4 ms·

In the New World, the Ramanujans' lives are spent optimizing high-frequency trading, ads or video recommendation algorithms. This is arguably even worse for soc

by maeil 2y ago

In the New World, the Ramanujans' lives are spent optimizing high-frequency trading, ads or video recommendation algorithms. This is arguably even worse for society than them not being discovered altogethrt.

fragmede 2y ago
Arguably. Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  Those bombs might have done more good than his potential math career. Considering we just had our first AI millionaire. Perhaps there is hope for humanity to wake up.
- sealeck 2y ago
  > The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail. There might be a middle ground between the two?
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    I think they're talking about specifically the Unabomber, who was known to be a math genius too.
    - sealeck 2y ago
      I'm aware of that.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? I think that if you tried you could imagine a world where Ramanujans are both supported and respected with nice lives, while also contributing to the future of the species rather than helping dig our own grave. > The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail. Why in the world would those be the only two options?? What a profoundly strange thing to say.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    You mean a world where someone like Terence Tao gets to be a professor of mathematics at UCLA, where he holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences? That brilliant geniuses have chosen corporate America and to not go into academia is yours and mine and the world's loss, but a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      > a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves. ... As if people outside the West have no self-determination? Pretty questionable, on multiple levels. And another indication of absurdly binary thinking/rhetoric. Good luck with that.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
People like Ramanujan are on a different planet compared to your everyday PhD working stiffs. There's smart (PhD), there's genius (Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann), and then there are freaks of nature like Ramanujan.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  I'm an atheist, but why not take Ramanujan at his word when he says that god(s) gives him his equations? I for one would ask him what we could do to make it easier for him to listen to the voice of god(s) rather than say "well akshually..."
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    Well, he's dead, so there's that ... I'm not sure there's much you can do to help someone at this level, other than perhaps take away outside distractions. It's not remotely clear how Ramanujan's mind worked, or whether he really knew himself. He seems to have been a lot more highly functioning than an idiot savant, but still operating at a level that is hard to comprehend. Was this an expression of humility or devotion by Ramanujan, or was he just expressing his own lack of understanding of how his mind worked?
    - regularfry 2y ago
      There's a parallel there to Feynman, if you squint a bit. He seems to have been synaesthetic in a way that let him use the sensory part of his brain as a maths coprocessor, and he didn't understand it himself.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
        Feymann seems more understandable. He wanted to understand everything from first principles and derive it all himself, and spent a lifetime doing so, building himself up. He developed a huge repertoire of insights and mathematical tricks/approaches that could be brought to bear on whatever he put his mind to... It seems like he trained his mind to become what it was. The end result was of course incredible, and he would instantly or within hours see solutions to problems that colleagues had been stuck on for months. Feynmann, like von Neumann, also seems more approachable/understandable in that he wasn't just operating at genius level, but was also a regular fun loving guy (strip clubs, bongo drums, safe hacking and all). Von Neumann and some of his Hungarian peers were famously referred to as "The Martians", but it's really Ramanujan who seems like the alien.

by maeil 2y ago

fragmede 2y ago

Arguably. Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.

ImHereToVote 2y ago
Those bombs might have done more good than his potential math career. Considering we just had our first AI millionaire. Perhaps there is hope for humanity to wake up.
sealeck 2y ago
> The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail. There might be a middle ground between the two?
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  I think they're talking about specifically the Unabomber, who was known to be a math genius too.
  - sealeck 2y ago
    I'm aware of that.
mandmandam 2y ago
> Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? I think that if you tried you could imagine a world where Ramanujans are both supported and respected with nice lives, while also contributing to the future of the species rather than helping dig our own grave. > The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail. Why in the world would those be the only two options?? What a profoundly strange thing to say.
- fragmede 2y ago
  You mean a world where someone like Terence Tao gets to be a professor of mathematics at UCLA, where he holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences? That brilliant geniuses have chosen corporate America and to not go into academia is yours and mine and the world's loss, but a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves. ... As if people outside the West have no self-determination? Pretty questionable, on multiple levels. And another indication of absurdly binary thinking/rhetoric. Good luck with that.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

People like Ramanujan are on a different planet compared to your everyday PhD working stiffs. There's smart (PhD), there's genius (Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann), and then there are freaks of nature like Ramanujan.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
I'm an atheist, but why not take Ramanujan at his word when he says that god(s) gives him his equations? I for one would ask him what we could do to make it easier for him to listen to the voice of god(s) rather than say "well akshually..."
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  Well, he's dead, so there's that ... I'm not sure there's much you can do to help someone at this level, other than perhaps take away outside distractions. It's not remotely clear how Ramanujan's mind worked, or whether he really knew himself. He seems to have been a lot more highly functioning than an idiot savant, but still operating at a level that is hard to comprehend. Was this an expression of humility or devotion by Ramanujan, or was he just expressing his own lack of understanding of how his mind worked?
  - regularfry 2y ago
    There's a parallel there to Feynman, if you squint a bit. He seems to have been synaesthetic in a way that let him use the sensory part of his brain as a maths coprocessor, and he didn't understand it himself.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      Feymann seems more understandable. He wanted to understand everything from first principles and derive it all himself, and spent a lifetime doing so, building himself up. He developed a huge repertoire of insights and mathematical tricks/approaches that could be brought to bear on whatever he put his mind to... It seems like he trained his mind to become what it was. The end result was of course incredible, and he would instantly or within hours see solutions to problems that colleagues had been stuck on for months. Feynmann, like von Neumann, also seems more approachable/understandable in that he wasn't just operating at genius level, but was also a regular fun loving guy (strip clubs, bongo drums, safe hacking and all). Von Neumann and some of his Hungarian peers were famously referred to as "The Martians", but it's really Ramanujan who seems like the alien.