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Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

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Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#31

Post by cjbgkagh »

datameta wrote: post #25
waynecochran wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One metric would be body count. 20th century Marxists are somewhere between 60 and 148 million dead. Hard to top that.

One thing that puzzles me is those people who shudder at comparing Stalin's murderous spree with what Hitler's effects were. Is it the cognitive dissonance of not wanting to believe that we not only allied with a genocidal dictatorship but heavily supplied them with industrial output during the war? My family lived in the USSR and I can say for a fact - knowing it was the NKVD rather than Gestapo that might knock on…

Most people don’t know that Lenin was sent to Russia from his Swiss exile by the Germans in a sealed diplomatic train with the express intent to induce the October revolution and end the hostilities on that front. It was done to the Russians by cynical Germans who still ended up losing WWI.

Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won WWII at the cost of Russian lives.

I’m one of those people who see China as a bigger threat to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented divisions between Russia and China. It would have been possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as well be considered a single entity. I think the west overestimated its strength, and even now with the posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it appears that the West doesn’t understand that warfare has forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would have woken people up to that reality but somehow we’re holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable.

I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway. I much prefer the Chinese way of fighting with ‘high tech overproduction’ and wish we could ‘fight back’ with our own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it, especially since the alternative is massively destructive.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#32

Post by blendergeek »

thih9 wrote: post #24
blendergeek wrote: post #5

Headline should be "Oscar Zariski - forgot about his own wedding" in accordance with HN headline guidelines.

Could you cite the guideline? I couldn't find it; I thought the idea is to use the original title where possible. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

Oscar Zariski - forgot about his own wedding is the original title on the article.

The title I objected to was "A man who forgot about his own wedding". This title was actually edited to make it more clickbaity before it was later edited to be less clickbaity.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#33

Post by kovezd »

simpaticoder wrote: post #11

Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds do well to "remember where the off switch is" to quote Ian Banks' "Excession". It's also helpful to characterize a person not just by their character, tenacity or energy, or age, but also a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how much of their time they've spent in the real world, vs in their happy fun space. Call it the "imagination factor". A bright, capa…

> A bright, capable mind of 40 with an imagination factor of .75 may only have the cumulative real-world experience of a 10-year-old.

While provocative, that argument does not take into account the development of the brain. Processing early experiences are far different from the ones when the brain is fully developed. This includes the storage of memories (knowledge).

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#34

Post by simpaticoder »

codingdave wrote: post #29
simpaticoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make no value judgement here. I thought the OP's post was interesting as an example of how humans can mediate their own "VR" experience, and have done so for all of human history. The "absent-minded professor" is a stereotype for a reason. It can be disconcerting for someone with high imagination factor to interact with someone with an imagination factor of 0, even if all other qualities (age, culture, language, et…

The path everyone has walked is different from everyone else. You seem to be trying to reduce it to a formula, coin new terms, and literally apply numeric values to people. I don't think anyone is that simple in reality. If you have struggled to interact with people who are different than you, that is also part of the human experience, not something we need to devise measurements for.

Your strawman assumes a reductive user who will replace a person with a number. This of course happens in real life, with IQ, Meyers-Briggs, and so on. This is wrong. It is a kind of wrongness exemplified by "Animal Farm", the nuanced ideals of revolution that eventually reduce to "4 legs good; 2 legs bad".

IF is a tool mostly to remind high IF people to cherish the value of both real and imaginary experience, and a tool to help people who dwell mostly in either realm to respect each other. If a high IF person forgets to respect the real, he's liable to forget his wedding. If a low IF person forgets, he's liable to miss out on the wonder and value of abstract thought.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#35

Post by simpaticoder »

kovezd wrote: post #33
simpaticoder wrote: post #11

Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds do well to "remember where the off switch is" to quote Ian Banks' "Excession". It's also helpful to characterize a person not just by their character, tenacity or energy, or age, but also a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how much of their time they've spent in the real world, vs in their happy fun space. Call it the "imagination factor". A bright, capa…

> A bright, capable mind of 40 with an imagination factor of .75 may only have the cumulative real-world experience of a 10-year-old. While provocative, that argument does not take into account the development of the brain. Processing early experiences are far different from the ones when the brain is fully developed. This includes the storage of memories (knowledge).

The fact that our identities are a path integral through a unique 4 dimensional spacetime curve does not undermine the utility of first-order characterizations of the resulting value. We do it all the time: where are you from? When were you born? What did you study? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? I am simply adding, and characterizing, an additional factor: how often do you dream? None of the answers to these questions tell the whole story of a person, but they are useful nevertheless.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#36

Post by apples5000 »

I talked to one of Zariski's students about this... He mention to me that the article said he studied ”real” algebraic geometry, which is a different subject —he studied “complex” algebraic geometry as well as algebraic geometry without a limiting adjective.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#37

Post by bongodongobob »

simpaticoder wrote: post #11

Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds do well to "remember where the off switch is" to quote Ian Banks' "Excession". It's also helpful to characterize a person not just by their character, tenacity or energy, or age, but also a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how much of their time they've spent in the real world, vs in their happy fun space. Call it the "imagination factor". A bright, capa…

[flagged]

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#38

Post by adammarples »

simpaticoder wrote: post #35
kovezd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bright, capable mind of 40 with an imagination factor of .75 may only have the cumulative real-world experience of a 10-year-old. While provocative, that argument does not take into account the development of the brain. Processing early experiences are far different from the ones when the brain is fully developed. This includes the storage of memories (knowledge).

The fact that our identities are a path integral through a unique 4 dimensional spacetime curve does not undermine the utility of first-order characterizations of the resulting value. We do it all the time: where are you from? When were you born? What did you study? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? I am simply adding, and characterizing, an additional factor: how often do you dream? None of the answers to these…

I like the cut of your jib and I'm assuming your factor is north of 0.5?

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#39

Post by antonf »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #16
ben_w wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious: most of us are familiar with what the USSR did wrong, were they better or worse than the Tsars before them?

Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century. The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that o…

> Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions

FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not allowed to legally leave.

> Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.

It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.

Re: Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry

#40

Post by ahdjkfnf »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #16
ben_w wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious: most of us are familiar with what the USSR did wrong, were they better or worse than the Tsars before them?

Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century. The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that o…

>to be fired

well that's an understatement

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