Wolfram’s over the top next level ego, to be sure. But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac.
Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.
Indeed psychoticism was identified by the psychologist Hans Eysenck as one of the traits of genius, including scientific genius. Psychoticism is a package which includes associative thinking, creativity, disagreeableness, lack of empathy, antisocial nature, introversion, coldness, aggression, high self-esteem.
The problem is that most people are afraid of giving offence, of being ostracised by their colleagues and so on, and so they self-censor their original thoughts and never create anything fundamentally new and important.
So it's unsurprising that most of the great scientists in history had very difficult personalities (Faraday may have been an exception). I think the optimal approach is to study and benefit from the work of geniuses but have as little to do with them personally as possible. Leave them alone to their work.
Of course the fact that someone has a difficult personality does not mean he is a great thinker. However science has a mechanism for dealing with that via the publication system, where ideas that are wrong are eventually criticised and ultimately forgotten.
Claude Shannon coined the word bit and fathered Information Theory. But very few know his name, despite his huge influence on our daily lives.
This is a long winded way of saying, written history is probably half right at best.
Ten years ago I watched a pay-per-view boxing match. At the end, the fighter said "I'm not the greatest but I'll fight the greatest".
2 minutes later the local news misquoted him as saying "I am the greatest".
Can you fully expand on the things you say rather than leaving them cryptic? I'm having to guess what point you are making.
This is why unquestioning criticism, judgement, is of no substance.
We call him delusional cause he has lost all humility. He is utterly convinced that he discovered the underlying mechanism of literally everything from physics to eceonomics. Delusion of grandeur is a well-known psychological condition, and no matter what you think of the science, it's hard to argue that Wolfram doesn't have it.
Why can't he just say: "hey I've got this idea, it's crazy, but you know what? I am going to pursue it and see where it leads, anyone wants to join?" Noone would be annoyed by that.
Whether being delusional affects the way you work, I would tend to think so, but you can think otherwise...