31–34 of 34 posts
Wolfram at his best
I'm consistently amazed by his blog. Wolfram's posts are always so huge and so detailed. I'm a decent writer (or so I thought), but it would take me weeks to write that post, even if I understood all the math, which I don't. It's insane how prolific he is.
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> 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.ht…
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, desp…
Yes, the rest of the comment was fine, which is why we left it unkilled, despite the tedious tangent it provoked.
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if you like the OA, and you'd like to read something in a similar spirit, a bit like Sol Golomb meets Stephen Wolfram meets Richard Feynman and a touch of The Princess Bride, then try a taste of the fictional Professor Heinrich von Hexenhammer, most recently of Galaxy G: https://www.reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_... https://www.reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/25ncg0/dspr_lightning...
Quite humorous the way some um..? gestures are just inserted mid dialogue for effect.. I doubt even Wolfram would be that bold :-)
yes it was meant to be a comedy. The Professor Heinrich von Hexenhammer character is a kind of loving homage to Mad Scientists in general. and to the most famous (or at least the most eccentric) physicists and mathematicians. Feynman meets Erdos meets Einstein meets Wolfram etc. except a little more fun and creative for entertainment value. :-P
I respect Wolfram's talents and accomplishments (esp Mathematica), but every time I come across artifacts of his personality quirks again, like in this Golomb post above, it does make me remember all the stereotypical anti-patterns of the Mad Scientist.
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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, desp…
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.
I do think that HN's biggest problem is a pervasive and long-standing culture of "asshole" behavior in comments, so anything you and the HN team can do to fight back against it, to set a better example, is gold.