Just learned about this. A long read, but really interesting.
he does love the cellular automata.
He kind of invented it. He did write the major book in the field
He absolutely did not invent CA. His book was published well after it had become an established modeling technique. Conway’s game of life was published in 1970. Complexity theory modeling had moved well past CA by the time Wolfram’s book came out, to the point that most of us didn’t know why he bothered writing it, much less thought it would revolutionize science.
I wish I were smart enough and/or educated enough beyond my undergrad Physics classes from decades ago to actually understand this. I get the big picture stuff, then as it gets into the details there’s always a point where I realize I’m decoding words, but I have no idea what the hell they’re writing about.
If he was smart and fully understood his argument, he could explain it to anyone in terms they understood.
