How could that be a "simple mistake"? Either the commenter has read the book, in which case such a lapse in memory is inexcusable in the face of such a strong statement of the book's contents, or the commenter has not read the book or even quickly searched its contents, in which case the lie is the result of deliberate ignorance.
If I claimed that the Lord of the Rings trilogy does not contain a character named "Frodo," would you call that a deliberate lie or a simple mistake?
If I claimed that the Lord of the Rings trilogy does not contain a character named "Frodo," would you call that a deliberate lie or a simple mistake?
I'd call it neither.
You'd be wrong, but maybe you were confusing the name, or maybe the book, or maybe it's spelt differently in a different language. Maybe you read it long ago and forgot. Maybe you read a printing done by a little known cult that censored all referenced to hobbits. I have no idea why, but there are an infinite field of possibilities and only some require bad faith.
Or maybe your cat skipped across the keyboard and just happened to type out those exact characters and submit the comment. Fair enough. However, when I read a comment, I tend to infer that it was made intentionally by a human, and that the human intends to claim that the contents of the comment are correct.
I infer that you are claiming me to be a Wolfram-cultist. This is not the case. I think Wolfram is a smart and accomplished guy who tends to be too prideful and single-minded about his own accomplishments. But I'm also someone who is able to spend 3 minutes searching the Internet to determine the validity of extraordinary claims regarding the content of Wolfram's book.
I don't have to worship a person to think it's inappropriate to use lies to discredit that person. In fact, the more worthy a person is of being discredited, the more important (and elementary) it is to discredit that person using true statements.
