> no more Wolfram Derangement Syndrome comments, please. They're off topic because they're always the same, and they compose into a weird counterversion of the very thing they're deriding.
If you really can't stand it then kill the thread. But Wolfram is a bad actor in a discipline that runs on reputation. He needs to be talked about.
He doesn't need to be talked about for the thousandth time in the way he always gets talked about—not on HN, at least, and it's easy to see why: this is a site for intellectual curiosity. Curiosity withers under repetition and fries under indignation. What happens to it under the combo? exercise for the reader.
An environment full of misleading information doesn't satisfy intellectual curiosity. It penalizes it. And a one-sided discussion about Stephen Wolfram is highly misleading -- even worse than no discussion at all. So I stand by what I said earlier. If you can't stand to hear the case against Stephen Wolfram then kill this thread.
The discussion isn't one-sided in the way you mean. Take out the dreck and it's still highly critical. For example, the top comment (not counting my moderation alert) begins "I don't see anything of substance here".
I agree with this. These theories would not get any traction whatsoever were it not for the entirely-physics-unrelated fame of their author.
It's important that that is pointed out, not everybody reading them will be aware and may invest time they wouldn't grant to the hundreds of other people promoting their pet Theories of Everything without the benefit of credit with programmers and startup followers.
Agreed. Not talking about it sends a very clear message of implicit endorsement and agreement.
In contrast, talking about it teaches those who haven't encountered him before how he works. Without that knowledge, one is liable to either get swept up in his aggressive, self-centered reality distortion field or reject him outright as blogspam. Neither response is appropriate. He deserves positive attention for his ideas and negative attention for the reality distortion field, and these discussions serve that purpose.
If you really can't stand it then kill the thread. But Wolfram is a bad actor in a discipline that runs on reputation. He needs to be talked about.