It's super weird to me how Hackernews is extremely skeptical of Stephen Wolfram's god-genius persona, while simultaneously being generally very receptive to Elon Musk's similarly ginormous ego-tripping.
Wolfram talks about how personally incredible he is, and how his work is revolutionary, and how he's this Great Mind who's laboring away on some perfect thing. Musk talks about how incredible his companies are, and how they'll change the world, without ascribing all progress to himself personally.
It seems like to be equivalent, Musk would have to stand up on a stage and give a talk about he personally invented rockets, or at least how he's doing great things based on his own theories about rockets.
Likewise, Wolfram has published some interesting papers on CA and Mathematica is great for it's problem domains, but ever since NKS I think he's forgotten the maxim cautioning to not get high on one's own supply.
For those who haven't seen it yet, this letter from Richard Feynman to Wolfram might be interesting: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand-ord...
He seems to have contributed a valued product that is used by many and is strictly an advantage in many domains.
He's certainly a force of personality, but he's more of an ideas and money guy. A backer.
Eberhard was the guy who actually thought sporty electric cars would work, took a shot, and was right. It's too bad he got forced out.
"the man is pure inspiration. 10 years ago, i was asked who i admired, and couldn't think of a single answer. Maybe that's sad on my part, but when asked now, he's at the top of my list." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9546353
It does seem like maybe the pendulum is finally swinging back a bit, though.