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Biggest mystery in mathematics in limbo after cryptic meeting

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Re: Biggest mystery in mathematics in limbo after cryptic meeting

#71

I just learned about Math 55 and would trade plenty to teach that course. The problem here is that Mochizuki uses too many German Nazi references. Those people had no academic integrity whatsoever; and their works are exclusively stolen, through war crimes and the Holocaust. After you do the right thing, and translate Mochizuki's nomenclature into French and Slavic; the proof is no longer valid, and the problem is ne…

Sounds to me like you are putting a political-correctness test or lens on what should be a mathematical and science based issue. Shame on you for bringing subjective issues into an objective issue.

Seems to me that you are ignoring the importance of academic integrity in the context of a mathematical discussion.

Shame on you for sympathizing with the Wehrmacht!

Re: Biggest mystery in mathematics in limbo after cryptic meeting

#72

I just learned about Math 55 and would trade plenty to teach that course. The problem here is that Mochizuki uses too many German Nazi references. Those people had no academic integrity whatsoever; and their works are exclusively stolen, through war crimes and the Holocaust. After you do the right thing, and translate Mochizuki's nomenclature into French and Slavic; the proof is no longer valid, and the problem is ne…

Interesting how Teichmueller has a bunch of stuff named after him, yet there's very little information about him to be had. There are some references on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22o+teichmueller%22&btn... . He is certainly published in more than a single journal, however. However there are no references to him on his "discoveries". Note the lack of a history section https://en.wikipedia.or…

The interesting thing is that the stuff named after O. Teichmueller is originally named after other mathematicians. Those journals all have the same name until the postwar period when they become taboo to cite. The names were changed and some of the propaganda was removed during the reconstruction of Germany.

However, the unreferenced and politically reprehensible nature of Teichmueller is just reasons for his extirpation from the mathematical literature. It is the best way to do justice to his German contemporaries, some of whom were Holocaust victims.

Consider Felix Hausdorff as the injured party who worked on exactly the same subject of topological metric spaces. The lack of information on Teichmueller is because his record is obscene, and thusly being curtailed. He would have been found guilty of war crimes had he survived the war.

The problem with Mathematics under the Nazis is that most academics engaged in plagiarism, and justified the theft with false notions of racial purity. The draconian Nazi party forced their best minds to emigrate, and the list those who fled includes: Herman Weyl, Kurt Friedrich Gödel, Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, Emmy Noether, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born.

Topology is not too difficult to understand, it is only esoteric. The historiography of brutal dictatorships is both arduous and mysterious. I am only familiar with the ten names because I have enjoyed citing them in my work.

The most inspiring part of the story is that the intellectual migrants were employed in the research and development of weapons that would later defeat Nazism.

Re: Biggest mystery in mathematics in limbo after cryptic meeting

#73

I just learned about Math 55 and would trade plenty to teach that course. The problem here is that Mochizuki uses too many German Nazi references. Those people had no academic integrity whatsoever; and their works are exclusively stolen, through war crimes and the Holocaust. After you do the right thing, and translate Mochizuki's nomenclature into French and Slavic; the proof is no longer valid, and the problem is ne…

I can agree with this being extremely problematic in a political sense - it's horribly wrong to rip someone off, even more so by robbing them during wartime. Quoting such stolen material is a kind of passive support and should not be tolerated. BUT - how does that affect it from a purely scientific perspective? Is the quoted stolen material also incorrect? Because it would be equally bad, IMHO, to ignore an important…

It is not simply problematic in a political sense, it is is of ethical and ontological significance. The misdeed of "ripping someone off" is only rectified when society recognizes the true ownership had by the victim and rejects the title had by the perpetrator. Quotation and Citation of plagiarized material demonstrates misunderstanding of the subject because it is a mistake with regards to the ontology of an idea.

But - the technical perspective is different from the scientific perspective. One writer may be technically correct in his or her own jargon, but the words do not merit publication because they are not comprehensible or reproducible. The quoted stolen material is technically and scientifically incorrect because discovery is the induction of titles by origin. The reason that we have many things named after people is so we can easily check the history of how, when, where, and why they were discovered. Findings are made unacceptable when they are produced in an unscientific way. Mochizuki is scientifically and technically incorrect because his citations are unacceptable and inaccurate.

Your hyperbole about "throwing away the cure" does not apply because this is a situation which involves at least two competing people. As a better simile, imagine that two scientists are hoping to cure aids. One scientist decides to study how white blood cells kill viruses, and why the human immunodeficiency virus surpasses host defenses. The other scientist decides to directly experiment with a variety of chemicals on babies and refugees. Even if both scientists succeed, only the first scientist deserves credit because that work is dignified and reproducible. Those findings are a result which others can build upon and replicate. The second scientist deserves no credit because that work is unethical and irreproducible. Those findings are a result which others cannot build upon nor reproduce. That way, as a society we reward the scientist whose work is more valuable and less expensive to undertake.

Re: Biggest mystery in mathematics in limbo after cryptic meeting

#74
post #67

I just learned about Math 55 and would trade plenty to teach that course. The problem here is that Mochizuki uses too many German Nazi references. Those people had no academic integrity whatsoever; and their works are exclusively stolen, through war crimes and the Holocaust. After you do the right thing, and translate Mochizuki's nomenclature into French and Slavic; the proof is no longer valid, and the problem is ne…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10750422 and marked it off-topic.

Please stop.
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