forgot_again

Of course Wolfram is rich and famous precisely because he has had a lot of good ideas. That's not to be discounted.

It's also important to not immediately discount Wolfram's work simply because he is wealthy and successful and not a formal member of academia. However it seems that some are personally threatened or dislike Wolfram because of who he is which triggers a knee jerk reaction against his work.

I am not an internet fanboy of Wolfram's, I'm only pushing back a bit against the idea that incremental progress upon the scientific mainstream is the only path forward.

Sure Einstein's work was built upon some previous work, in the same way the Wolfram's work is building on pre-existing work.

This doesn't change the fact that Einstein's approach was a radical departure from the prevailing mainstream. Just as Wolfram's is today.

Trying to classify Einstein as an incrementalist on the basis of his work being built upon previous work would then imply that Wolfram is also an incrementalist because he too is inspired by earlier work in the same vein as his, as the article states. But clearly we're talking about something different here.

I don't disagree with you that paradigm shifts are rare, but to dismiss then out of hand as simply not being the way we do science is indeed naive.

We need both sorts of thinkers in science: those who want to make the important incremental improvements and those who seek entirely new ways of looking at problems.

>"I think the popular notion that physicists are all in search of the eureka moment in which they will discover the theory of everything is an unfortunate one,” says Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “We do want to find better, more complete theories. But the way we go about that is to test and refine our models, look for inconsistencies and incrementally work our way toward better, more complete models.”

And yet Einstein did just that in developing General Relativity, as have many other scientists and thinkers in producing their novel theories or approaches. Yes, GR made falsifiable predictions, but it still represents a paradigm shift, the sort Katie Mack thinks of as "unfortunate".

I am not endorsing Wolfram's work at all. But the idea that science has to progress in a step by step, gradual, collaborative fashion is naive and historically ignorant.

Make sure you get 8 hours of sleep each night. Eat healthy. Exercise daily. Keep anxiety in check.

>"I think the popular notion that physicists are all in search of the eureka moment in which they will discover the theory of everything is an unfortunate one,” says Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “We do want to find better, more complete theories. But the way we go about that is to test and refine our models, look for inconsistencies and incrementally work our way toward better, more complete models.”

And yet Einstein did just that in developing General Relativity. Yes, his theory produced made predictions which could be falsified, but GR still represents a paradigm shift, the sort Katie Mack thinks of as "unfortunate".

I am not endorsing Wolfram's work at all. But the idea that science has to progress in a step by step, gradual, collaborative fashion is a naive and historically ignorant view.

How would the legal system look if it was inspired by a materialist worldview? I'm not sure that it would change much from how it is set up currently.

Why would those be the only reasonable goals to have?

It would be more reasonable to look at the racial breakdown of the average 4 year college graduating class.