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At this point when people reflexively sh*t on Stephen Wolfram in HN threads, I reflexively assume they're just piling on, don't actually know who he is, and hav

by mwfunk 10y ago

At this point when people reflexively sh*t on Stephen Wolfram in HN threads, I reflexively assume they're just piling on, don't actually know who he is, and have never used any of his company's software (except maybe for some class in college where they struggled with it for homework in which they were required to use it). I'm not above such things myself, sometimes I can't help myself when people are just a little too worshipful and idealizing of people like RMS or ESR. But the Wolfram comments are always so content-free that it just sounds like people having knee-jerk emotional responses to the guy based purely on other peoples' knee-jerk emotional responses. Seriously, reflexively shitting on Stephen Wolfram in content-free HN posts is like the new "obligatory XKCD" of HN, not unlike hot grits or petrified Natalie Portman jokes got to be on Slashdot back in the day. I really don't get it. I don't have strong feelings about the guy either way. Yes, he can come across as full of himself in a lot of his writings. But I don't ever get this visceral level of loathing from people being narcissistic, and I honestly don't know how anyone else does either. That's a reason to dislike and/or ignore someone, not a reason to reflexively post about how much you despise someone in literally EVERY SINGLE THREAD that has anything at all to do with Wolfram (the guy, the company, or its products). Seriously: I just don't get it guys, I just don't get it. AFAIK he's never hurt anyone or said anything about anyone or anything that was hateful or damaging to anything but his own image.

tacos 10y ago
I've read at least three previous articles from Wolfram where someone dies and yet he makes it all about him. I know 'dang' has come in and said "yeah yeah, he's a nut, we know... move on" on these threads before. But this article was so different -- and so interesting to boot -- that I felt the need to say something. You cannot address Wolfram on HN without addressing the fact that people think he's a nut. I chose my words carefully. When I've moderated huge forums (gasp!) I used similar techniques to keep conversations on track. Specifically getting in early and defusing the boring, predictable, obvious wave that's coming with a touch of humor. If my post was actually flagged dead/shadowbanned or whatever, that speaks poorly to the current culture 'round these parts.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  In Hardy's words, "Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. [...] It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. Wolfram can continue writing these articles but as long as they aren't accompanied by actual research, he is just another critic that somehow finds ways to point back to himself - which makes it even worse. At least even the self-actualized critics realize that unless they are seriously involved, they should have a bit of humble pie to avoid making their audience even more turned off. I love Mathematica, I like the idea of cellular automata. But man, there are no excuses for what Wolfram does in every blog post. Shameless.
- dang 10y ago
  > I chose my words carefully Not carefully enough. "Or the meds are working" was a nasty cheap shot and more than enough reason to flag your comment. I've had to ask you repeatedly to stop posting uncivil comments to Hacker News. Perhaps your experience moderating huge forums has blinded you to the differences between those and this one, but please follow the rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
  - syngrog66 10y ago
    agreed the "meds are working" was a bad thing. but the rest of his comment was gold, was signal. I applaud you for trying to uphold a high S/N ratio on HN recently, but through the vast majority of HN experience a reader has had to become used to a vast sea of asshole-ish or humblebrag comments, in order to keep coming back. it's become an HN trademark. whereas this particular comment truly delivers some signal, despite this one flaw.
    - dang 10y ago
      A comment with an uncivil slight is not a civil comment. Uncivil slights need to be edited out, full stop. Yes, the rest of the comment was fine, which is why we left it unkilled, despite the tedious tangent it provoked.
gjm11 10y ago
I think there's an important difference between the "man, Wolfram sure likes to make everything about himself, doesn't he?" comments here and the "frist psot imagine a beowulf cluster of petrified Natalie Portman in hot grits" comments on Slashdot. The Slashdot ones contributed nothing to discussion. They were pure group-signalling; their sole purpose was to enable the people who wrote them and the people who upvoted them to feel "I am part of the in-crowd here." (In fact, their very pointlessness was essential to that role.) The Wolfram comments here are not irrelevant; they are pointing out something that would be worth pointing out -- if if weren't for the fact that by now almost anyone reading an HN discussion of a Wolfram post is already aware that this is what Wolfram does, all the time. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe for some people "hahaha, Wolfram turned the death of an eminent mathematician into a chance to talk again about his own cleverness" is just an attempt at fitting in with the HN crowd, or a crass karma-farming move, or something. But it doesn't look that way. I think the people saying this are genuinely trying to contribute to the discussion, in a way that the Slashdot reflex-posters weren't.

by mwfunk 10y ago

tacos 10y ago

I've read at least three previous articles from Wolfram where someone dies and yet he makes it all about him. I know 'dang' has come in and said "yeah yeah, he's a nut, we know... move on" on these threads before. But this article was so different -- and so interesting to boot -- that I felt the need to say something. You cannot address Wolfram on HN without addressing the fact that people think he's a nut. I chose my words carefully. When I've moderated huge forums (gasp!) I used similar techniques to keep conversations on track. Specifically getting in early and defusing the boring, predictable, obvious wave that's coming with a touch of humor. If my post was actually flagged dead/shadowbanned or whatever, that speaks poorly to the current culture 'round these parts.

goldenkey 10y ago
In Hardy's words, "Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. [...] It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. Wolfram can continue writing these articles but as long as they aren't accompanied by actual research, he is just another critic that somehow finds ways to point back to himself - which makes it even worse. At least even the self-actualized critics realize that unless they are seriously involved, they should have a bit of humble pie to avoid making their audience even more turned off. I love Mathematica, I like the idea of cellular automata. But man, there are no excuses for what Wolfram does in every blog post. Shameless.
dang 10y ago
> I chose my words carefully Not carefully enough. "Or the meds are working" was a nasty cheap shot and more than enough reason to flag your comment. I've had to ask you repeatedly to stop posting uncivil comments to Hacker News. Perhaps your experience moderating huge forums has blinded you to the differences between those and this one, but please follow the rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- syngrog66 10y ago
  agreed the "meds are working" was a bad thing. but the rest of his comment was gold, was signal. I applaud you for trying to uphold a high S/N ratio on HN recently, but through the vast majority of HN experience a reader has had to become used to a vast sea of asshole-ish or humblebrag comments, in order to keep coming back. it's become an HN trademark. whereas this particular comment truly delivers some signal, despite this one flaw.
  - dang 10y ago
    A comment with an uncivil slight is not a civil comment. Uncivil slights need to be edited out, full stop. Yes, the rest of the comment was fine, which is why we left it unkilled, despite the tedious tangent it provoked.

gjm11 10y ago

I think there's an important difference between the "man, Wolfram sure likes to make everything about himself, doesn't he?" comments here and the "frist psot imagine a beowulf cluster of petrified Natalie Portman in hot grits" comments on Slashdot. The Slashdot ones contributed nothing to discussion. They were pure group-signalling; their sole purpose was to enable the people who wrote them and the people who upvoted them to feel "I am part of the in-crowd here." (In fact, their very pointlessness was essential to that role.) The Wolfram comments here are not irrelevant; they are pointing out something that would be worth pointing out -- if if weren't for the fact that by now almost anyone reading an HN discussion of a Wolfram post is already aware that this is what Wolfram does, all the time. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe for some people "hahaha, Wolfram turned the death of an eminent mathematician into a chance to talk again about his own cleverness" is just an attempt at fitting in with the HN crowd, or a crass karma-farming move, or something. But it doesn't look that way. I think the people saying this are genuinely trying to contribute to the discussion, in a way that the Slashdot reflex-posters weren't.