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Vladimir Voevodsky has died

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Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a frightening testament to the power of addiction that even some of the smartest, most logical people in the world cannot control some of their own extremely illogical decisions.

On the other hand, lacking proof this comment chain amounts to nothing more than a smear. "Vladimir Voevodsky alcohol" gives zero results. Can we let one person's death be a little respectful? Just once.

I think you're being pretty hyperbolic in your reaction here. A lot of people like to indulge in their morbid curiosity, and they're free to do so. If that means aimless speculation about the cause of someone's death as a means of rationalizing it then so be it. It's not really your place to be the arbiter of someone's death and others' reactions to it.

A friend of mine died when he was only 24 due to a sudden brain aneurysm in his sleep, and in that same year I had two other friends commit suicide (in fairness one was questionable, but it was by a train). I grappled with that for well over a year, to the point that it caused me a great deal of anxiety and insomnia for someone apparently healthy to die that young. It fundamentally crushed a lot of my own personal sense of control and security. One of the most difficult things for me to process was the utter lack of information - how did he die? Did he have chronic headaches and didn't check? Is there a way I could consider him accountable for it? Something to understand the situation would give me greater closure than the reality that people simply die, sometimes quite suddenly, for no predictable reason at all.

This is an extreme example for me to give, but the message is this: I understand that you're upset by this individual dying and the way others reacted to it (take a look at a comment I made here when John Nash died in a car accident in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9597349). But what you're doing is policing other peoples' emotions, and they have a right to react to the death by speculating about its causes. That is a natural and very common response that you cannot artificially remove.

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#62

The name Voevodksy comes from two old russian words: vodit, which means "to lead", and voena which means war. So, voevod, would mean something like "war leader", or general. (Source: russian friend that I just consulted.)

The word is voevoda (воевода) and, indeed, originally meant "a general". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivode

It seems like the word "Voevoda", at least in Ancient Rus, was the highest military rank given to someone who exceled in very specific areas of warfare.

For instance, the Voevoda of Defense (modern minister of defense?) would figure out how to fortify and defend a city from assault. Similarly, a Reconnaissance Voevoda would be sent to figure out the position and the size of an enemy. So it's not necessarily the general, although it looks like the highest class of Voevoda "Bolshoi Voevoda" or "Big Voevoda" could probably be compared to modern day Generals. I'm not entirely sure if one could progress up the ranks or if they just sort of branched out. Very interesting read here (in Russian) [1]

[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/воевода

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#63

This interview (link below) gives some interesting insight into his work and motivations. It’s in Russian, but Google Translate does a pretty good job with it. http://baaltii1.livejournal.com/198675.html Among many other things, he describes some unusual experiences in 2006–7 that clearly had a powerful impact on his thinking: [Translation by Google] “I had in a few months acquired a very considerable experience of v…

I'm getting access denied on this entry. Could you copy-pase it somewhere else?

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#64
post #63

This interview (link below) gives some interesting insight into his work and motivations. It’s in Russian, but Google Translate does a pretty good job with it. http://baaltii1.livejournal.com/198675.html Among many other things, he describes some unusual experiences in 2006–7 that clearly had a powerful impact on his thinking: [Translation by Google] “I had in a few months acquired a very considerable experience of v…

I'm getting access denied on this entry. Could you copy-pase it somewhere else?

Try this (may have to run it through Translate): http://archive.is/b4gHd

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, lacking proof this comment chain amounts to nothing more than a smear. "Vladimir Voevodsky alcohol" gives zero results. Can we let one person's death be a little respectful? Just once.

I think you're being pretty hyperbolic in your reaction here. A lot of people like to indulge in their morbid curiosity, and they're free to do so. If that means aimless speculation about the cause of someone's death as a means of rationalizing it then so be it. It's not really your place to be the arbiter of someone's death and others' reactions to it. A friend of mine died when he was only 24 due to a sudden brain…

Yeah, I agree. I'm not thinking clearly right now. My wisdom tooth appears to be coming in. Or something. The right half of my face is swollen and this pain is ~excruciating. Hey, at least my face looks the way my comments sounded, right?

Thanks for putting this into perspective. My comments in this post are pretty embarrassing. I wish I could delete them. But mistakes are too easy to run from. Apologies regardless.

It was quite selfish to make a ruckus like that, so I think I was the disrespectful one. The focus should be on Vladimir and his life.

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#67
post #5

A great loss for mathematics! I became familiar with his work through HoTT -- > More recently he became interested in type-theoretic formalizations of mathematics and automated proof verification. He was working on new foundations of mathematics based on homotopy-theoretic semantics of Martin-Löf type theories. His new "Univalence Axiom" has had a dramatic impact in both mathematics and computer science. And some of…

Could you expand on his work, related to CS and/or his influence in your work? I've never heard of him so I'm curious, being a Field medalist and all.

Not the op, but basically Voevodsky realized that the notion of equality in type theories as implemented in Coq or Agda is fundamentally more fine grained than what mathematicians are used to thinking of. This mismatch causes problems when formalizing mathematics in type theory.

Voevodsky proposed the univalence axiom which can be used to obtain more equalities and gave rise to the field of homotopy type theory (HoTT).

An intuition about the univalence axiom is that it allows to regard isomorphic types as equal. (This isn't entirely correct but gives a good intuition). The consequences of the axiom are severe (probably in a good way) but a lot more research is needed.

The hopes are that the work on HoTT will make it easier to formalize mathematics and in turn make it easier to verify software.

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#68
Amusing anecdote from the life of Voevodsky (https://lj.rossia.org/users/tiphareth/2097217.html):

Voevodsky was too lazy to search for an apartment, so he lived in his office (at Harvard each graduate student gets a personal office) and slept on the roof. Unfortunately, the windows of dean office (Willy Schmid) had direct view at that roof. Volodya didn't adhere to the usual day routine (and didn't adhere to anything at all), sometimes he slept during the dean office hours. Some day Schmid looked through the window and saw a roof and Voevodsky was sleeping at the roof. It has to be said, that living and sleeping in the office is a terrible taboo and social stigma in America, so Schmid was outraged. Voevodsky was almost expelled, but everything turned out well, though he was forced to rent an apartment and he has lived there from then on.

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#69

This interview (link below) gives some interesting insight into his work and motivations. It’s in Russian, but Google Translate does a pretty good job with it. http://baaltii1.livejournal.com/198675.html Among many other things, he describes some unusual experiences in 2006–7 that clearly had a powerful impact on his thinking: [Translation by Google] “I had in a few months acquired a very considerable experience of v…

Thank you for posting this! I'm lucky to be able to read the interview in the original (for those who can't, google translate does a reasonable job). Part I: http://archive.is/b4gHd. Part II: http://archive.is/NtBiy.

Well worth reading.

Re: Vladimir Voevodsky has died

#70
post #68

Amusing anecdote from the life of Voevodsky ( https://lj.rossia.org/users/tiphareth/2097217.html ): Voevodsky was too lazy to search for an apartment, so he lived in his office (at Harvard each graduate student gets a personal office) and slept on the roof. Unfortunately, the windows of dean office (Willy Schmid) had direct view at that roof. Volodya didn't adhere to the usual day routine (and didn't adhere to anythi…

> It has to be said, that living and sleeping in the office is a terrible taboo and social stigma in America

I am not a US-American, so can you elaborate?

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