I spent around 15 years working on stochastic lattice models. They can be amazing. They can also fail to capture the essence of the problem. Same with cellular automata.

They’re definitely not _new_. They weren’t new in 2002. I’ve always viewed Conway’s game of life as an interesting deterministic variant of an Ising model, and Ising models date back to the 1920s.

Most physicists I knew at the time looked at the book, shrugged, and kept working on what they were doing. I love lattice models, cellular automata, lattice fluid models, and the like. But they’re just one class of useful model.

And yet because Wolfram has a perpetual money machine called Mathematica, he’s got a huge megaphone to advocate for himself.

I’ll keep rolling my eyes. I don’t hate the guy, but he is just a little too into self-promotion for my taste.