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Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#161

Post by hackernewds »

senderista wrote: post #155
cloudbonsai wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more surpised that the other amateur mathematian appearing in this article is Greg Egan (He has a personal website on https://www.gregegan.net/ ). He is one of the best contemporary hard SF writers in the world.

He also must be one of the best recreational mathematicians in the world, as anyone who follows his work on his website and Mastodon knows.

sometimes on HN, I cannot tell which posts are AstroTurfing because the praise often is so niche and unrelated and superlative

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#162

Post by somenameforme »

tstrimple wrote: post #158
somenameforme wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something great about enforced anonymity. It gets rid of people saying what they think they should say, and instead simply what they think. It reminds one of the wisdom of the masses experiments. If you take a bunch of people and ask them how many peas are in a jar, the average will come out extremely close to the right answer. But if you let those people collaborate, debate, and try to pick the smartest answ…

> There's something great about enforced anonymity. It gets rid of people saying what they think they should say, and instead simply what they think. No it absolutely does not. It enables people to hold whatever positions are immediately expedient regardless of personal beliefs. There is no way to call an anonymous person a hypocrite when you cannot connect their directly contradictory statements due to their anonymi…

And does calling a person a hypocrite make them go 'Oh gosh, you're right. Let me immediately change my opinion.'? No, even the most justified ad hominem does nothing more than encouraging self censorship, which is completely contrary to what's desired when the goal is to understand what people truly think and believe.

Humans are not consistent. We hold conflicting views, and in a decade we'll think a good chunk of what we believe today is idiotic. It's all fine and normal.

I would also add that in many cases claims of hypocrisy are themselves somewhat disingenuous, because scarce (and perhaps even undesirable) is the human that holds any given view as absolute dogma. We all hold views and values on a spectrum. For instance utilitarianism and taking the 'intuitive' solution to the trolley problem are not mutually exclusive, because one's adoption of utilitarianism is often of the nature of simply generally preferring utilitarian solutions, rather treating it as the be all, end all, of decision making.

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#164

Post by ErigmolCt »

lqet wrote: post #64

I am not surprised that the author of this great article is Manon Bischoff. I have been reading her articles on Spektrum.de for years now, and they are always excellent. Here is a list of all her articles: https://www.spektrum.de/profil/bischoff/manon/1486871 Selected articles get translated and published by SciAm: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/manon-bischoff/

This is a talent to just make complex mathematical concepts feel accessible and engaging. Also thanks for sharing the links!

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#165

Post by ErigmolCt »

tombert wrote: post #5

There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post. It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...

What other accidental discoveries are buried in meme threads and forgotten forums?

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#166

Post by ErigmolCt »

bntyhntr wrote: post #39

At one of my old jobs, the bathroom was locked with a 4 digit code followed by the key symbol. We jokingly made up "Bathroom Code" as an interview question/to nerd snipe each other instead of working, which was "assuming you don't have to press key, and that the bathroom door will unlock if the correct 4 digits are entered in order at any time, write the code to print the shortest possible test sequence to guarantee…

Funny how these kinds of "just messing around" problems sometimes turn out to have deep mathematical roots

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#167

Post by ErigmolCt »

not2b wrote: post #127

I was impressed with how tight the known bounds are. For length 30, the upper bound is 1.0000397 times the lower bound. For 40 the ratio is 1.0000164 and it quickly approaches 1.

Makes me wonder if a full solution is just around the corner or if there's some sneaky mathematical trick still waiting to be discovered

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#168

Post by shric »

nash wrote: post #150
dang wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I had no idea. Thanks! Macroexpanded: Unscrambling the hidden secrets of superpermutations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325146 - Feb 2024 (8 comments) Mystery math whiz and novelist advance permutation problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36191831 - June 2023 (92 comments) An Anonymous 4chan Post Helped Solve a 25-Year-Old Math Puzzle (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23968618 -…

I hope there is a specific order we should look at these threads.

You can read them in any order

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#169

Post by kikokikokiko »

Oarch wrote: post #109
tombert wrote: post #5

There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post. It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...

I recommend watching the Internet Historian's video series on He Will Not Divide Us for similarly ingenious buffoonery.

The He Will Not Divide Us saga teached me, really early, to never leave any personal information on the web, and above all, to never piss off groups of male teenagers/early adults with a lot of free time on their hands and a penchant for doing anything for the lolz.

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#170

Post by moi2388 »

wombatpm wrote: post #85
tombert wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's kind of what I was getting at. Who knows what kind of weird mathematical or scientific things have been discovered by hobbyists and posted on some obscure forum thread or abandoned blog that wasn't appreciated by anyone? Like, if someone had a proof for the Goldbach Conjecture, and for whatever reason posted about it on the WatchUSeek forums (just as a throwaway example), it could just lay dormant for who…

Just to clarify: all perpetual motion machine videos on TikTok are fake or using the stored energy of magnets over time.

Which is strange, because it’s rather trivial. You make your machine inside out. Now the entire universe is on the inside of it, so all energy it gets from external sources is technically on the inside.
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