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Comment by bugsy | Hacker News Reader

In the video that is found at the cited link, Knuth doesn't clearly say there that the incident didn't happen.

He says that he gets asked about this story and he met both Jobs and Gates only a few times and that in each case he was more impressed by them than they were of him.

The story is definitely false because Knuth is a very polite and modest person who has never been the sort of person that says "you're full of shit" to anyone.

More conclusively, another person in this thread pointed to the letter from Knuth in his own handwriting in which he says the Jobs story is untrue:

http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/knuth-page2-enla...

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> The story is definitely false because Knuth is a very polite and modest person who has never been the sort of person that says "you're full of shit" to anyone.

Absolutely. It's just a special case of the (likely) fact that Knuth never told anyone that they were full of shit.

I think great scientists and thinkers wouldn't tell another person that they're "full of shit", just in case they themselves are wrong. Scientists tend to be tolerant, sometimes to a fault, of differing views. Their training demands of it. And that's why we have that evolution vs pseudo-science thing today.

I think this might be overly optimistic. Really smart people can also have really large egos and no patience for common courtesy. When they're sure of something, they have no problem calling someone out on it.

Talented people tend to get misjudged a lot. Lots of scientists have big egos, but that can go a few was. A big ego can make you humble and accepting of others (if you reserve your harshest criticism for yourself) or a real prick.

Some people want to be liked, some people want to be respected, and some people just want to be left alone.

Not true. Richard Feynman would criticize academic presentations without mercy if he found them wrong.

Scientists can be just as emotional and biased as any other human being, regardless of training.

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