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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Every single piece Wolfram writes, without exception, is arrogant content marketing blogspam. Even his books. Sometimes very clever, sometimes interesting (though I'd find him 1,000x more interesting if say 1 article in 10 made no mention of how clever he and Mathematica are); always arrogant and self-promotional. This piece is no exception - because it's Turing I made exception to my usual personal hard-ban on reading Wolfram. It's no exception to the above. It is, however, interesting despite being arrogant and self-promotional.

If you asked Stephen Wolfram what time it was, he would be arrogant and self-promotional, and mention Mathematica at least as much as the time.

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It’s definitely self-promotion, but I don’t see why this is a bad thing. He’s clearly spent a large portion of his life developing a programming and computing environment to handle mathematics (and other things). What is he supposed to do? Write a blog post about something he's interested in, without using the programming language he has intentionally developed to deal with the things he’s interested in?

Mathematical notation.

When in Rome, do what the Romans do. Given his previous career as a particle physicist I doubt he has any issues with it

That last sentence made me laugh, and it does ring true. Here's how I imagine he would answer that question:

https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-re...

> So, OK, if I mounted a project to try to find the fundamental theory of physics, what would I actually do? It’s a complex project, that’ll need not just me, but a diverse team of talented other people too.

It's illuminating that, in order to explore the nature of space and time, he mentions Euclid, Einstein, but most of all himself and his work. The self-absorption encompasses all of existence.

That said, dismissing all of his writing as "arrogant content marketing blogspam" feels uncharitable and too reductive - I don't disagree, but still consider it arrogant self-promotion of the highest order, by one of the most productive and insightful thinkers of our time.

You manage to neatly encapsulate why I find him so frustrating.

"feels uncharitable and too reductive"

I'm old enough to remember when the law suits, a flagged throwaway comment briefly mentions, were going - my recollection is of a lengthy effort to deprive the other developers of the fruits of Mathematica labours. That colours later impressions. Charitable isn't necessarily always the right take...

Still, that's an aside here, and perhaps I was too sweeping. It's difficult as there are rare times, like this one, where the topic is fascinating and well explored, and the self-promotion is, for Stephen, light touch. It's well known he was a child prodigy, so I'm sure many people and events had part in boosting his ego and innate sense of exceptionalism, resulting in the personality we know. So I don't entirely blame him for it...

"arrogant self-promotion of the highest order, by one of the most productive and insightful thinkers of our time."

You're not wrong. He'd probably be well served employing someone to bring a lighter touch, via an editing pass to all output. I end up not finishing articles he writes on topics I might otherwise find hugely interesting. Solely because too much prose is spent telling me he's brilliant, rather than simply showing it. For me at least, the style of delivery has cost the message - as I stopped regularly reading him as far too frustrating, ages ago. :)

Ehhh, you know, he's not a journalist. He's the founder and CEO of a company that he is very hands on at. What you view as arrogance and self-promotion is really just a man who is obsessed with the technology he builds and works on every single day. No one is forcing you to read his stuff or pay attention to him.

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