6 ms·

Attributing "young man's game" to G. H. Hardy, he'd had a heart attack the year before he published A Mathematician's Apology, and by all accounts, had lost muc

by JJMcJ 4y ago

Attributing "young man's game" to G. H. Hardy, he'd had a heart attack the year before he published A Mathematician's Apology, and by all accounts, had lost much of his drive and energy. The whole book has something of a sad tone to it.

SemanticStrengh 4y ago
the majority of the damages of a stroke are generally induced in the following weeks of the event, e.g. via extremely high oxidative stress and apoptotic signaling and impaired bioenergetics. Those issues are trivial to fix pharmacologically speaking and indeed there are countless studies showing a very potent protection against damage including neurons death, unfortunately doctors have not the required erudition nor do they care to save those lives and therefore people are left helpless and suffering.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  Do you have any sources on that? I'd love to have that info handy if it ever becomes useful (hopefully it doesn't).
  - rendall 4y ago
    Favoriting so I too can see the answer
  - treeman79 4y ago
    I have a small one every few months. If I’m quick with blood thinners it Takes a couple days to a couple months to get back to normal. Typical average is about a week after an event.
davesque 4y ago
This really seems like a detail that should be emphasized. One famous man uttered a very quotable line that was more reflective of his mood at the time than of some universal truth. I don't get how the culture of science sometimes has this tendency to fetishize things like youth or pedigree. I guess it's the classic fallacy of confusing averages with maximums or of thinking that summary statistics preclude the possibility of individuals with unusual characteristics.
- interroboink 4y ago
  There's also the quote from Einstein: "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so." I rather dislike it, and am glad Einstein was wrong about various things (:
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Einstein published General Relativity when he was 35, and after that he did important work but nothing quite as world shaking as the period 1905-15. So he may have been projecting his own disappointment into a general statement.
  - 3a2d29 4y ago
    Makes all of us (since we will all be 30+ one day if not alright) happy to know that Einstein wasted a lot of time trying extremely hard to disprove quantum mechanics because "God doesn't play dice with the universe."
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      Also Unified Field Theory, which has had very little substantive progress since his time.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Well that's interesting. So what does that mean, has to have been published by 30, or just the successful experiment carried out before 30?
- mjreacher 4y ago
  I think you'll find many mathematicians agree with it. For example, The Abel Prize [1] does interviews with their award winners every year and quite often they are asked about this question, and most of them agree that as a mathematician your peak "mathematical powers" so to speak and energy are at their highest in your 20s and 30s, while afterwards you have to rely more on experience to make up for it as you grow older. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAbelPrize1/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAbelPrize1/videos
trenchgun 4y ago
Yep.From replies: >This isn't exactly what you were asking for, but Littlewood himself, after overcoming depression at age 72, did good mathematics throughout his 80's--it's hardly a young man's game. (Littlewood is Hardy's pen name)
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Of course that's not really true. The origin of the story is that so many papers were published by Hardy and Littlewood, that an Indian mathematician thought that Littlewood was a pseudonym that Hardy used for his inferior work. Littlewood was reported to be quite amused when he heard this. And of course the story might be apocryphal. Especially since it's also attributed to Edmund Landau and Norbert Wiener. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edensor_Littlewood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edensor_Littlewood
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    That is, that either Landau or Wiener believed this, which seems very unlikely.

by JJMcJ 4y ago

SemanticStrengh 4y ago

the majority of the damages of a stroke are generally induced in the following weeks of the event, e.g. via extremely high oxidative stress and apoptotic signaling and impaired bioenergetics. Those issues are trivial to fix pharmacologically speaking and indeed there are countless studies showing a very potent protection against damage including neurons death, unfortunately doctors have not the required erudition nor do they care to save those lives and therefore people are left helpless and suffering.

silicon2401 4y ago
Do you have any sources on that? I'd love to have that info handy if it ever becomes useful (hopefully it doesn't).
- rendall 4y ago
  Favoriting so I too can see the answer
- treeman79 4y ago
  I have a small one every few months. If I’m quick with blood thinners it Takes a couple days to a couple months to get back to normal. Typical average is about a week after an event.

davesque 4y ago

This really seems like a detail that should be emphasized. One famous man uttered a very quotable line that was more reflective of his mood at the time than of some universal truth. I don't get how the culture of science sometimes has this tendency to fetishize things like youth or pedigree. I guess it's the classic fallacy of confusing averages with maximums or of thinking that summary statistics preclude the possibility of individuals with unusual characteristics.

interroboink 4y ago
There's also the quote from Einstein: "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so." I rather dislike it, and am glad Einstein was wrong about various things (:
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Einstein published General Relativity when he was 35, and after that he did important work but nothing quite as world shaking as the period 1905-15. So he may have been projecting his own disappointment into a general statement.
- 3a2d29 4y ago
  Makes all of us (since we will all be 30+ one day if not alright) happy to know that Einstein wasted a lot of time trying extremely hard to disprove quantum mechanics because "God doesn't play dice with the universe."
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Also Unified Field Theory, which has had very little substantive progress since his time.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Well that's interesting. So what does that mean, has to have been published by 30, or just the successful experiment carried out before 30?
mjreacher 4y ago
I think you'll find many mathematicians agree with it. For example, The Abel Prize [1] does interviews with their award winners every year and quite often they are asked about this question, and most of them agree that as a mathematician your peak "mathematical powers" so to speak and energy are at their highest in your 20s and 30s, while afterwards you have to rely more on experience to make up for it as you grow older. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAbelPrize1/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAbelPrize1/videos

trenchgun 4y ago

Yep.From replies: >This isn't exactly what you were asking for, but Littlewood himself, after overcoming depression at age 72, did good mathematics throughout his 80's--it's hardly a young man's game. (Littlewood is Hardy's pen name)

JJMcJ 4y ago
Of course that's not really true. The origin of the story is that so many papers were published by Hardy and Littlewood, that an Indian mathematician thought that Littlewood was a pseudonym that Hardy used for his inferior work. Littlewood was reported to be quite amused when he heard this. And of course the story might be apocryphal. Especially since it's also attributed to Edmund Landau and Norbert Wiener. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edensor_Littlewood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edensor_Littlewood
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  That is, that either Landau or Wiener believed this, which seems very unlikely.