ZenOfTheArt
Joined 6 years ago
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Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
I'm inclined to regard talk of judgement of who is a "great mathematician", who is the "greatest mathematician" and so on as mathematical criticism. And I'm inclined to regard mathematical critics in the same way G. H. Hardy did, as he explained in A Mathematician's Apology [1].
To put the matter more bluntly: if the pilots of Top Gun were in the business of criticism, there wouldn't be any left because they'd blow each other to bits.
I think mathematicians and other high achievers should rather consider their relation to the Mary Sue and their domain of expertise as a LARP. Nobody likes a Mary Sue, nobody likes a Spock. And everyone should remember what rock music has to say about the fortunate sons who can aspire to the Mary Sue, Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
[1] https://archive.org/details/AMathematiciansApology/page/n29
Comment · 6 years ago
> So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials.
With all due respect, I disagree entirely, and elected officials censor each other as a matter of doing business. social media sites should be designated as journals and subject to the same ethics as journalists. I think the novelty of harvesting personal data (as in, "Oh, you mean someone cares about my favorite color? Neat!") can be tempered by holding users to the same standard as journalists.
Social media sites are just journals. I am not going to allow Tinker Bell to sprinkle her magic pixie dust over Facebook and Twitter to give them some "special" status that allows them to avoid their journalistic responsibilities. They are in the journalism industry; they should lead, not beg for special consideration.
Comment · 6 years ago
A Fitch derivation of the existence of the intersection of all members of a nonempty set is a better place to start because it can be done in less than ten sheets of paper longhand. The ratio of triviality to pages consumed is quite shocking when you finally confront it. It is at that point that you realize intuition has no formal translation but is vital since the level of detail seems to blur and darken intuition when holding a proof to the standard of formal derivation rather than the ordinary informal standard. So far, I’ve seen relatively little interest in mathematical intuition or even honest appraisal of what it is or how mathematicians should develop it. Rather the trend seems to be pretending that mathematical intuition doesn’t exist and treating formalization as a no-op. I think this is due to an anti-intellectual atmosphere that views mathematics as a source of problems for the military as opposed to pastimes for civilians.
Comment · 6 years ago
Thank you, this is a brilliant comment.
mathematicians aren't a bunch of marysues, and you're never going to recruit carrying on that way
you don't see the value in getting rid of it so mathematicians aren't burdened this way
as if their burdens weren't great enough