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Comment by elteto | Hacker News Reader

He comes across like that because he was. From him you always get these profound wisdoms mixed with denigrating statements, a lot of times about mental capacity. He was an asshole, a brilliant one, but an asshole.

I, by the way, don’t celebrate him as other people do. I don’t think there’s ever an excuse for anyone to behave like that, no matter how brilliant.

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Again, I've not read all of his works, but based on the ones I have, such as this, I wouldn't say brilliant.

In just this piece alone he makes several objectively false and/or narrow-minded statements, even back when he wrote it.

Not saying he wasn't smart, but being so narrow-minded precludes brilliance in my view.

So yeah, I've never really understood the fame he got either.

It's hard to make people view both intelligence and arrogance (or other bad traits) in hand. And neither does society encourage benevolence. I think Dijkstra was right about many things, but I can take those views and choose to act in certain ways, not just parrot Dijkstra as an all-knowing god. Although I will be the first to say that I am too arrogant for my own good. But still. Don't be like me or like Dijkstra, I guess.

I think some people mistake arrogance as wisdom. It's more prevalent in these days of social media where people mistake strong words and loud proclamation for truth, but I suspect similar things have been happening on a smaller scale in the past.

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