My initial thoughts about reading the Wolfram interview:
1) Wolfram being so "intelligent" had lost touch with being a real with himself and his feelings towards others. He didn't seem to be appreciative of the "legacy of knowledge" that he came from being the son of a novelist and philosophy educator. He knew (moreso told) he was a genius and a whole lot smarter than others in the areas of physics and complex systems than those who would be in his prescence.
2) I truly admired his "confidence" which seemed to be arrogance from the writer (Levy) on how the universe was no more than 4-5 lines of code that could be calculated in Mathematica (a much smaller codebase) than that of Microsoft Windows (which had to be Windows 95 aka "codenamed Chicago") which contained ~ 30,000+ lines of code to discover how the cosmos work together. Those lines of code in Wolfram's mind had to be the abridged version on how he looked at the universe without telling Levy what he was really thinking.
3) Wolfram's story reminds me of my former Distinguished Physics professor Dr. Peter Hall who was considered a prodigy finishing MIT at age 18 with degrees in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. He would later have over 25+ patents with Bell Laboratories (now AT&T). The differences between Wolfram's story and the story of my former professor would seem to be that Wolfram isolated himself from the world whereas my professor would always have a limmerick to share that would get us started to learn Physics and how we can change the world.
4) It was interesting to see that Wolfram saw the computer being a primary research tool early on. It enlighted me to see that how his story as well as many others have been overshadowed by Gates, Jobs, and Edison to name a few. This story was actually interesting to read and to see how he didn't let Caltech deter him from developing and keeping his intellectual property per se. He just picked up and went elsewhere to maintain control and develop his own "empire" which made millions.
5) My last thought about this article was that it was interesting to see the reflection of the timeline when Levy met Wolfram back in the 80s where he seemed to be ambitious and a bit of a "hot head" and to see how he was 10 years later as the "family guy" with a appreciation of his lifelong, ongoing work captured in his book, "A New Kind of Science." Personally, I can relate to being a bit adventureous 10 years ago before being the family guy. I didn't play life for keeps but, I worked long hours to accomplish much and to be rewarded for it. Fast forward to the present and I now see each day as an opportunity to make a difference in this world for my family, community, and the world. Life is no longer a game of checkers as it was 10 years ago for me. I have to be a bit more strategic (i.e., like chess) and plan ahead a lot more for the future of the legacy that I will leave for generations to come. Again, I'm not agreeing that the universe is only 5 lines of code. It just makes me wonder about Wolfram's faith towards God since saying this because this would be a bit of a contridiction of what has been passed down about the creation of the earth, heavens, and life as we know it since the beginning of time.
This was an interesting read for us to be introduced to.
Again, thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts.
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