Considering everything Wolfram has accomplished with wolfram research it's incredible that anyone would think Feynman was right in his advice. Wolfram succeed not only in creating the perfect environment for his personal research endeavors that he intended, he also built a company worth billions and is able to employ hundreds of talented software developers, and researchers from across different fields to support his company.<p>I think Feynman underestimated just how brutally effective Wolfram could be when he set his mind and time to it.<p>Now the flip side of this is that many would argue that he didn't manage to turn all of this money and research effort into the major breakthrough that he was looking for, but really I think any researchers would take his "failure" over a single professorship dedicated to your own pursuits at a dark corner of a university.
> drive yourself wild or they will drive you wild<p>"ordinary people" are 'stupid fools', this is somewhat unsurprising yet funny when it actually came from Feynman