I love NKS and think Wolfram is one of the best Math and even science explainers out there. Yes, he doesn't know the meaning of the word "humility" but I honestly don't care.

He advertises NKS as some sort of revolution, but I don't care about these claims either. What I do care is the clarity of his explanations and the quality of the book overall.

Stephen Wolfram isn't my idol. But I get a ton of value listening to him nonetheless. He's a genius and a rare one who can bridge the gap with the layman.

His blog posts are really great, his post on chatGPT [1] is probably the best "0 to literate" explainer for a curious but non-technical person. And the fact that there's real runnable Mathematica code interspersed just makes everything so tangible, and is quite a testament to how succinct, powerful, and readable the language is.

He also posts (and sometimes livestreams?) videos of some design discussion meetings at Wolfram "live CEOing", it's a rare glimpse at how he is in an "unpolished" form. From the few videos I sampled, he came off as pleasant and amiable.

[1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-...