JonnieCache didn't bring this up, in response to what reads as an honest response by someone not familiar with Wolfram.
This quote is a succinct way of pointing out that Wolfram is, in fact, famously lacking in humility and self awareness, to the degree that many find it detracts from his legitimate achievements.
The root of this comment tree was written by someone who wasn't familiar with Wolfram's reputation but saw cause to gripe anyway. The transition from "Stephen Wolfram" to "absurdly self-centered" occurred by observation, not hashtable.
I hadn't heard of "Pavlov's hashtable" before, it's a neat concept, and I'm glad you brought it up. I just don't think it's responsible for the direction of this particular comment train. Which is in itself a testament to the peculiar qualities of Wolfram's personality.
Sorry, you are right my comment was not constructive. You raise a good point. It's the first time I'd come across that style of writing and got a weird vibe from it and thought I'd comment about it. But in hindsight it was pretty negative.
He is that irritating combination of someone who lacks humility and is unable to ever admit being wrong (except superfluously to make a larger point) and yet is demonstrably, objectively a genius.
It is not clear how much of a genius he is or not. His NKS is just a bunch of repackaged ideas, mostly unacknowledged, with lots of pretty pictures, with some original work. It's borderline crank mathematics. The other things attributed to him are dubious, as he has a big problem attributing to himself the work of others. He has threatened to sue employees of his who try to publish mathematical results of their own without attributing them to his company. He keeps acting like Mathematica was all him, whereas in reality he got it from a bunch of coauthors after suing them into submission and silence. It's difficult to find any evidence of this other than oblique allusions, because, well, he won or settled the lawsuits in his favour.
Wolfram certainly has talent, but like Steve Jobs, it may be more people-talent to know how to manipulate and impress others than mathematics talent. He certainly has some of the latter too.
He is one of those smart douchebag assholes type (L. Torvalds, S. Jobs etc.), probably even a prodigy genius level of smart. I have not read enough bios about, lets say, Torvalds or Jobs, but S. Wolfram looks like pure evil against them.
The eye opener for me was that Mathematica was basically stollen from University of Illinois[0]. It goes on and on, like that [1].
I am amazed how S. Wolfram managed to settle courts in his favour, or just successfully threaten with courts. How can you threaten someone of citing your (I guess public) work, if it will be openly and correctly cited, and people know details about it? Threatening your employees, etc. How can anyone work there?
Sorry, for this rant, but after some reading today, S. Wolfram looks like Genghis Khan of academics. Gives impression of great leader, who have accomplished something who have not done before, though simply chops heads for everyone who can cross his path.
In my eyes, a person who does not respect others, does not deserve respect themselves.
[0] > Wolfram quit Illinois, took the program private, and entered into complicated lawsuits with both his former employee and his co-authors (all since settled).
[1] > ..because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret of Wolfram Research.
Sure, he was a precocious student. What came after that is more difficult to measure.
edit: He may well be a genius. To almost all of his contemporaries, Galois seemed like an incomprehensible twit. Wolfram may be a Galois, or he may just be a precocious blowhard full of nothing but hot air.
I watched a TED talk by him and got the same impression. Maybe he is a genius, but it certainly is off putting to my own ego for him to laud how great he is all the time.
I actually disagree. Having thought that about some stuff he's written in the past, I actually thought he came across as quite humble and just really excited about his book.
