8 ms·

Dunno. My granddad was a mathematician and my mother was a mathematician (and my father was a mathematician and a computer scientist, but they divorced). Still

Dunno. My granddad was a mathematician and my mother was a mathematician (and my father was a mathematician and a computer scientist, but they divorced). Still the only “math immersion” I got was Perelman books, scattered around our apartment, like Physics for Entertainment and Algebra for Fun: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AYakov+Perelman https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AYakov+Perelm... They are both challenging and entertaining and very simple - on the surface. Some were written in 1913 or so. Each American family can get such an “immersion” for their kids - total is less than $100 I guess. But you also should turn off TV and computers, so probably would not work. Also my daughter took major in mathematics - and I like my parents had no time to immerse her in anything - adults work, children play with fun but impractical problems. I would rather guess that it is some genetic defect in the brain causing a person to prefer playing with abstract problems to booze, smoke and sexual gratification. But I doubt that having such a guess is allowed.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> I would rather guess that it is some genetic defect in the brain causing a person to prefer playing with abstract problems to booze, smoke and sexual gratification. But I doubt that having such a guess is allowed. Understandable given it's a comically elitist point of view. Fun fact: Richard Feynman experimented with both LSD and Ketamine, among other things. Shame, imagine how much he could have achieved if he had this "genetic defect" you posit...
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Yep and Einstein got laaaaaaaid.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Elitist?? I doubt that any American family has a lower standard of living, than a Soviet math post-graduate student, single mother of two. We have no permanent beds only folding ones, I made my studies on a drawing board put over a sewing machine (do you know what sewing machine is for? It’s to repair your old clothing) our apartment was shared by two families, it has no hot water and water itself was de facto rationed. In elementary school - while my mother was on the field trips gathering data for her PhD thesis on methan gas distribution in coal mines of Donbass region I was living with my mathematician granddad. It was a small house shared by three families, no running water and amenities inside. My grandparents grew their own vegetables since you can’t buy vegetables on the market (since there were no market), and even bread was rationed - it was Khrushchev time. Elitist family, indeed. Btw my ancestors were slaves, freed about the same time American slaves were freed. And then communists killed a brother of granddad, and a father of my stepfather, and then national-socialists killed the only brother of my mother, my uncle. My stepfather was never allowed to college, as a son of the “enemy of the people”. If you want to see “elitist” - look at any American house.
  - bumby 4y ago
    You might not know the wide variability in American standards of living. I had a SO who did not experience much luxury growing up. They had to run an extension cord from a charitable neighbor to have electricity to do their homework. It wasn't uncommon for them to sleep bundled up in winter clothes together in the living room because they had no heat. I understand television may give a false impression of the American lifestyle, but there's a wide range of experience in a country approaching 400MM people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Come to New Orleans and after I am done giving you tour of some neighborhoods let's see what you say.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      As one Indian professor I don’t know said to a Russian-Mexican professor I do know while the latter was giving the former a tour on some unhappy parts of Mexico City: “You want to surprise me with poverty? Look, everyone here has shoes”. Our company moved to San Francisco in late 90s to save money before IPO. The location was right near Tenderloin, the murder capital of the US. I walked through it from time to time. Nothing special, a city like a city. I remember thinking: how nice it is to walk through American streets - so less aggression in the air… There was a huge homeless camp though near Civic Center. There was a homeless man sleeping near a back door to our office, he once saved a girl patronizing a local bar from rape. In Soviet Union these homeless would have been rounded up and moved to some rural location not near than 100 km to any big city. Some could have been criminally tried even, like “elitist” Soviet poet Brodsky who was tried and convicted for a lack of permanent job. “Elitist” who can be tried and convicted any time authorities do not like something he says? (I kinda worried that Americans do not feel that personal freedoms had much value, and are willing to trade them for some fashionable illusion). But I can agree that there can be found some Americans who are materially worse than our family was. Still, calling us elitists - is a sign of laughable ignorance of the world at large.
- c1ccccc1 4y ago
  Is that really true about Feynman? I thought he wrote in "Surely You're Joking" that he didn't take psychoactive drugs because he loved thinking and he "didn't want to mess up the machine".
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    My understanding is he was reluctant in his earlier days but did indeed experiment later in life. From: https://gizmodo.com/10-scientific-and-technological-visionaries-who-experim-5876304 https://gizmodo.com/10-scientific-and-technological-visionar... > Nevertheless, Feynman's curiosity got the best of him when he became acquainted with none other than John C. Lilly and his sensory deprivation tanks. Feynman experimented briefly with LSD, ketamine, and marijuana, which he used to bring on isolation-induced hallucinations more quickly than he could when sober. As an aside, that page has a list of other notable scientists who also experimented with psychoactive drugs.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      The article you linked left out that Mullis not only took acid, he wrote a Nature paper on universal time reversal based on ideas he had on a trip in Golden Gate Park.
bumby 4y ago
>I would rather guess that it is some genetic defect in the brain causing a person to prefer playing with abstract problems to booze They may not be as mutually exclusive as you think. I remember reading some research years ago that investigated the positive correlation between alcohol abuse and IQ. Their theory was that high IQ personalities seek novelty and that can manifest in chasing novel mental states.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  That may be true, but my “living experience” is causing me to doubt it, heavily. I’ve seen a lot of guys - most of them more gifted than me in math (I actually switched to computer science after 2 years in university cause I fell in love with computers but math seemed too abstract to me) - so I’ve seen both brains and lives of these bright guys completely destroyed by alcohol abuse, completely destroyed, not an easy thing to watch.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
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BaseballPhysics 4y ago

> I would rather guess that it is some genetic defect in the brain causing a person to prefer playing with abstract problems to booze, smoke and sexual gratification. But I doubt that having such a guess is allowed. Understandable given it's a comically elitist point of view. Fun fact: Richard Feynman experimented with both LSD and Ketamine, among other things. Shame, imagine how much he could have achieved if he had this "genetic defect" you posit...

jamiek88 4y ago
Yep and Einstein got laaaaaaaid.
MikePlacid 4y ago
Elitist?? I doubt that any American family has a lower standard of living, than a Soviet math post-graduate student, single mother of two. We have no permanent beds only folding ones, I made my studies on a drawing board put over a sewing machine (do you know what sewing machine is for? It’s to repair your old clothing) our apartment was shared by two families, it has no hot water and water itself was de facto rationed. In elementary school - while my mother was on the field trips gathering data for her PhD thesis on methan gas distribution in coal mines of Donbass region I was living with my mathematician granddad. It was a small house shared by three families, no running water and amenities inside. My grandparents grew their own vegetables since you can’t buy vegetables on the market (since there were no market), and even bread was rationed - it was Khrushchev time. Elitist family, indeed. Btw my ancestors were slaves, freed about the same time American slaves were freed. And then communists killed a brother of granddad, and a father of my stepfather, and then national-socialists killed the only brother of my mother, my uncle. My stepfather was never allowed to college, as a son of the “enemy of the people”. If you want to see “elitist” - look at any American house.
- bumby 4y ago
  You might not know the wide variability in American standards of living. I had a SO who did not experience much luxury growing up. They had to run an extension cord from a charitable neighbor to have electricity to do their homework. It wasn't uncommon for them to sleep bundled up in winter clothes together in the living room because they had no heat. I understand television may give a false impression of the American lifestyle, but there's a wide range of experience in a country approaching 400MM people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Come to New Orleans and after I am done giving you tour of some neighborhoods let's see what you say.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    As one Indian professor I don’t know said to a Russian-Mexican professor I do know while the latter was giving the former a tour on some unhappy parts of Mexico City: “You want to surprise me with poverty? Look, everyone here has shoes”. Our company moved to San Francisco in late 90s to save money before IPO. The location was right near Tenderloin, the murder capital of the US. I walked through it from time to time. Nothing special, a city like a city. I remember thinking: how nice it is to walk through American streets - so less aggression in the air… There was a huge homeless camp though near Civic Center. There was a homeless man sleeping near a back door to our office, he once saved a girl patronizing a local bar from rape. In Soviet Union these homeless would have been rounded up and moved to some rural location not near than 100 km to any big city. Some could have been criminally tried even, like “elitist” Soviet poet Brodsky who was tried and convicted for a lack of permanent job. “Elitist” who can be tried and convicted any time authorities do not like something he says? (I kinda worried that Americans do not feel that personal freedoms had much value, and are willing to trade them for some fashionable illusion). But I can agree that there can be found some Americans who are materially worse than our family was. Still, calling us elitists - is a sign of laughable ignorance of the world at large.
c1ccccc1 4y ago
Is that really true about Feynman? I thought he wrote in "Surely You're Joking" that he didn't take psychoactive drugs because he loved thinking and he "didn't want to mess up the machine".
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  My understanding is he was reluctant in his earlier days but did indeed experiment later in life. From: https://gizmodo.com/10-scientific-and-technological-visionaries-who-experim-5876304 https://gizmodo.com/10-scientific-and-technological-visionar... > Nevertheless, Feynman's curiosity got the best of him when he became acquainted with none other than John C. Lilly and his sensory deprivation tanks. Feynman experimented briefly with LSD, ketamine, and marijuana, which he used to bring on isolation-induced hallucinations more quickly than he could when sober. As an aside, that page has a list of other notable scientists who also experimented with psychoactive drugs.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The article you linked left out that Mullis not only took acid, he wrote a Nature paper on universal time reversal based on ideas he had on a trip in Golden Gate Park.

bumby 4y ago

>I would rather guess that it is some genetic defect in the brain causing a person to prefer playing with abstract problems to booze They may not be as mutually exclusive as you think. I remember reading some research years ago that investigated the positive correlation between alcohol abuse and IQ. Their theory was that high IQ personalities seek novelty and that can manifest in chasing novel mental states.

MikePlacid 4y ago
That may be true, but my “living experience” is causing me to doubt it, heavily. I’ve seen a lot of guys - most of them more gifted than me in math (I actually switched to computer science after 2 years in university cause I fell in love with computers but math seemed too abstract to me) - so I’ve seen both brains and lives of these bright guys completely destroyed by alcohol abuse, completely destroyed, not an easy thing to watch.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 4y ago

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