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> I think the intuition is that the best mathematicians, autistic or not, tend to be in academia already. Is that a safe assumption, though? Won't it limit th
by jlarocco 8y ago
> I think the intuition is that the best mathematicians, autistic or not, tend to be in academia already.
Is that a safe assumption, though? Won't it limit the field to people who are happy making a low salary and don't mind teaching?
- tuxxy 8y agoThis is an asinine assumption. What of the incredibly "genius" poor folks who do not have the opportunities to join academia?
- throwawaymath 8y agoThe point is that raw genius is insufficient for replicating Ramanujan-like accomplishments in the 21st century. It's almost irrelevant how brilliant someone is these days - if they haven't had the opportunity to learn a vast amount of theory, they can't really make significant progress towards theoretical problem. The field simply has far less low hanging fruit than it did a century, or even a half-century ago. It's not reasonable to expect that a lone genius with little to no academic background in mathematics could resolve a famous open problem through sheer creativity. For literally generations the field's most intelligent researchers have spent their careers chipping away at this problem.
- jbottoms 8y agoJust yeah, I didn't let Ramunujan into my school, much too messy, over promised, couldn't do proofs right. Not really academic material. He refused to learn LaTex.
- azernik 8y agoI'm not talking about a hard-and-fast policy; I'm talking about a Bayesian, "if a random person off the street sends a proof what should my priors be?"