ESR: Ego is for little people

On the other hand, this writing doesn't feel like the work of a graceful overachiever. It feels like a rationalization of the man's own loneliness. The graceful overachievers I know are warm people, who see the good in the people they're dealing with, warts and all, and who respect that good.

[no audible dialogue]

Your Alan Turing efforts put you in a class of your own, this ESR bashing is detrimental.

Let him stew, outcode him or ignore him, it's not worth it.

One very eloquent description I've seen is "The luxury of humility." Basically, a guy like Einstein had the luxury to declare himself horrible at math (for example) because his reputation as a physicist and mathematician was so solid that nothing he said could possibly dent it. Instead, any self-deprecation he did would simply bolster his reputation for humility.

An unproven physicist, on the other hand, would not be advised to mimic Einstein in declaring himself bad at math because people would be more likely to take it seriously and dismiss his work as probably containing errors.

That said, Eric Raymond used to annoy me, then he became this sort of perversely amusing thing (about the time ELER was running). Now I have to say that I can't read this kind of stuff without feeling sorry for him. He's a textbook example, or at least his writing is, of false bravado vainly trying to mask almost limitless amounts of insecurity.

I quit reading when he started using himself "as an example". Talking about himself seemed to be the point of this post.

Any guesses? I'm pretty sure this phone doesn't use fetchmail.

So you think you are the best mathematician all around? You can still compete with Gauss.