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A very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very r

A very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very repetitive and tiresome. I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;)

r0muald 11y ago
No, sorry but I can't agree with you. I had no idea the post was by Wolfram until the end due to loading it on a poor connection, and while at first it seemed just here and there, why not. It's also the first time I read a piece by him and honestly I was furious at the promotional tone of it long before the end. But his story is so beautiful and tragic, I wanted to read it again (I remember reading other accounts in the past). What's worst: it seems to appropriate a wonderful story by making it seem as if Mathematica is the natural outcome of Ramanujan's work.
murukesh_s 11y ago
It is completely OK for him to do self-promotion (it might not have been deliberately). But it would have been far far better if hand't mentioned mathematica or himself. The article then would have been gold
cbd1984 11y ago
It's too bad they rely on slave labor.
Cyph0n 11y ago
Yeah, it wasn't too distracting in this article, and it was so well written that it's actually hard to notice.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  I wrote this up last night but decided not to post it, but why not, since it's topical now. He might've learned from the criticism last time. sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' rama.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsk.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 11 me 22 his 45 he 51 i
  - leblancfg 11y ago
    Well, Wolfram also spent time with Minsky, so he'd have stories to recount, but not with Ramanujan. That alone would explain the numbers. I find the Ramanujan story actually reads more like a Mathematica advert, whereas the other more like a very self-involved eulogy.
    - bpchaps 11y ago
      Nah, I agree. I was mostly being facetious :)
de_Selby 11y ago
I completely agree. It seems like it's fashionable to immediately jump on any new Wolfram article and slate it. His tone and personality might not be to everyone's taste but he's brilliant and has achieved a huge amount. This is the most comprehensive article I've read about the Ramanujan (and I've read a few before, I've always been interested in his story). I especially liked the parts about Hardy, who always seems to be overlooked. The comments about Mathematica aren't really as shoe-horned in as people are making out anyway, Ramanujan's method was very experimental so it fits well.
pjmlp 11y ago
Fully agree with you. To me, that will never achieve in this life something like Wolfram did or will do, it seems HN is full of people envy of his accomplishments and the only way they can get over it is complaining how much self-promoted he is. Yes, he did not program all the company products alone and has a team behind it, but someone is needed to steer the ship into good direction. So, I always enjoy reading his articles, regardless of the self-promotion that might be present.
llamaz 11y ago
I agree. There is already enough literature on Ramanujan to sate the most curious appetites, so the only thing Wolfram can offer that others can't, is his relationship ship as a scholar, to that of another scholar he admires.
dang 11y ago
Correct, and it's time for HN to let go of it. Think of it as a test for this community: can we focus on what's interesting in what the man says and resist being trolled by the rest. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndrome&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndro...
- linhchi 11y ago
  I hope you put this everytime you find the syndrome as you call it. Because "the rest" might be newcommer. After I read your explanation in the link, i think it makes sense. But i must say that everyone gets that impression of SW writing doesnt know that it has been there since forever and would not change, and we can do nothing about it (as a comment below says that SW himself says he writes like that bc arrorange helps him solve problem). Treatment needs time.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  It's understandable that you want sponsored content on HN, but could you at least mark it as such?
- hgwells 11y ago
  It isn't that simple: yesterday, after seeing your comment I carefully read Wolfram's article from beginning to end. I enjoyed it while trying to skip the ads. Today, when I was thinking about Ramanujan, he was inextricably linked to Wolfram/Mathematica. This sort of thing is sinister and it's exactly the reason why people are getting worked up about it.
  - dang 11y ago
    That's a fair point but I think it might be too subtle for this level of discussion. If we ever get HN to the place where we can work on refining discourse to that level, I'll be delighted, but it seems to me a long-term goal.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Too bad it's advertising for a company that uses slave labor.
tetromino_ 11y ago
> I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;) Do not presume. It's the first time I've read anything by Wolfram. And before I read it, I had a positive opinion of him (love Mathematica and find Alpha to be occasionally rather useful). The ratio of self-promotion to content in the article bothered me enough to 1. make a top-level comment here about it (I rarely comment on HN); and 2. decide not to read anything by Wolfram again. Because the content is both interesting and well-written, but filtering out all the self-aggrandizing BS to get to the content is sufficiently annoying for me to make the result not worth the bother.
batbomb 11y ago
Are you also bothered by half the blog posts posted on here from startups/amazon/microsoft/facebook? Wolfram is unabashedly self-promoting, but so is a significant percentage of other things posted on here. I suppose the difference is most people on HN are much more likely to use AWS or $saas_product then they are Mathematica.

r0muald 11y ago

No, sorry but I can't agree with you. I had no idea the post was by Wolfram until the end due to loading it on a poor connection, and while at first it seemed just here and there, why not. It's also the first time I read a piece by him and honestly I was furious at the promotional tone of it long before the end. But his story is so beautiful and tragic, I wanted to read it again (I remember reading other accounts in the past). What's worst: it seems to appropriate a wonderful story by making it seem as if Mathematica is the natural outcome of Ramanujan's work.

murukesh_s 11y ago

It is completely OK for him to do self-promotion (it might not have been deliberately). But it would have been far far better if hand't mentioned mathematica or himself. The article then would have been gold

cbd1984 11y ago

It's too bad they rely on slave labor.

Cyph0n 11y ago

Yeah, it wasn't too distracting in this article, and it was so well written that it's actually hard to notice.

bpchaps 11y ago
I wrote this up last night but decided not to post it, but why not, since it's topical now. He might've learned from the criticism last time. sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' rama.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsk.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 11 me 22 his 45 he 51 i
- leblancfg 11y ago
  Well, Wolfram also spent time with Minsky, so he'd have stories to recount, but not with Ramanujan. That alone would explain the numbers. I find the Ramanujan story actually reads more like a Mathematica advert, whereas the other more like a very self-involved eulogy.
  - bpchaps 11y ago
    Nah, I agree. I was mostly being facetious :)

de_Selby 11y ago

I completely agree. It seems like it's fashionable to immediately jump on any new Wolfram article and slate it. His tone and personality might not be to everyone's taste but he's brilliant and has achieved a huge amount. This is the most comprehensive article I've read about the Ramanujan (and I've read a few before, I've always been interested in his story). I especially liked the parts about Hardy, who always seems to be overlooked. The comments about Mathematica aren't really as shoe-horned in as people are making out anyway, Ramanujan's method was very experimental so it fits well.

pjmlp 11y ago

Fully agree with you. To me, that will never achieve in this life something like Wolfram did or will do, it seems HN is full of people envy of his accomplishments and the only way they can get over it is complaining how much self-promoted he is. Yes, he did not program all the company products alone and has a team behind it, but someone is needed to steer the ship into good direction. So, I always enjoy reading his articles, regardless of the self-promotion that might be present.

llamaz 11y ago

I agree. There is already enough literature on Ramanujan to sate the most curious appetites, so the only thing Wolfram can offer that others can't, is his relationship ship as a scholar, to that of another scholar he admires.

dang 11y ago

Correct, and it's time for HN to let go of it. Think of it as a test for this community: can we focus on what's interesting in what the man says and resist being trolled by the rest. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndrome&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndro...

linhchi 11y ago
I hope you put this everytime you find the syndrome as you call it. Because "the rest" might be newcommer. After I read your explanation in the link, i think it makes sense. But i must say that everyone gets that impression of SW writing doesnt know that it has been there since forever and would not change, and we can do nothing about it (as a comment below says that SW himself says he writes like that bc arrorange helps him solve problem). Treatment needs time.
cbd1984 11y ago
It's understandable that you want sponsored content on HN, but could you at least mark it as such?
hgwells 11y ago
It isn't that simple: yesterday, after seeing your comment I carefully read Wolfram's article from beginning to end. I enjoyed it while trying to skip the ads. Today, when I was thinking about Ramanujan, he was inextricably linked to Wolfram/Mathematica. This sort of thing is sinister and it's exactly the reason why people are getting worked up about it.
- dang 11y ago
  That's a fair point but I think it might be too subtle for this level of discussion. If we ever get HN to the place where we can work on refining discourse to that level, I'll be delighted, but it seems to me a long-term goal.
cbd1984 11y ago
Too bad it's advertising for a company that uses slave labor.

tetromino_ 11y ago

> I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;) Do not presume. It's the first time I've read anything by Wolfram. And before I read it, I had a positive opinion of him (love Mathematica and find Alpha to be occasionally rather useful). The ratio of self-promotion to content in the article bothered me enough to 1. make a top-level comment here about it (I rarely comment on HN); and 2. decide not to read anything by Wolfram again. Because the content is both interesting and well-written, but filtering out all the self-aggrandizing BS to get to the content is sufficiently annoying for me to make the result not worth the bother.

batbomb 11y ago

Are you also bothered by half the blog posts posted on here from startups/amazon/microsoft/facebook? Wolfram is unabashedly self-promoting, but so is a significant percentage of other things posted on here. I suppose the difference is most people on HN are much more likely to use AWS or $saas_product then they are Mathematica.