yeah, but he's a really bad jerk, and it isn't so bad to pick on those"
But that can't be right, can it? Because labels like "really bad jerk" can easily be stretched to fit lots of people.
I'm done here. I had no intention of defending Wolfram, only common sense. Perhaps tomorrow there will be some new really bad person that we can throw stones at. But we'll be sure first that they're really bad.
The people who care the most are people in fields adjacent to what Wolfram works on. They have an excellent reason to care: Wolfram has appropriated many things they've been saying far longer than he. Since their livelihood depends on their reputation for discovery, it's easy to see why they get annoyed and upset.
Criticizing people for all sorts of valid reasons and treating them decently are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to know someone personally in order to give a fair critique of their published ideas, or to know that the reason they sued you was stupid. Not everything is a personal attack (and you seem to take criticism of Wolfram more personally than he does. Note that this is an observation, and not intended as a personal attack on you!).
Again, I'm only defending the criticisms that I've read, which do not include Hecker's. They seem fair to me.
Is that a reason to hate the guy? No, I agree with you, don't be hatin'. It's unbecoming, and a waste of time. (Hecker's website is down, so I can't say if that's what he was doing.) If you really are defining yourself by who you hate, you are a pathetic individual who should be mocked yourself (but not hated). Wolfram is a brilliant, brilliant guy, and his company has written some pretty cool and impressive software, after all. What hast thou accomplished, O mocker?
But I don't believe in giving arrogant people the benefit of the doubt just because we don't have a couple hundred years of perspective on their ideas either. The number of people who warrant that kind of treatment can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they were almost always overlooked because they were out of the mainstream and were not able to get anyone to pay attention to their ideas. Wolfram has had no problem getting people to pay attention to his ideas, and while they are not exactly mainstream, they are in some well known tributaries. They aren't misunderstood or ignored, just unsubstantiated, or not new, or wrong, for the most part. There's not necessarily any shame in that. Science is hard. But when you add a massive ego....
A certain amount of arrogance can be a useful thing and a lot of really smart people are also arrogant, but I would be very careful about using it as a sign of people who are likely to have good ideas, or who deserve any sort of deference. There are much better things to go by, and much worse things to mock.
A decent summary of Wolfram's scientific ideas can be found here: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/