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Comment by theoh | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person who looks at Jeremy Kun's output and thinks "Nope, this guy is not actually a gifted communicator dedicated to sharing knowledge, he's just a postdoc on an annoyingly self-aggrandizing narcissism trip"?

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people are downvoting you because that's one the saltiest opinions I've ever seen on hn. the guy is a narcissist because he writes a blog and other people post it? how does make that sense in your head? or do you think that the people that post links to his blog are shills? not to mention his pedagogy is excellent - these blog posts (which are not his primers) are meant to be introductory and cursory.

I can't see that him being "just" a postdoc has very much to do with anything, especially when covering stuff like this which is foundational rather than cutting-edge.

The "just" was supposed to apply to the whole self-aggrandizing trip.

My point is that there are a lot of people with math PhDs, but Kun is in a small unenviable minority that is driven to engage in self-promotion via all these blog post "primers", which of very dubious pedagogical quality.

“Oh no, someone is attempting to teach, how dare they!” is what this reads like. Writing articles like this is good for the author, in terms of finding new ways to explain things, and clarify knowledge they already had. The writing style of this author in particular is quite engaging for myself and (I would assume) many others.

I enjoy his content and I have found some of his explanations novel and enlightening.

I don't know why him spending untold hours producing detailed content is a bad thing. Even if it is for self-promotion.

yes, you are.

He's not a postdoc, though?

Presumably you understand what I'm saying ("he's 'just a vain postdoc on an ego trip'"). Of course I know what his professional status is, it's the most prominent information on his website.

It's a shame that rather than actually considering the very evident pathology here (i.e. the production of mediocre vanity blog content that serves primarily to improve the author's profile) everyone is either downvoting or nitpicking.

You might have better luck if you were to expound upon the ways in which you found the content to be mediocre and how it might be improved rather than personally attacking the author for what you perceive his motives to be.

OTOH he might just be writing for the pleasure of it and getting self-feedback from it (the more you explain something the better you understand it).

I mean, if you know what his professional status is, why say that he's a postdoc when he isn't?

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