Scott Aaronson tears NKS apart [pdf]

I'm more impressed with the book than the review.<p>It's a good review, no doubt, but I think Aaronson, while catching Wolfram using a bit of hyperbole on occasions, misses the essence of what NKS is.<p>It's not simply a review of existing CS theory.<p>The Feynman quote was quite illuminating. Wolfram does take the discrete conversation to the next step. He doesn't answer the questions, mainly because what he is proposing is, well, a New Kind of Science. Which means that there are going to be hundreds or thousands of questions.<p>What might be missing the most is a methodology for exploration. But I think overall Wolfram is just a bit ahead of his time. Those things will be worked out.

Wolfram's talent for self-promotion has been nicely demonstrated by the publicity campaign ahead of his WolframAlpha launch. Multiple pre-announcements, screenshots, peek-reviews, demos have been appearing on NH for weeks already.<p>Which may not be a bad thing, except it all comes at a price of credibility. Why does one need to create all that fuzz? Isn't it because the revolutionary product/idea cannot win followers and reputation solely on its merits?<p>Same applies to his book. With a bit of modesty its impact could have been so much greater. Especially since its subject is indeed fascinating.

Wolfram is remarkably short-sighted. You'd think that such a smart guy would have realized that spending 1100+ pages blowing is own horn would tend to turn off the very people he hoped to convince.<p>They say that love is blind, ego must just be plain blinding.

Kurzweil's write-up on it is also good:<p><a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1</a>

I prefer this review:<p><a href="http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/</a>

Wolfram is a brilliant, egotistical, narcissistic credit hog. The history of science is littered with them. Some of the greatest discoveries of mankind are credited to the wrong people.

Until I read the PDF, I assumed this would be about Nobody Knows Shoes. It's better to abbreviate A New Kind of Science as ANKOS to avoid confusion.

Thanks for the alley-oop? <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612002" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612002</a>