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This top-rated story is kinda low even for "Hacker News". Written in the ritual heroic allegory style. A puff-piece with supposed facts about some dude's childh

This top-rated story is kinda low even for "Hacker News". Written in the ritual heroic allegory style. A puff-piece with supposed facts about some dude's childhood and what people think about him, patronizing even his own opinions as modesty-only-rivalled-by-his-genius. I'd at least understand such articles about Sophie Germain or Alexander Grothendieck, who achieved "genius" despite not being coddled quite so much by every superficial social system arbitrarily impressed by early child-development timelines. For example, Germain hacked the system as a child: "When night came, [her parents] would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left she would take out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics." Then, "She used the name of a former student Monsieur Antoine-August Le Blanc, 'fearing,' as she later explained to Gauss, 'the ridicule attached to a female scientist.'" Social engineering? One thing hackers do. As for Tao as a child wanting something in shape of arabic numerals, or as an adult imagining himself as some mathematical transform? His wife giving up "paid employment to manage the household, shield Tao from mundane matters and buy the polo shirts he wears"? Seems less hackerish. If Tao has done anything beyond what society shaped him to do, straying from the path he was given in an intensely hierarchical society, I don't recall seeing it in this article.

jacques_chester 12y ago
It's like I wandered into a maths department based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
bo1024 12y ago
I thought it was an interesting/fine article. If you want to submit articles about other people to HN, go for it (your anecdotes sound interesting). But there's no reason that every interesting person has to fit some "hacker" archetype you seem to have in mind.
mb_72 12y ago
Poster from Adelaide here. A friend of mine went to university and did some courses with Terry; he commented to me back in those days about 'some smartarse guy who interrupted the lecturer and argued with them'. Little did he know at the time what a bright spark Terry would turn out to be!
serf 12y ago
I was fine with it until the video of the 'behind-the-scenes' further down in the article that shows the camera crew telling him to write math on a piece of glass for pictures. I don't expect to read a good article about math from any general-purpose publication, but goddamn am I sick of the glass-with-formulas cliche. It's as tired as the "hooded man in dark room behind a green phosphor terminal" image that is thrown about any time there is a db leak or black hat scandal of some sort.

jacques_chester 12y ago

It's like I wandered into a maths department based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

bo1024 12y ago

I thought it was an interesting/fine article. If you want to submit articles about other people to HN, go for it (your anecdotes sound interesting). But there's no reason that every interesting person has to fit some "hacker" archetype you seem to have in mind.

mb_72 12y ago

Poster from Adelaide here. A friend of mine went to university and did some courses with Terry; he commented to me back in those days about 'some smartarse guy who interrupted the lecturer and argued with them'. Little did he know at the time what a bright spark Terry would turn out to be!

serf 12y ago

I was fine with it until the video of the 'behind-the-scenes' further down in the article that shows the camera crew telling him to write math on a piece of glass for pictures. I don't expect to read a good article about math from any general-purpose publication, but goddamn am I sick of the glass-with-formulas cliche. It's as tired as the "hooded man in dark room behind a green phosphor terminal" image that is thrown about any time there is a db leak or black hat scandal of some sort.