7 ms·

Wolfram has never come across as egotistical to me. Every single time I read the comments in a post about Wolfram, there is always some nitpicking going on, on

Wolfram has never come across as egotistical to me. Every single time I read the comments in a post about Wolfram, there is always some nitpicking going on, on words and phrases that don't mean anything special, being blow out of proportion. I don't know where all this resentment is coming from for this man, but I guess some people just see what they believe, as opposed to believing what they see... Or I've just missed something completely.

spitfire 14y ago
You've never met the guy then.
qq66 14y ago
He's an unusual combination of incredibly intelligent (among a handful in the world), but also incredibly boastful and supercilious. Unlike in basketball, where the biggest trash talkers are often the top players, among intellectuals, the biggest boasters are usually complete phonies. Wolfram is the exception -- he is indisputably the "real deal" while also sparing no opportunity to rub everyone's face in it. His work is brilliant and insightful -- just treat it as work on its own merits and try not to think too much about the sanctimonious tone behind it.
olalonde 14y ago
> Wolfram has never come across as egotistical to me. That's interesting because the man himself believes he comes across as egotistical: "That’s somewhat egotistical because I can say, ‘this would not have happened without me.’"
gfodor 14y ago
Reading articles by Wolfram is like stepping into a alternative universe where the entire contemporary scientific community does not exist. Science and engineering are simply the progression of ideas and projects conceived by Stephen Wolfram. Hell, he has an entire company staffed with likely hundreds of engineers that have worked on his projects for decades, and yet talks about Mathematica as if he wrote every single line of code himself. I make an effort when I see him talk or write to find any references to this team of people who work tirelessly on his projects, and I usually fail to find even a single one. If you handed his writing to a 3rd grader, they'd probably infer that actual research ground to a halt after the scientific revolution until, praise the Lord, A New Kind of Science was published. This seminal work broke all barriers and unified every single field of science through an elegant framework that had escaped mankind for hundreds of years. And, how was this great breakthrough possible, you ask? Well, it was only possible due to the amazing effort behind that other great work, Mathematica. And now, thanks to the breakthroughs of A New Kind of Science, the world is finally able to see the pinnacle of human achievement and computation: Wolfram|Alpha. When he writes about historical progress of science and engineering, Wolfram peppers his points with citations to A New Kind of Science over and over again while not linking to, say, any other publication, ever. It's beyond egotistical, it's bizarre.

spitfire 14y ago

You've never met the guy then.

qq66 14y ago

He's an unusual combination of incredibly intelligent (among a handful in the world), but also incredibly boastful and supercilious. Unlike in basketball, where the biggest trash talkers are often the top players, among intellectuals, the biggest boasters are usually complete phonies. Wolfram is the exception -- he is indisputably the "real deal" while also sparing no opportunity to rub everyone's face in it. His work is brilliant and insightful -- just treat it as work on its own merits and try not to think too much about the sanctimonious tone behind it.

olalonde 14y ago

> Wolfram has never come across as egotistical to me. That's interesting because the man himself believes he comes across as egotistical: "That’s somewhat egotistical because I can say, ‘this would not have happened without me.’"

gfodor 14y ago

Reading articles by Wolfram is like stepping into a alternative universe where the entire contemporary scientific community does not exist. Science and engineering are simply the progression of ideas and projects conceived by Stephen Wolfram. Hell, he has an entire company staffed with likely hundreds of engineers that have worked on his projects for decades, and yet talks about Mathematica as if he wrote every single line of code himself. I make an effort when I see him talk or write to find any references to this team of people who work tirelessly on his projects, and I usually fail to find even a single one. If you handed his writing to a 3rd grader, they'd probably infer that actual research ground to a halt after the scientific revolution until, praise the Lord, A New Kind of Science was published. This seminal work broke all barriers and unified every single field of science through an elegant framework that had escaped mankind for hundreds of years. And, how was this great breakthrough possible, you ask? Well, it was only possible due to the amazing effort behind that other great work, Mathematica. And now, thanks to the breakthroughs of A New Kind of Science, the world is finally able to see the pinnacle of human achievement and computation: Wolfram|Alpha. When he writes about historical progress of science and engineering, Wolfram peppers his points with citations to A New Kind of Science over and over again while not linking to, say, any other publication, ever. It's beyond egotistical, it's bizarre.