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He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal

355 points by digital55 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago
"it feels like you’re grabbing something that’s already there, rather than creating something in your mind." This is why the conceit of "intellectual property" has always bothered me. I relate to what he describes as "finding things". Those things are are eternally "out there" for all to find. I can put up a signpost or build a road to show you the way, but how can a mere man own what is part of the infinite and eternal?
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  Interestingly, patent law agrees with you — mathematical theorems, for example, cannot be patented. In principle, a patent should cover specific machinery/process/material designed for a task rather than the underlying more ephemeral/indefinite concept powering the invention. The interesting thing is that, of those, machine and process seem like the least conceited. Composition of matter seems more like sticking a flag in infinite ground. But in practice it’s the former two that power most of what I consider an abuse of the spirit of patent law. But perhaps that’s just my personal bias and the bio or materials people will disagree. What can we say? Profit motive is a strong incentive and lawyers/judges are clever. Anyways, with 7B people and counting, a term limited right to one idea in the infinite space of ideas seems less harmful than perpetual rights to a piece of land.
  - j-pb 4y ago
    Except that they are in the form of software patents. We live in this complexity nightmare partly because all the simple and obvious solutions are easily patented.
  - onedognight 4y ago
    > seems less harmful than perpetual rights to a piece of land. Interestingly, society agrees with you; for the most part, we don’t grant perpetual rights to a piece of land. Instead we charge property tax to ensure you are doing something productive with it. You have to generate enough free cash flow to pay the taxes or you lose the land.
    - InefficientRed 4y ago
      Not really. The property taxes on a piece of land I own are about $200 per year, which can be paid in perpetuity with a low five figure endowment stored in zero risk FDIC-insured CDs. In most counties, property taxes are fairly marginal and come nowhere near necessitating that land is used productively.
- gsatic 4y ago
  Maybe question could be - what to do about those people who have high loss aversion, status seeking traits, mindless ambition etc baked deep into their code? How to handle these type of people when they stumble upon something useful to everyone.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    That's actually a refreshing way of looking at something. The pathologically acquisitive are naturally a small part of the population suffering insecurity, often driven by early deprivation. Our natural instinct is to share intelligence, wrt food, predators, resources. I have a theory that the misnomer "intellectual property" is most ardently championed by (perhaps older) intelligent/creative people who fear losing their power. Fear that this may be their last great idea fosters withholding and subtracts from the opportunities of the many. This comes up in other contexts. In cybersecurity, if one discovers a new exploit the natural instinct for most people is responsible disclosure, even without a bounty. However, the temptation to privatise that knowledge as a sellable "zero-day" is powerful. But what we see is that it's the mediocre who do that more. Top 0.1% hackers are so confident in their ability to find more and deadlier exploits at will, they don't hoard as it's beneath them.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      > Top 0.1% hackers are so confident in their ability to find more and deadlier exploits at will, they don't hoard as it's beneath them. Or they probably see it as leverage for a job with a company at some point in the future. Or an achievement they can put on their resume or show the world. I might be wrong in assuming this, but I take it that you believe the disclosures of these top tier hackers are a result of an altruistic benevolence. If so, I think you're describing a soul rarer than the Loch Ness Monster. The best hackers do zero-day work because they love it and it pays (in cash, achievement, fame, etc.). If it doesn't pay, they'll probably find some other way of getting their kick upto and including trading exploits or data for cash. Even the hacker who saved the net from Mirai all those years ago sold exploits.
      - 4y ago
- Someone 4y ago
  That logic applies as well to minerals and fossils as to inventions. If I stumble upon a lump of gold, how can I own it? After all, it was merely “out there” to find. Also, the question whether math is discovered or invented is an old one, with arguments going either way. It’s not like people just stumble upon certain proofs, or that Newton was just lucky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Mathematical_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Math..., for example, holds that math would still exist if there were no life anywhere in the universe (maybe even if there were no universe)
- justsomeguy123 4y ago
  But you don't "own" that. You get a temporary rent. The problem is society (and tech) moves so fast it feels like the rent is too long. The idea to incentivize public sharing of knowledge for a short term rent is not so stupid.
  - nwah1 4y ago
    In economics there is a concept called "search costs." And those costs need to be compensated if you want to encourage searching. But, of course, as you said, such compensation should not be in perpetuity. A patent, in this sense, is infinitely more reasonable than a land title as currently conceived.
    - andrepd 4y ago
      Henry George would agree :p
- bluecalm 4y ago
  It's hard to say a novel you can write or a computer program is "out there" for everyone to find though. I find this argument very compelling against patents but not against copyright in general.
- keiferski 4y ago
  This assumes that Platonism is the correct model of reality. In mathematics specifically, Platonism is but one of many positions and is not accepted by all philosophers or mathematicians. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    But Platonism is not a model of anything at all. It’s just a philosophical idea which, by the way, has no impact on mathematics proper, either.
    - keiferski 4y ago
      Platonism is a metaphysical model of the universe. It’s also one of the most popular approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. This is explained in the link I posted.
      - Koshkin 4y ago
        In the link, they only talk about "models of a theory" and the "mathematical/set-theoretical universe," none of which has to do with "a metaphysical model of the universe."
        keiferski 4y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism This is…basic philosophical knowledge about Plato’s ideas. It’s not up for debate.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- slightwinder 4y ago
  Ownership is a legal right. You found/created it, so society gives you the right to rule about it's usage for a certain time. The same applies to physical objects. You own something, because society gives you the permission, not because you have the actual power to protect it with your own muscles. And there is nothing wrong with this concept; it encourages people to search and create, and prevents people from being abused by the strong and getting their findings stolen. Generally, this is beneficial for everyone and lets society moving forward and to higher levels of quality.
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
- cinntaile 4y ago
  If you get paid for it, it is.
- aqme28 4y ago
  If you can get paid to do it, is it not a profession?
  - circlefavshape 4y ago
    I'd have thought a profession was something you made a living from, not something you sometimes got some money for - I sometimes get paid to play music in bars, but music is not my profession. Neither Philip Larkin nor Seamus Heaney made a living from poetry, so I'd guess nobody else does either
  - martyvis 4y ago
    Depends on how you think about the act of professing. Taking it literally it would be those that profess - articulate, exude, demonstrate, apply - their knowledge, skill and experience. Remuneration could be seen as irrelevant in this context.
- vivegi 4y ago
  At least in the Indian film industry, we have songs and lyricists. Popular music may call them songwriters. Many lyricists are published poets and identify their vocation as a poet/writer.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I come to HN for such nuanced insight /s
- Veen 4y ago
  Nor is "developer" if we go by the traditional definition of the professions.
Markoff 4y ago
Ah yeah, everyone quickly drop out to be successful... /facepalm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- bsaul 4y ago
  I must say after reading the article that i don’t even understand the title.. He seemed to have done a regular maths curriculum at university.
- ktownsend 4y ago
  I can empathize with the gut reaction, and the title is clickbait-y, but the article does elaborate that it's not the same tired trope of privileged kid drops out of Stanford/MIT/Harvard to become startup billionaire: > he dropped out of high school to become a poet. It would take a chance encounter during his university years — and many moments of feeling lost — for him to find that mathematics held what he’d been looking for all along. Having taken a similar path myself -- I dropped out of high school due to a combination of factors, but was still able to get into university 6 months later -- I can empathize with mandatory education NOT being something people fit into, and where making the right career choice isn't always clear or easy. Not everyone who 'dropped out' did it because of unlimited mom-and-dad-money and boundless professional and social opportunities, nor wears it like a badge of honor. I get tired of the trope and survivorship bias as well, but in this case it seems like the author did still put in the hard work of learning his niche the traditional way, if in a round-about manner: through a lot of hours of study, personal investment, natural curiosity, and using the abilities he has to the best of his abilities.
  - tester756 4y ago
    >but was still able to get into university 6 months later How does that even work?
    - astrange 4y ago
      Some countries' systems rely on entrance exams, not your high school transcripts. I've seen it claimed it's common to drop out of high school in Korea to focus on the exams, though I don't really understand the details.
zuzuleinen 4y ago
"He found the writing process too focused on the self — and for him, that exploration was often painful and depressing. Moreover, as he later realized, “I wanted to be someone who writes great poetry,” he said. “I didn’t want to write great poetry.” Now he sees that version of himself as almost a complete stranger." That's the reason I deleted my personal blog. I felt that when I was writing publicly about my life/thoughts I was focusing too much on my ego.
- kkleindev 4y ago
  > I felt that when I was writing publicly about my life/thoughts I was focusing too much on my ego. Why do you want to avoid that?
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    To avoid over-feeding the beast known as ego?
    - lupire 4y ago
  - zuzuleinen 4y ago
    I felt I got into this point where everything was revolving around me. It was all about "me, me, me". And at that time, I suspected that most of my problems were generated by putting my opinions/ego on a pedestal. I still write sometimes when I want to clear things for myself in a notebook nobody will see. I think it can be therapeutic at times. But I'm in a point in my life where I think I need to get myself out of the way, be humble and enjoy everything else out there.
    - pqs 4y ago
      I'm glad you found this problem. I also had this problem (me, me, me) and realizing this has improved my life and the life of people surrounding me, a lot. Our ego is not our friend.
amelius 4y ago
Good thing. If he had dropped out to become a programmer, be probably would have ended up addicted like the rest of us :)
- rrishi 4y ago
  need a clarification ... addicted to what?
  - rizzaxc 4y ago
    to money and a lazy life I assume
DecayingOrganic 4y ago
Although this article is well-written, I'm not convinced that he was "lost," or that he didn't really like math, based only on a few anecdotal stories. Furthermore, the article says that "he dropped out of high school to become a poet," but please note that, a number of students drop out of high school in South Korea to fully focus on the college entrance exam, in hopes of getting into better universities. This is not uncommon at all. And sure enough, he got accepted into the best university in South Korea, majoring in astronomy and physics. One of his classes was even taught by a Fields Medalist. If this is his definition of "being lost," I'm not sure if I'll ever be found.
- thedailymail 4y ago
  There's a bit more detail about Huh's student days in this 2017 article. It does seem he was a real dropout, and aspiring poet prior to thinking about becoming a sci/tech reporter. He joined Hironaka's course thinking it would make a good journalistic story. https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak-of-the-math-world-20170627/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak...
- ken47 4y ago
  I can't say whether he disliked math, but I think it's clear that he didn't want to pursue it initially, for practical reasons if nothing else. As you can find in his bio on Wikipedia, he performed poorly on mathematical aptitude tests in elementary school, and so he thought he wouldn't be particularly good at it. If these are the kinds of math tests that I encountered as a kid (multiply, divide, solve single-variable equations, etc. as fast as humanly possible), it's unsurprising that he could still be good at abstract math, because these 2 skillsets have almost nothing in common.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    >these 2 skillsets have almost nothing in common Are you sure about that? I know at least some number theory can help with quick mental calculations. For example, I remember that if the digits of a number add to 9 the number itself is divisible by 9. I'm sure there are lots of other relationships like that.
ken47 4y ago
This passage caught my attention: He proceeds just as deliberately when doing mathematics. Wang was shocked when he first witnessed it. “I have this math competition experience, that as a mathematician you have to be clever, you have to be fast,” he said. “But June is the opposite. … If you talk to him for five minutes about some calculus problem, you’d think this guy wouldn’t pass a qualifying exam. He’s very slow.” So slow, in fact, that at first Wang thought they were wasting a lot of time on easy problems they already understood. But then he realized that Huh was learning even seemingly simple concepts in a much deeper way — and in precisely the way that would later prove useful. Having gone through the American education system, I felt like I was in a factory being evaluated as a potential end product. Steamroll through as much material as quickly as possible. Optimize behavioral patterns for the next performance metric. Rinse and repeat. Is this really the best system we can come up with? Can the pace of mathematical and scientific advancement be optimized by steamrollers? I wonder how much potential we've missed as a society because the education system has been trying to force everyone through the same hole, and destroying intellectual curiosity in the process. Personally, my experience with this educational system turned me off from "math." It was only much later in life when I learnt that the mindless algorithms that I had to personally execute for years on end to get into university could barely be considered math at all. Only then could I begin to appreciate how elegant real math could be. And I doubt I'm alone in my experience.
- buchoo 4y ago
  That passage reminded me of a remark by the 2002 French Fields Medalist Laurent Lafforgue: "My specificity today among French mathematicians is not to know more mathematics than others, I can even admit that I know less mathematics than most French and foreign mathematicians. It's not about being 'great' either, I'm not great at all, on the contrary I have a rather slow mind. When I listen to a seminar, I'm probably one of those who understand the least what is being said: an idea in an hour, for me, that's already a lot. No, the only explanation for the successes that I have been able to obtain in mathematics is my being imbued by the reading of the great classics." https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/index.php?p=https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/laurent-lafforgue.html https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/index.php?p=https://www.bien... As for your experience, you are indeed very far from alone.
astrange 4y ago
He has very good handwriting.
- tarentel 4y ago
  It's really quite beautiful. All but one of my math professors had terrible handwriting.
gfd 4y ago
“Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician. [Upon hearing that one of his students had dropped out to study poetry]” ― David Hilbert
BigglesB 4y ago
Don’t want to “diagnose at a distance”, but it’s difficult to read this and not see a lot of the guy’s quirks as being quite typical of someone incredibly smart who also has ADHD. Also don’t want to diminish his quite remarkable achievements in any way, either!
- ramraj07 4y ago
  It’s clear the article wanted to convey that as well (esp. given the photo of his lecture notes).
- user_7832 4y ago
  Yes! I literally ctr-F'ed the comment section for ADHD to see if someone had mentioned it already. I wonder if June himself knows, because and ADHD diagnosis and treatment can majorly help quality of life. Fortunately he seems to be already doing decently.
amoghs 4y ago
lol "later that year, Kim gave birth to their first son, Dan. While in labor, she caught Huh doing math."
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Labor for the first kid is often long - over 24 hours is common. There's nothing exceptional in what Huh did.
- astrange 4y ago
  It's actually best practice to make the dad do something pointless. It's not like he has anything better to do. Traditionally this would be the midwife making him go out to fetch hot water repeatedly.
option 4y ago
Four people got Fields medal today, including second woman in its history. Yet, HN discusses the article with catchiest title :D https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/2022-fields-and-abacus-medals/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/2022-fields-and-abacus-me...
jdcampolargo 4y ago
Why did he leave UIUC?
- foldedcornice 4y ago
  His full reasoning wasn't reported on by Quanta, but an article in 2017 noted that faculty from the University of Michigan invited him to transfer after hearing his talk on his proof of Read's conjecture. From the older article [0]: "Soon after he posted his proof of Read’s conjecture, the University of Michigan invited Huh to give a talk on his result. On December 3, 2010, he addressed a room full of many of the same mathematicians who had rejected his graduate school application a year earlier. By this point Huh’s talent was becoming evident to other mathematicians. Jesse Kass was a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at Michigan at the time. Just before Huh’s visit, a senior faculty member encouraged Kass to watch the talk because '30 years from now you can tell your grandchildren you saw Huh speak before he got famous,' recalled Kass, who’s now a professor at the University of South Carolina. "Huh’s lecture did not disappoint. "'The talk was somehow very polished and very clear; it just went to the right points. It’s a bit unusual for a beginning graduate student to give such clean talks,' said Mircea Mustaţă, a mathematician at Michigan. "Following his talk, the Michigan faculty invited Huh to transfer, which he did in 2011. By that point he’d learned that Read’s conjecture was a special case of a larger and more significant problem — the Rota conjecture."" [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak-of-the-math-world-20170627/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak...
gtsnexp 4y ago
Interesting article highlighting the relevance of a having a good mentor on early stages. However, I feel there is a slight issue with the "he is a genius and geniuses don't have to work hard" tone.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
spraveenitpro 4y ago
paulpauper 4y ago
This shows the power of IQ. Having a sufficiently high IQ means you can become a world-class master at a hard subject quickly, easily surpassing others who have decades of experience. It's the ultimate cheat code or power-up in life, second to have rich and well-connected parents, I suppose. Freddie Deboer is right that parents consider IQ to be very important, as much as society may try to downplay its importance or predictive value.
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  Jordan Peterson always says that, when it comes to predicting success in life, IQ has the highest predictive value of all the traits that we can currently measure.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Koreans might be discouraged there because their national example didn't do anything with his IQ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong The other problem being that "high IQ explains everything" people don't actually go around personally going around giving people IQ tests. They just read somewhere that X guy has IQ Y and then decide that's evidence for something.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  perhaps not, perhaps "deeply loving" something with a decent IQ is a better way to go. A lot of great discoveries come from people who have an independence of spirit and a strong love for a subject and not just raw IQ.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    you realize though that having a high IQ is the necessary condition. plenty of people are passionate about math , how many prove important stuff?
evermore99 4y ago
The new Norma Cenva - Butlerian Jihad Fank Herbert. The beginning of time travel
evermore99 4y ago
The new Norma Cenva. Time travel beginning. Folding space. Butlerian Jihad -Frank Herbert

355 points by digital55 4y ago

"it feels like you’re grabbing something that’s already there, rather than creating something in your mind." This is why the conceit of "intellectual property" has always bothered me. I relate to what he describes as "finding things". Those things are are eternally "out there" for all to find. I can put up a signpost or build a road to show you the way, but how can a mere man own what is part of the infinite and eternal?

InefficientRed 4y ago
Interestingly, patent law agrees with you — mathematical theorems, for example, cannot be patented. In principle, a patent should cover specific machinery/process/material designed for a task rather than the underlying more ephemeral/indefinite concept powering the invention. The interesting thing is that, of those, machine and process seem like the least conceited. Composition of matter seems more like sticking a flag in infinite ground. But in practice it’s the former two that power most of what I consider an abuse of the spirit of patent law. But perhaps that’s just my personal bias and the bio or materials people will disagree. What can we say? Profit motive is a strong incentive and lawyers/judges are clever. Anyways, with 7B people and counting, a term limited right to one idea in the infinite space of ideas seems less harmful than perpetual rights to a piece of land.
- j-pb 4y ago
  Except that they are in the form of software patents. We live in this complexity nightmare partly because all the simple and obvious solutions are easily patented.
- onedognight 4y ago
  > seems less harmful than perpetual rights to a piece of land. Interestingly, society agrees with you; for the most part, we don’t grant perpetual rights to a piece of land. Instead we charge property tax to ensure you are doing something productive with it. You have to generate enough free cash flow to pay the taxes or you lose the land.
  - InefficientRed 4y ago
    Not really. The property taxes on a piece of land I own are about $200 per year, which can be paid in perpetuity with a low five figure endowment stored in zero risk FDIC-insured CDs. In most counties, property taxes are fairly marginal and come nowhere near necessitating that land is used productively.
gsatic 4y ago
Maybe question could be - what to do about those people who have high loss aversion, status seeking traits, mindless ambition etc baked deep into their code? How to handle these type of people when they stumble upon something useful to everyone.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  That's actually a refreshing way of looking at something. The pathologically acquisitive are naturally a small part of the population suffering insecurity, often driven by early deprivation. Our natural instinct is to share intelligence, wrt food, predators, resources. I have a theory that the misnomer "intellectual property" is most ardently championed by (perhaps older) intelligent/creative people who fear losing their power. Fear that this may be their last great idea fosters withholding and subtracts from the opportunities of the many. This comes up in other contexts. In cybersecurity, if one discovers a new exploit the natural instinct for most people is responsible disclosure, even without a bounty. However, the temptation to privatise that knowledge as a sellable "zero-day" is powerful. But what we see is that it's the mediocre who do that more. Top 0.1% hackers are so confident in their ability to find more and deadlier exploits at will, they don't hoard as it's beneath them.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    > Top 0.1% hackers are so confident in their ability to find more and deadlier exploits at will, they don't hoard as it's beneath them. Or they probably see it as leverage for a job with a company at some point in the future. Or an achievement they can put on their resume or show the world. I might be wrong in assuming this, but I take it that you believe the disclosures of these top tier hackers are a result of an altruistic benevolence. If so, I think you're describing a soul rarer than the Loch Ness Monster. The best hackers do zero-day work because they love it and it pays (in cash, achievement, fame, etc.). If it doesn't pay, they'll probably find some other way of getting their kick upto and including trading exploits or data for cash. Even the hacker who saved the net from Mirai all those years ago sold exploits.
    - 4y ago
Someone 4y ago
That logic applies as well to minerals and fossils as to inventions. If I stumble upon a lump of gold, how can I own it? After all, it was merely “out there” to find. Also, the question whether math is discovered or invented is an old one, with arguments going either way. It’s not like people just stumble upon certain proofs, or that Newton was just lucky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Mathematical_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Math..., for example, holds that math would still exist if there were no life anywhere in the universe (maybe even if there were no universe)
justsomeguy123 4y ago
But you don't "own" that. You get a temporary rent. The problem is society (and tech) moves so fast it feels like the rent is too long. The idea to incentivize public sharing of knowledge for a short term rent is not so stupid.
- nwah1 4y ago
  In economics there is a concept called "search costs." And those costs need to be compensated if you want to encourage searching. But, of course, as you said, such compensation should not be in perpetuity. A patent, in this sense, is infinitely more reasonable than a land title as currently conceived.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Henry George would agree :p
bluecalm 4y ago
It's hard to say a novel you can write or a computer program is "out there" for everyone to find though. I find this argument very compelling against patents but not against copyright in general.
keiferski 4y ago
This assumes that Platonism is the correct model of reality. In mathematics specifically, Platonism is but one of many positions and is not accepted by all philosophers or mathematicians. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/
- Koshkin 4y ago
  But Platonism is not a model of anything at all. It’s just a philosophical idea which, by the way, has no impact on mathematics proper, either.
  - keiferski 4y ago
    Platonism is a metaphysical model of the universe. It’s also one of the most popular approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. This is explained in the link I posted.
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      In the link, they only talk about "models of a theory" and the "mathematical/set-theoretical universe," none of which has to do with "a metaphysical model of the universe."
      - keiferski 4y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism This is…basic philosophical knowledge about Plato’s ideas. It’s not up for debate.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
slightwinder 4y ago
Ownership is a legal right. You found/created it, so society gives you the right to rule about it's usage for a certain time. The same applies to physical objects. You own something, because society gives you the permission, not because you have the actual power to protect it with your own muscles. And there is nothing wrong with this concept; it encourages people to search and create, and prevents people from being abused by the strong and getting their findings stolen. Generally, this is beneficial for everyone and lets society moving forward and to higher levels of quality.

sam_lowry_ 4y ago

cinntaile 4y ago
If you get paid for it, it is.
aqme28 4y ago
If you can get paid to do it, is it not a profession?
- circlefavshape 4y ago
  I'd have thought a profession was something you made a living from, not something you sometimes got some money for - I sometimes get paid to play music in bars, but music is not my profession. Neither Philip Larkin nor Seamus Heaney made a living from poetry, so I'd guess nobody else does either
- martyvis 4y ago
  Depends on how you think about the act of professing. Taking it literally it would be those that profess - articulate, exude, demonstrate, apply - their knowledge, skill and experience. Remuneration could be seen as irrelevant in this context.
vivegi 4y ago
At least in the Indian film industry, we have songs and lyricists. Popular music may call them songwriters. Many lyricists are published poets and identify their vocation as a poet/writer.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I come to HN for such nuanced insight /s
Veen 4y ago
Nor is "developer" if we go by the traditional definition of the professions.

Markoff 4y ago

Ah yeah, everyone quickly drop out to be successful... /facepalm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

bsaul 4y ago
I must say after reading the article that i don’t even understand the title.. He seemed to have done a regular maths curriculum at university.
ktownsend 4y ago
I can empathize with the gut reaction, and the title is clickbait-y, but the article does elaborate that it's not the same tired trope of privileged kid drops out of Stanford/MIT/Harvard to become startup billionaire: > he dropped out of high school to become a poet. It would take a chance encounter during his university years — and many moments of feeling lost — for him to find that mathematics held what he’d been looking for all along. Having taken a similar path myself -- I dropped out of high school due to a combination of factors, but was still able to get into university 6 months later -- I can empathize with mandatory education NOT being something people fit into, and where making the right career choice isn't always clear or easy. Not everyone who 'dropped out' did it because of unlimited mom-and-dad-money and boundless professional and social opportunities, nor wears it like a badge of honor. I get tired of the trope and survivorship bias as well, but in this case it seems like the author did still put in the hard work of learning his niche the traditional way, if in a round-about manner: through a lot of hours of study, personal investment, natural curiosity, and using the abilities he has to the best of his abilities.
- tester756 4y ago
  >but was still able to get into university 6 months later How does that even work?
  - astrange 4y ago
    Some countries' systems rely on entrance exams, not your high school transcripts. I've seen it claimed it's common to drop out of high school in Korea to focus on the exams, though I don't really understand the details.

zuzuleinen 4y ago

"He found the writing process too focused on the self — and for him, that exploration was often painful and depressing. Moreover, as he later realized, “I wanted to be someone who writes great poetry,” he said. “I didn’t want to write great poetry.” Now he sees that version of himself as almost a complete stranger." That's the reason I deleted my personal blog. I felt that when I was writing publicly about my life/thoughts I was focusing too much on my ego.

kkleindev 4y ago
> I felt that when I was writing publicly about my life/thoughts I was focusing too much on my ego. Why do you want to avoid that?
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  To avoid over-feeding the beast known as ego?
  - lupire 4y ago
- zuzuleinen 4y ago
  I felt I got into this point where everything was revolving around me. It was all about "me, me, me". And at that time, I suspected that most of my problems were generated by putting my opinions/ego on a pedestal. I still write sometimes when I want to clear things for myself in a notebook nobody will see. I think it can be therapeutic at times. But I'm in a point in my life where I think I need to get myself out of the way, be humble and enjoy everything else out there.
  - pqs 4y ago
    I'm glad you found this problem. I also had this problem (me, me, me) and realizing this has improved my life and the life of people surrounding me, a lot. Our ego is not our friend.

amelius 4y ago

Good thing. If he had dropped out to become a programmer, be probably would have ended up addicted like the rest of us :)

rrishi 4y ago
need a clarification ... addicted to what?
- rizzaxc 4y ago
  to money and a lazy life I assume

DecayingOrganic 4y ago

Although this article is well-written, I'm not convinced that he was "lost," or that he didn't really like math, based only on a few anecdotal stories. Furthermore, the article says that "he dropped out of high school to become a poet," but please note that, a number of students drop out of high school in South Korea to fully focus on the college entrance exam, in hopes of getting into better universities. This is not uncommon at all. And sure enough, he got accepted into the best university in South Korea, majoring in astronomy and physics. One of his classes was even taught by a Fields Medalist. If this is his definition of "being lost," I'm not sure if I'll ever be found.

thedailymail 4y ago
There's a bit more detail about Huh's student days in this 2017 article. It does seem he was a real dropout, and aspiring poet prior to thinking about becoming a sci/tech reporter. He joined Hironaka's course thinking it would make a good journalistic story. https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak-of-the-math-world-20170627/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak...
ken47 4y ago
I can't say whether he disliked math, but I think it's clear that he didn't want to pursue it initially, for practical reasons if nothing else. As you can find in his bio on Wikipedia, he performed poorly on mathematical aptitude tests in elementary school, and so he thought he wouldn't be particularly good at it. If these are the kinds of math tests that I encountered as a kid (multiply, divide, solve single-variable equations, etc. as fast as humanly possible), it's unsurprising that he could still be good at abstract math, because these 2 skillsets have almost nothing in common.
- javajosh 4y ago
  >these 2 skillsets have almost nothing in common Are you sure about that? I know at least some number theory can help with quick mental calculations. For example, I remember that if the digits of a number add to 9 the number itself is divisible by 9. I'm sure there are lots of other relationships like that.

ken47 4y ago

This passage caught my attention: He proceeds just as deliberately when doing mathematics. Wang was shocked when he first witnessed it. “I have this math competition experience, that as a mathematician you have to be clever, you have to be fast,” he said. “But June is the opposite. … If you talk to him for five minutes about some calculus problem, you’d think this guy wouldn’t pass a qualifying exam. He’s very slow.” So slow, in fact, that at first Wang thought they were wasting a lot of time on easy problems they already understood. But then he realized that Huh was learning even seemingly simple concepts in a much deeper way — and in precisely the way that would later prove useful. Having gone through the American education system, I felt like I was in a factory being evaluated as a potential end product. Steamroll through as much material as quickly as possible. Optimize behavioral patterns for the next performance metric. Rinse and repeat. Is this really the best system we can come up with? Can the pace of mathematical and scientific advancement be optimized by steamrollers? I wonder how much potential we've missed as a society because the education system has been trying to force everyone through the same hole, and destroying intellectual curiosity in the process. Personally, my experience with this educational system turned me off from "math." It was only much later in life when I learnt that the mindless algorithms that I had to personally execute for years on end to get into university could barely be considered math at all. Only then could I begin to appreciate how elegant real math could be. And I doubt I'm alone in my experience.

buchoo 4y ago
That passage reminded me of a remark by the 2002 French Fields Medalist Laurent Lafforgue: "My specificity today among French mathematicians is not to know more mathematics than others, I can even admit that I know less mathematics than most French and foreign mathematicians. It's not about being 'great' either, I'm not great at all, on the contrary I have a rather slow mind. When I listen to a seminar, I'm probably one of those who understand the least what is being said: an idea in an hour, for me, that's already a lot. No, the only explanation for the successes that I have been able to obtain in mathematics is my being imbued by the reading of the great classics." https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/index.php?p=https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/laurent-lafforgue.html https://www.biennale-lf.org/b22/index.php?p=https://www.bien... As for your experience, you are indeed very far from alone.

astrange 4y ago

He has very good handwriting.

tarentel 4y ago
It's really quite beautiful. All but one of my math professors had terrible handwriting.

gfd 4y ago

“Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician. [Upon hearing that one of his students had dropped out to study poetry]” ― David Hilbert

BigglesB 4y ago

Don’t want to “diagnose at a distance”, but it’s difficult to read this and not see a lot of the guy’s quirks as being quite typical of someone incredibly smart who also has ADHD. Also don’t want to diminish his quite remarkable achievements in any way, either!

ramraj07 4y ago
It’s clear the article wanted to convey that as well (esp. given the photo of his lecture notes).
user_7832 4y ago
Yes! I literally ctr-F'ed the comment section for ADHD to see if someone had mentioned it already. I wonder if June himself knows, because and ADHD diagnosis and treatment can majorly help quality of life. Fortunately he seems to be already doing decently.

amoghs 4y ago

lol "later that year, Kim gave birth to their first son, Dan. While in labor, she caught Huh doing math."

BeetleB 4y ago
Labor for the first kid is often long - over 24 hours is common. There's nothing exceptional in what Huh did.
astrange 4y ago
It's actually best practice to make the dad do something pointless. It's not like he has anything better to do. Traditionally this would be the midwife making him go out to fetch hot water repeatedly.

option 4y ago

Four people got Fields medal today, including second woman in its history. Yet, HN discusses the article with catchiest title :D https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/2022-fields-and-abacus-medals/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/2022-fields-and-abacus-me...

jdcampolargo 4y ago

Why did he leave UIUC?

foldedcornice 4y ago
His full reasoning wasn't reported on by Quanta, but an article in 2017 noted that faculty from the University of Michigan invited him to transfer after hearing his talk on his proof of Read's conjecture. From the older article [0]: "Soon after he posted his proof of Read’s conjecture, the University of Michigan invited Huh to give a talk on his result. On December 3, 2010, he addressed a room full of many of the same mathematicians who had rejected his graduate school application a year earlier. By this point Huh’s talent was becoming evident to other mathematicians. Jesse Kass was a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at Michigan at the time. Just before Huh’s visit, a senior faculty member encouraged Kass to watch the talk because '30 years from now you can tell your grandchildren you saw Huh speak before he got famous,' recalled Kass, who’s now a professor at the University of South Carolina. "Huh’s lecture did not disappoint. "'The talk was somehow very polished and very clear; it just went to the right points. It’s a bit unusual for a beginning graduate student to give such clean talks,' said Mircea Mustaţă, a mathematician at Michigan. "Following his talk, the Michigan faculty invited Huh to transfer, which he did in 2011. By that point he’d learned that Read’s conjecture was a special case of a larger and more significant problem — the Rota conjecture."" [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak-of-the-math-world-20170627/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak...

gtsnexp 4y ago

Interesting article highlighting the relevance of a having a good mentor on early stages. However, I feel there is a slight issue with the "he is a genius and geniuses don't have to work hard" tone.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

spraveenitpro 4y ago

paulpauper 4y ago

This shows the power of IQ. Having a sufficiently high IQ means you can become a world-class master at a hard subject quickly, easily surpassing others who have decades of experience. It's the ultimate cheat code or power-up in life, second to have rich and well-connected parents, I suppose. Freddie Deboer is right that parents consider IQ to be very important, as much as society may try to downplay its importance or predictive value.

burntoutfire 4y ago
Jordan Peterson always says that, when it comes to predicting success in life, IQ has the highest predictive value of all the traits that we can currently measure.
- astrange 4y ago
  Koreans might be discouraged there because their national example didn't do anything with his IQ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong The other problem being that "high IQ explains everything" people don't actually go around personally going around giving people IQ tests. They just read somewhere that X guy has IQ Y and then decide that's evidence for something.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
perhaps not, perhaps "deeply loving" something with a decent IQ is a better way to go. A lot of great discoveries come from people who have an independence of spirit and a strong love for a subject and not just raw IQ.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  you realize though that having a high IQ is the necessary condition. plenty of people are passionate about math , how many prove important stuff?

evermore99 4y ago

The new Norma Cenva - Butlerian Jihad Fank Herbert. The beginning of time travel

evermore99 4y ago

The new Norma Cenva. Time travel beginning. Folding space. Butlerian Jihad -Frank Herbert