[ryanmolden]

I personally love Perelman's story. I think many (most) people have a very difficult time understanding motivations that differ from their own. People are amazed Perelman turned down a Fields medal and a Millennium Prize, they can't fathom any sane person doing that.

Similarly, people can't fathom why _why decided to do what he did.

I think people are inherently uncomfortable with people who live in a way that appears to contradict or call into question the very goals that the uncomfortable people are themselves pursuing with such abandon.

Perelman turned down a sought after prize (two of them) and _why ducked out from a kind of localized fame/recognition that a lot of developers crave. It calls into question the value of these kinds of rewards/goals, and not everyone is comfortable with those thoughts.

[chc]

I guess it might be that for some people, but I think a lot of people's feelings about Why are rather different. The thing about Why is that he was insanely helpful and produced a lot of cool stuff. His focus at the time was a project intended to help kids learn to program. So when Why suddenly tore everything down and disappeared, it seemed really incongruous with the way he'd acted up to that point, and people were left wondering … why? It's not that he turned down fame (honestly, he always rejected fame, so big surprise there), but that this incredibly nice and helpful guy acted so violently toward the projects he'd created to make the world a better place. People want to know why, and so they want to know Why.

[ryanmolden]

True, though I think most people attribute his disappearance to the outing of his real identity [1]. As to why he was so insistent on remaining anonymous, well we could only speculate, but perhaps he just felt a powerful desire to 'control his fate/life', and the forced outing of his true identity, against his wishes, simply showed he was no longer able to do that. Perhaps he felt the community was moving away from what he wanted to see and he no longer wanted to be involved. Speculation abounds :)

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3707960