Remember, nobody's going to help you … except science

Dr. Stephen Wolfram has been called arrogant, I gather, which I found to be completely unfair. "Arrogant" implies someone treats you with no respect, and Dr. Wolfram is completely respectful, and interested in the people around him. What he is not is humble, which is, in my view, completely fine. I don't think he should have to bow and scrape and apologize for having invented so many things or explored so many intellectual pursuits. He's done an incredible amount to advance science and research, and in my view deserves a Nobel prize for Mathematica alone. If he were a patent-troll I'd have no patience for him, sure, but he's a man of science in the truest sense of the word.

In the lobby again, I stood, as one does, and listened politely while he was talking at length with someone from the Encyclopedia of Life about their data, and then asked him a couple questions. He'd mentioned that he'd invented an algorithm that, by simply tweaking the parameters, could iterate through all the possible shell designs one finds in nature… in fact, he'd found some bizarre shells from his algorithm and showed them to a naturalist, who'd in each case said, "Oh, yes, there's actually a rare animal that has this exact shell…" This was an incredible finding and says something amazing about evolution — that shells are determined by the same algorithm with slight tweaks.

I told Dr. Wolfram about my troubles focussing barcodes using the crappy far-sighted lens on Apple's new iMacs, and asked if Mathematica would have the tools I could use to mock up a process that I could then hard-code (answer: yes). I'd like to point out this is a total n00b question — I'd just admitted I didn't know crap about his incredibly famous invention and asked him, essentially, to sell me on it. But he was an incredible gentleman and told me exactly what chapter of his book would cover the operations I'd need to learn about as I explored Mathematica.

It's quite possible that Dr. Wolfram has something like Asperger's syndrome, but is obviously super-incredible-high-functioning — obviously I'm not a psychiatrist, so what do I know, but he strikes me as a fellow who follows a different set of social cues than "normal" people, and is obviously much better off for it (much like Temple Grandin, who also spoke at TED this year.)

As supporting evidence, I was up drinking later with another TEDster (as I am wont to do, gasp) and my new buddy told me a story of Dr. Wolfram speaking to him for an hour at another conference, and the good Dr. was excited by the TEDster's work and offered to help. Dr. Wolfram then left the room, came back in a few minutes later, and turned to the TEDster with absolutely no recognition in his face and asked casually, "Do you know when the next speaker is?"

My drinking buddy was so surprised he answered, "Dr. Wolfram… it's me! We've been talking for the last hour!" Dr. Wolfram looks at the guy's badge and says, "Oh, yes… sorry — I don't index people by face, I do it by name, and I didn't see your badge."

Now, you may be tempted to say, "Well, he was just covering up for not remembering the dude!" But that's not the end of this story. A couple days later my (now-drunken) friend gets an e-mail from an assistant of Dr. Wolfram's, that says, essentially, "You spoke with Dr. Wolfram at such-and-such conference about so-and-so, and you have been assigned conversation tracking number #47572… please send me a list of what you need from Dr. Wolfram for your project."

I'm floored. Conversation tracking numbers? I have literally never met anyone so organized. Honestly, my drunken friend's story sounds a bit fishy.

Except, a few days after I get back from TED, I got this actual e-mail:

 

 

Now tell me that this is an arrogant man.

From Wil Shipley's excellent (and long) post about TED 2010

A wife goes out for a night with the girls, telling her husband she'll be home around midnight.

Midnight passes by, drinks are flowing, the girls are laughing and having a great time. At around 2:45 in the morning, drunk as hell, she finally gets a cab and makes her way back home.

She gets to the front door and ever-so-gently nudges it open, not making a sound. She takes her shoes off, again not making a sound. Knowing her husband will give her hell for coming home so late and drunk, she's quite proud of herself for being so stealthy.

Just then, the cuckoo clock in the hallway goes off, cuckooing 3 times. Realizing he might wake up, she decides to cuckoo another 9 times. She smiles to herself, proud that she'd come up with such a clever solution on the spot. He'd never know the difference!

That next morning during breakfast the husband looked at his wife, obviously hungover, and asked, "So... what time did you get in last night?"

"Oh, right around midnight," she replied. The husband didn't seem disturbed at all, her plan had worked!

"Well," he said, "I think we need a new cuckoo clock."

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because last night the one we have cuckooed 3 times, then said 'oh shit,' cuckooed 4 more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, then tripped over the coffee table and farted."