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He is a popular public figure who gets sent crank work claiming to have solved NP=/=P several times a week. His context for saying that is a little different th
by threwawasy1228 6y ago
He is a popular public figure who gets sent crank work claiming to have solved NP=/=P several times a week. His context for saying that is a little different than here where the author is critiquing someone for creating what is essentially a short survey of several papers alongside his commentary. The original author isn't claiming to have proved anything, and even is asking for feedback and public contribution to his survey. It hardly struck me as cranklike.
That said, Tao is a good example of why gate-keeping is so dumb. If Tao wrote an article surveying and commentating on the current state of covid-19 epidemiological research as someone with no experience in the field, I'd trust it. I'd actually probably be more likely to trust it than any random credentialed epidemiologist doing the same work.
- threatofrain 6y agoBut doesn't the point still stand that the reason why Tao refuses random papers is due to bandwidth/capacity issues? The public faces the same problems, which is why credentials are generally more useful than the lack of it. One of the reasons this is even coming up was due to readers feeling that there was an attempt by the author to obscure over this issue of credibility. And randomly selecting an expert from a field seems a bit off when there are institutions and professionals who have developed _reputation_?