Here [1] is a comment on Wolfram's 2002 book which includes a section about his choice of style (go to `Why everybody doesn't get it`), talking about the cultur

Here [1] is a comment on Wolfram's 2002 book which includes a section about his choice of style (go to `Why everybody doesn't get it`), talking about the culturally expected extreme humbleness of scientists, and the impact of that humbleness on clarity of communication. A plausible explanation for his being viewed as megalomaniac is a disapproval of a perceived lack of humbleness ("A good scientist ought to downplay their discoveries, make them seem like no big deal. He claims his discoveries are super important, so he's a baaaad guy"). Having been in your (supposed) position of coming across discussions about Wolfram, where the first things I read where judgments about Wolfram the person instead of his ideas, I arrived at the following conclusion after a while: I don't know and don't have the expertise to evaluate the correctness or value of his ideas to physics or science in general. I'm also not interested in "drama", I just want to learn cool stuff. So what I can do is actually read his work, keep an open mind with respect to his writing style, and see what, if anything, I get out of it. The result of that is that I occasionally read a blog post by him, or a random paragraph from NKS (which is available online), or watch one of his Q&A streams. [2] And from those, I get tremendous value. The ideas are often beautiful, clearly explained and visualized, and some have had a large impact of my thinking about both the universe and the mind. Not reading someone's work because of other peoples' judgment of that person just robs you of potential opportunities to learn something. [1] https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0201.html [2] https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives&sort=time https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram/videos?filter=archives...