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Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

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Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#401

Post by rosywoozlechan »

arrow7000 wrote: post #397
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok, you're insulting the guy's restaurant and the market disagrees with you, apparently

Contrary to what you may believe, the market has failure modes. Just because something is difficult to monetise doesn't mean that it's not valuable. Fundamental research is one such thing. It can open up vast realms of possibility for all of humanity, but in a way that's difficult, if not impossible, to privatise. And the benefits may take years, decades or even centuries to pay off. Thus there is very little incenti…

I get it, but I do get some satisfaction out of observing when justifications of perceived value meet market realities. I don't think it's bad, I think it's interesting, and the person made the choice that was theirs to make. That's economic freedom.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#402

Post by kbrkbr »

Tainnor wrote: post #385
kbrkbr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The causality here is hard to prove, even untangle. I think the French Revolution was largely more influential for the state of governments today. I also think that science was not influenced so much by Popper, but much more by Fisher and Neyman. People tend to use what is a successful tool, and be influenced by power and theatre, not so much by fragile logical constructs without empirical value found sitting in the…

Do you think the French Revolution happened in a vacuum? Without the ideals of Enlightenment philosophy it would have amounted to nothing more than mob violence (if it had even gotten started at all).

Good point, I agree that it did not. Were those ideas however progress, or a tool that the Committee of Public Safety used because it fit their agenda?

Was this philosophy finding truth that guided policy, or was it making up rhetorical arguments in a power struggle on behalf of the rising middle class and its policy?

In absence of criteria of non empirical truth that are independent of the very non empirical truths they are criteria for I tend to believe the latter.

In addition to this inherent weakness philosophical arguments are not for the masses anyways. Not even philosophers usually agree what they mean or entail. How could those idea(l)s have guided the revolution as more than just superficial self justification?

Remember that the enemies of the French Revolution had their philosophers too, they just lost.

Historical events usually have very mundane reasons, class struggles, geopolitics etc. Ideas may play a part too. But I believe not in the sense that they are the horses in front of the cart.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#403

Post by arrow7000 »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #401
arrow7000 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to what you may believe, the market has failure modes. Just because something is difficult to monetise doesn't mean that it's not valuable. Fundamental research is one such thing. It can open up vast realms of possibility for all of humanity, but in a way that's difficult, if not impossible, to privatise. And the benefits may take years, decades or even centuries to pay off. Thus there is very little incenti…

I get it, but I do get some satisfaction out of observing when justifications of perceived value meet market realities. I don't think it's bad, I think it's interesting, and the person made the choice that was theirs to make. That's economic freedom.

I'm not sure what you're deriving satisfaction out of. That the market prevented someone from being able to earn a living and fulfilling their potential at the same time? I'm genuinely confused

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#405

Post by rosywoozlechan »

arrow7000 wrote: post #403
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, but I do get some satisfaction out of observing when justifications of perceived value meet market realities. I don't think it's bad, I think it's interesting, and the person made the choice that was theirs to make. That's economic freedom.

I'm not sure what you're deriving satisfaction out of. That the market prevented someone from being able to earn a living and fulfilling their potential at the same time? I'm genuinely confused

I don't believe there's enough data in the original comment to assume that the market prevented them from being able to fulfill their living working with physics. It said they could make more money running a restaurant. If that it is the case they could not earn a living at all, and it's due to discrimination, which I asked about, then I agree it's not good. But if it's the case they could make a living in physics but chose to instead open a restaurant due to making a better living that way, then yes I think it's good.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#406

Post by jll29 »

ebjaas_2022 wrote: post #334
wikfwikf wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the whole story. Of course, it is a tragedy when people who had undeniable raw talent are neglected or passed over and don't get to achieve as they might. It's also sad and disappointing when we observe structural injustices in our society. However, isn't it possible that giving great teaching resources to people who aren't already at the top level in terms of raw talent, allows them to succeed…

> rather than on the finding and promotion of undiscovered geniuses. There's a catch in it as well, which is that you cannot really identify a genius up-front. A genius is, by definition, someone who thinks differently. A lot of people think differently. But the thing with the genius is that he thinks differently and correctly. The latter part won't be obvious until after the fact. When Alex Ferguson started out as a…

> Same with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They probably had a genius vision for the company right from the start.

That seems inconsistent with reports that they tried to sell early to Yahoo! for $2m.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#407

Post by fnordpiglet »

vlovich123 wrote: post #196
fnordpiglet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).

Einstein is probably a terrible example here because in his day he was regarded as a pop culture icon so there’s plenty about him in film [1]. That’s not even considering that he’s had plenty of excellent biographies written about him. Agora with Rachel Weisz is an excellent one about Hypatia. Could we do better as a society? Maybe. To do that though you’d have to bring these stories into film classrooms and get stud…

To my knowledge there’s only one dramatization of his biography which is this:

https://www.dogomovies.com/einstein-and-eddington/movie-revi...

My point is even einstein doesn’t get the same treatment as, say, a politician or actor gets as far as coverage. There’s more out there about Elvis than Newton.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#408

Post by fnordpiglet »

bmitc wrote: post #257
fnordpiglet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).

Also, biopics are terrible. I can't think of a single one that is worth it, especially if you consider that for many of the subjects, you could just watch a documentary on the person anyway, often with real footage and interviews with them. Biopics are usually just cash grabs and weird Hollywood flexes about mimicking someone else. The fact that they do so well at the awards ceremonies speaks to this.

I find them useful for teaching my 8 year old something about the person behind the name. After watching Einstein and Eddingiton (pretty ok movie) she has a better appreciation for who he is beyond a name. Obviously you learn almost nothing about his research and it’s a very tiny slice of Einsteins extraordinarily interesting life.

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#409

Post by jll29 »

FabHK wrote: post #373
toyg wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex Ferguson might have been a good football manager, but he wasn't a genius - and I say that as a Man United supporter. He didn't advance football in any significant way, and even towards the end of his career he was somewhat naive from a tactical perspective. He was just a good man-manager in what is a sea of managerial mediocrity - football management is largely restricted to ex-pro-footballers who can't do anyth…

On a similar note, Page and Brin were obviously smart and driven and all, but applying linear algebra to the search problem was arguably one of the things that was "in the air". It is hard to judge, because what seems obvious ex post was (obviously) not obvious ex ante. But, again, eigenvalue decomposition/SVD (and linear algebra more generally) - you throw it at the Netflix problem, you throw it at image compression…

Yes, and also don't forget that Rajeev Motwani's (Ph.D. supervisor and FFF investor) research field was randomized algorithms. So thinking about random walks in his group was a bread and butter thing, probably, not something that required genius. Rajeev is co-author to several seminal paper on the search engine and worked intensively with Google and joined their board. According to Prabhakar Raghavan, Sergey Brin acknowledged in a BBC Radio interview in 2009 that Google might not have been possible without Rajeev. (Tragically, he passed away in 2009 by falling into his own pool with alcohol in his blood, and he could not swim.)

Re: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang

#410

Post by jll29 »

pmontra wrote: post #344
woodruffw wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we sometimes understate philosophy's progress: it's certainly not measurable in decades, but the world of 2022 looks very different (in terms of philosophical priors and their consequences) than the world of Socrates or Confucius. A handful of examples that come to mind: * (Nearly) everybody on our planet lives under a government whose fundamental structure and right to power comes from modern (meaning 17th c…

I second your other two points but I think this one is inaccurate: > * (Nearly) everybody on our planet lives under a government whose fundamental structure and right to power comes from modern (meaning 17th century) political philosophy. A large number of countries are ruled by dictators and their close supporters. Sometimes they position themselves within the boundaries of a more or less modern ideology but ultimat…

What is most annoying is: many of the dictators were installed by "democracies" so that these can continue their unsustainable lifestyles, at the expense of extreme suffering elsewhere.

...and I disagree with the parent's parent's point on progress in philosophy: all three examples are not progress of philosophy but at best influence or application of it, and in the last case did not involve trained/professional philosophers (e.g. Turing was a mathematician/chemist-turned-cryptoanalyst/computer scientist).

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