this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

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[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

on a side note, I notice this passage in the review:

Wolfram refers incessantly to his "discovery" that simple rules can produce complex results. Now, the word "discovery" here is legitimate, but only in a special sense. When I took pre-calculus in high school, I came up with a method for solving systems of linear equations, independent of my textbook and my teacher: I discovered it. My teacher, more patient than I would be with adolescent arrogance, gently informed me that it was a standard technique, in any book on linear algebra, called "reduction to Jordan normal form", after the man who discovered it in the 1800s. Wolfram discovered simple rules producing complexity in just the same way that I discovered Jordan normal form.

this is certainly mistaken. I think the author or teacher must have meant RREF or something to that effect, not Jordan normal form

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Gauss–Jordan elimination, maybe?

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 5 points 3 weeks ago

yah there we go. gauss-jordan to reduce to rref

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The fractal border between reality and bullshit, in a nutshell.

Wolfram refers incessantly to his “discovery” that simple rules can produce complex results.