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Comment by thomashobohm | Hacker News Reader

I have no stake in this at all and (I literally just learned what "Wolfram Derangement Syndrome" was by reading the comments that you linked to). It looks like you've said several times in the past that the people talking about Wolfram's self-obsession are practicing a "counterversion" of the same thing, but you've never explained why or how; to me, it seems obvious that being obsessed with another person who you don't personally know, like Wolfram, is the exact opposite of being obsessed with yourself.

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I'm talking about a collective phenomenon that accrues out of many individual contributions. Sometimes this is metaphorically called the hivemind.

What builds up in these threads is an obsession with Wolfram that is even more Wolfram-obsessed than the Wolfram-obsession Wolfram is charged with. This is unmistakeable, and always happens the same way. Out of the material of these comments, a Golem arises that is a variation of the same monster. Arguably even more monstrous: at least Wolfram writes about things other than Wolfram, and very interestingly—just in a way that would take a chemist to separate from its packaging.

I wouldn't get too misled by the polarity being opposite (yay Wolfram-me, boo Wolfram-him). That's only one bit of difference, similar to the negative of a photo. The interesting thing is, what does this arch-enemy that springs out of the internet aether want to talk about? Wolfram wolfram wolfram. And what does it hate the most? How fixated on Wolfram he is.

What makes this fascinating is that in its trivial, internet-in-a-teapot way, it is an example of how we collectively create our own demons. Nietzsche famously said about monsters: be careful when fighting them, lest you become one. Other writers have said: whatever you fight, you create; and so on. That is a profound question. The fact that this is a small and somewhat embarrassing case makes the dynamic easier to see. It's as if it had been isolated in a laboratory for the purposes of studying it—a simple example for early in the textbook.

I know it feels like being obsessed with another is the exact opposite of being obsessed with yourself, but that is how self-deception works: we dress something up as its opposite, so we can have it without seeing it. The gateway into seeing it is to look at how it stirs up your emotions. Why do we create such an intense, and intensely personal, picture of someone whom we don't (as you point out) personally know? Where is that activation coming from? From inside us. $monster just furnishes material.

You're in a position to have a different perspective of course, but that doesn't track with what I've seen. It doesn't seem like anyone has been obsessed with him, in this thread or in ones I've seen before here. Seems like people just point out he's a grandiose jerk when he comes out with grandiose, non-peer-reviewed scientific theories. The depth of their emotional involvement doesn't appear to go much deeper than that, it just comes up commonly because (a) it's commonly known but (b) Wolfram has enough clout to semi-commonly publish stuff that trends on HN.

The phenomenon is most concentrated before we get in and moderate the threads. Maybe that puts my argument in the oxymoronic position of getting weaker the more true it is (since the truer it is, the more moderation is needed).

I really have no idea what large parts of this comment are supposed to mean. Regardless:

What is the "monster" in this case? Obsession? That's just a feeling; in a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with it. No philosopher, Nietzsche included, would say "obsession" is always bad. If stuff like that could be dealt with in absolutes, then people like Nietzsche wouldn't have spent their lives writing books about the nuance of it. Clearly, for any feeling or action, "obsession" included, the actor and the object both matter. There is a qualitative difference between self-obsession and obsession with someone else.

I fail to see how this is an example of how we "collectively create our own demons." That's a cute turn of phrase, sure, but in its original usage, "demons" refers to one's own insecurities and internal emotional challenges, not every bad thing that exists. Clearly, if you think about it with some nuance, some "demons" exist outside of oneself. Nobody believes that people trapped in poverty have "collectively created" the demon of inequality. Nobody believes that victims of violence "collectively created" the trauma they experienced. In reality, some demons simply exist, at no fault of one's own; the people complaining about Wolfram didn't collectively invent him. He exists, he's writing and funding these huge research projects, and that's a material fact external to the people complaining about him.

As for your last point-yes, technically, everything we think and feel comes from inside us. But that doesn't make everything we think and feel the same.

Just btw, I think that it's generally cringey to vaguely quote Nietzsche (or any philosopher) to defend a point, unless you are a philosopher writing to other philosophers, or you're citing some unique idea of his. And I hate this whole style of writing, to be honest, where one papers over any nuanced interrogation of their beliefs with shoddy references to pop-philosophy.

Surely there are other people this applies to much more commonly on HN? Musk and Jobs jump to mind.

The community is a lot more divided about those two, making things more complicated.

It's all very meta but this is possibly one of the best comments I've read on HN.

Had a bit of an aha moment.

You seem very interested in this WDS concept. In fact, I would say it is interesting. But I think citing "please reply to the argument instead of calling names" will be less confusing. Here, calling names is short-hand for criticising/analysing the individual instead of the argument.

To my eyes, the collectively specific hn analysis of Wolfram may be interesting, but it is not relevant to moderation of the content. At the same time, succeeding at moderating away the content means that we can't see it, so it can't actually be interesting or even visible to anyone but you.

I'm happy to answer but don't understand. I'm confused about which specific things fall in which buckets you use the words 'interesting', 'the argument', 'moderation', and 'the content'.

I do sometimes post out of personal interest or for fun—not often, but it's an old habit. My comment upthread was definitely one of those. If it were just moderation I would have said something more procedural.

Yeah, I am not seeing the mirroring claimed. Salesman projects a reality distortion field. Potential buyers end up complaining about the RDF during the latest product advertisement. It is clearly a reaction, and in that sense a "mirror", but they aren't copying the behavior by projecting a reality distortion field themselves.

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