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Every one of the bad arguments that Gowers points out have been made in this thread full of smart people, even after everyone read the article. I think that's p
by evanpw 10y ago
Every one of the bad arguments that Gowers points out have been made in this thread full of smart people, even after everyone read the article. I think that's pretty good evidence that the theorem really isn't obvious.
- ColinWright 10y agoWhat's the bet most of them have at best skimmed the article, and that many haven't even bothered to read further than the first few paragraphs, if at all. Edit: typo
- cousin_it 10y agoI've kinda stopped believing that high intelligence always leads to high quality discussions. Every HN thread about math or physics has many misguided comments, coming from people who are probably very smart in their own fields. I've seen that on LessWrong too, really smart math/CS people talking about biology can get demolished by a second year biology student. Noticing my own cluelessness about a topic is a very subtle skill, it took me years to learn and I'm probably not there yet. Sometimes I even feel that math/CS education has damaged me in some ways, made me too arrogant, though obviously it gave me a huge advantage in other ways.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- delazeur 10y ago> I've seen that on LessWrong too, really smart math/CS people talking about biology can get demolished by a second year biology student. IMO, LessWrong and other communities based around critical thinking tend to either foster a sense of intellectual arrogance or attract people who already have that quality. > Sometimes I even feel that math/CS education has damaged me in some ways, made me too arrogant, though obviously it gave me a huge advantage in other way. A lot of education in science and engineering is based around teaching people to walk up to a problem they are completely unfamiliar with and make a reasonable attempt at solving it. That is an extremely useful skill in some cases, but very dangerous in others.
- jdc 10y agoI generally agree, however I would like to know for what cases you think the skill of solving unfamiliar problems is dangerous.
- lostlogin 10y agoWatch what happens when you let the post doc PhD "help" set up a scan in the MR scanner. It's amazing/terrifying what a very clever person will do in an unfamiliar environment with different rules to the real world.
- delazeur 10y agoIt's dangerous when it leads a person to choose "I'm going to figure this out on my own" over "I'm going to find someone who can solve this" in cases where they really should have known to pick the latter.
- curiousgal 10y ago>Every HN thread about math or physics has many misguided comments, coming from people who are probably very smart in their own fields. The curse of Dunning-Kruger.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> even after everyone read the article. <courtroom drama> Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. </courtroom drama>
- vladsotirov 10y agoI think it's pretty good evidence that Gowers' blog post fails miserably to either persuade or explain why the fundamental theorem of arithmetic isn't obviously true. Garbage in, garbage out, irrelevant of how good the machine is.
- ColinWright 10y agoI think it's even better evidence that people didn't read the entire article. I'd even suggest that those who did read it, didn't "read like math" but instead "read like a novel".