[HN Gopher] Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern alg...
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Oscar Zariski was one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry
Author : boogiemath
Score : 180 points
Date : 2024-07-27 12:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (boogiemath.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (boogiemath.org)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Nice little story, the bride was not upset. But a interesting
| read.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Reminds me of the story about Weiner, who forgot he moved.
|
| Apparently a true story, but the version where he also didn't
| recognize his daughter (waiting for him at his previous home to
| show him to the new one) was an embellishment; at his funeral,
| his daughter said "dad never forgot who his children were".
| mandibeet wrote:
| I think such anecdotes and concepts reflect the complexity of
| human nature
| blendergeek wrote:
| Headline should be "Oscar Zariski - forgot about his own wedding"
| in accordance with HN headline guidelines.
| thih9 wrote:
| Could you cite the guideline? I couldn't find it; I thought the
| idea is to use the original title where possible.
|
| > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| It's literal clickbait as you're moved to click to figure out
| who that man is.
| nikolajan wrote:
| This isn't clickbait in the slightest, this low level
| obsession with labeling anything that isn't entirely
| descriptive as clickbait is obnoxious.
|
| Not every article title has to be "A 500 word blog post on
| Oscar Zariski, covering years 1899-1960, published May 26th
| 3PM EST, by Boogie Math"
| blendergeek wrote:
| Oscar Zariski - forgot about his own wedding is the original
| title on the article.
|
| The title I objected to was "A man who forgot about his own
| wedding". This title was actually edited to make it more
| clickbaity before it was later edited to be less clickbaity.
| raldi wrote:
| And in this case, it seems misleading and definitely
| clickbait. The quote at the end doesn't support the claim
| that he forgot anything.
|
| The citation (https://books.google.com/books?id=9zu0BQAAQBAJ&
| pg=PA33&lpg=P... ) doesn't support the claim either. It
| sounds more like the story was: While waiting for his wife to
| arrive at their wedding ceremony, he stepped away and passed
| the time by working on a problem.
| dang wrote:
| This seems to be one of those non-converging title sequences
| because no option satisfies everyone.
|
| We eventually changed it to "Oscar Zariski was one of the
| founders of modern algebraic geometry", even though this omits
| the anecdote which the thread is mostly about. People won't
| miss that if they see the article's own title though.
| mpalmer wrote:
| I like the post, and I would upvote it if the title was more
| descriptive of the actual content instead of a clickbait-y "hook"
| that hints nothing about the topic.
|
| I thought I'd be reading about an interesting neuroscience case
| (or whatever), but it's a review/short synopsis of a
| mathematician's biography. The wedding anecdote is just the last
| paragraph.
| waynecochran wrote:
| I think it's difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that
| the Russian Revolution brought to the working people.
|
| That hypotheses didn't workout very well.
| ben_w wrote:
| Now I'm curious: most of us are familiar with what the USSR did
| wrong, were they better or worse than the Tsars before them?
| jfengel wrote:
| It kinda depends on how you measure.
|
| Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal
| agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled.
| And the process killed literally millions -- some from
| outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement.
|
| Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural
| societies can be very conservative. And things had been
| slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures
| that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century.
| Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that
| could easily have gone the other way and saved the
| institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations
| of improvements.
|
| So... depends.
| waynecochran wrote:
| One metric would be body count. 20th century Marxists are
| somewhere between 60 and 148 million dead. Hard to top that.
| datameta wrote:
| One thing that puzzles me is those people who shudder at
| comparing Stalin's murderous spree with what Hitler's
| effects were. Is it the cognitive dissonance of not wanting
| to believe that we not only allied with a genocidal
| dictatorship but heavily supplied them with industrial
| output during the war? My family lived in the USSR and I
| can say for a fact - knowing it was the NKVD rather than
| Gestapo that might knock on the door in the middle of the
| night to disappear your father or uncle was of little
| consolation.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Most people don't know that Lenin was sent to Russia from
| his Swiss exile by the Germans in a sealed diplomatic
| train with the express intent to induce the October
| revolution and end the hostilities on that front. It was
| done to the Russians by cynical Germans who still ended
| up losing WWI.
|
| Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented
| attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for
| them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won
| WWII at the cost of Russian lives.
|
| I'm one of those people who see China as a bigger threat
| to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give
| Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented
| divisions between Russia and China. It would have been
| possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds
| ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the
| bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that
| was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done
| and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China
| and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as
| well be considered a single entity. I think the west
| overestimated its strength, and even now with the
| posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it
| appears that the West doesn't understand that warfare has
| forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would
| have woken people up to that reality but somehow we're
| holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable.
|
| I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts
| to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations
| governed by astute politicians would have found ways to
| successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a
| multipolar world which we're likely to get anyway. I much
| prefer the Chinese way of fighting with 'high tech
| overproduction' and wish we could 'fight back' with our
| own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it,
| especially since the alternative is massively
| destructive.
| surfingdino wrote:
| China no longer sees Russia as a partner, but a vassal
| state. They rejected Putin's proposal for the Siberian
| pipeline and are slowing down deliveries of various
| components needed to manufacture weapons. Chinese banks
| are limiting their dealing with Russian banks and
| companies to avoid sanctions. Like it or hate it, US
| Dollar is the world's reserve currency and getting cut
| off from the global banking network is not worth all the
| gold that Putin can offer. China doesn't want Russia to
| attack other countries, because like a wise drug dealer,
| it does not want to loose its customers. Russia is
| killing them and that messes with China's business. To be
| honest if China could capture Putin and give him to the
| West in a box with a red ribbon it would. They saw how
| weak he is and have no respect for him.
|
| On top of that, China has its own problems--demographic
| and economic. Russia cannot help China solve them so
| China is happy to see Russia bleed and slowly descend
| into the inevitable chaos once the Russian economy
| collapses. Xi will be happy to carve out a part of Russia
| for himself once an opportunity presents itself. Although
| how much more of a really backwards population and barren
| land he needs is a open question.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I don't agree with your assessments but I don't have the
| time to discuss it on HN. Back to work for me.
| racional wrote:
| _Instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we
| should have again fermented divisions between Russia and
| China._
|
| Your reading of what's driving Western support for
| Ukraine is completely wrong here. They're not simply
| doing it to "give Russia a bloody nose" for its own sake.
| They certainly don't _mind_ if that 's what Russia gets
| out of it. But that's not the key objective in itself.
|
| On the flip side: "fermenting divisions between Russia
| and China" is just fantasy, as at the moment U.S. is
| really quite inept in regard to such influence. It has no
| clue how to do that effectively (and any efforts it did
| take in that direction would most likely be moot and/or
| backfire).
|
| _I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts
| to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations
| governed by astute politicians would have found ways to
| successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a
| multipolar world which we're likely to get anyway._
|
| Okay, multipolar world, whatever.
|
| But what it really comes down to is this: the only way to
| have "avoided war" (after 2014) would have been to simply
| give Russia what it wanted -- recognized sovereignty over
| significant chunks of territory (most likely at least as
| much as it's sitting on now), combined with permanent
| limits on Ukraine's own sovereignty (in terms of its
| ability to enter treaties).
|
| If you think this would have been (or still would be) an
| astute course of action -- you might as well come out an
| say so.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think peace could have been bought at the cost of
| neutrality, so sovereignty yes. I'm sure Ukraine would
| have been far better off with that, and there are many
| hundred of thousands of men who definitely would be.
|
| It is hard to discuss this with people because it appears
| to me that most people are divorced from reality of the
| war. The framing of it has been warped and anyone who
| strays from the NAFO line is somehow an apologist. I hate
| this war and I hate the wars that it seems we're on the
| precipice of starting with China and Iran and world will
| be much worse off when that happens.
| racional wrote:
| _I think peace could have been bought at the cost of
| neutrality, so sovereignty yes._
|
| It's possible of course, but it's also speculative, and
| the window for that option is long since closed -- once
| Putin grabbed the Crimea and then the LNR/DNR, the
| "neutrality" bid fell from the table.
|
| In any case he's been quite consistent about maintaining
| whatever regions he's currently occupying (and likely
| then some, according to the most recent formulations).
|
| So if we're to buy peace now by just giving him what he
| wants -- that (or some approximation thereof) is what
| he'll be demanding. In any case it seems extremely
| unlikely he'd accept a neutrality-only bid by this point.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| * once Putin grabbed the Crimea and then the LNR/DNR, the
| "neutrality" bid fell from the table
|
| For a while it looked like Ukraine was turning the tide
| and they were told then not to negotiate for peace
| because they didn't have to - wait for an even better
| negotiating position. So they're told don't negotiate
| when you're loosing and don't negotiate when you're
| winning which approximate boils down to don't negotiate.
| Many things are possible when the alternative is losing a
| hugely destructive war. I.e. these things were and still
| remain on the table. Sure, Ukraine's not getting their
| land back unless they win the war but how likely is that
| to happen anyway.
|
| Knowing Ukraine before the war there was already a huge
| Ukraine vs Russia ethnic divide that was being made worse
| by the Ukrainian government passing anti-Russian laws. I
| see Putins objectives as bringing ethnic Russians back
| into the fold and establishing a buffer zone. I think if
| a real Russia-NATO conflict broke out Russia out of
| necessity would turn to nukes pretty quickly - so I see
| this Russia-Ukraine war as less of a war of a conquest
| and more of a way to avoid nuking their Russian Ukrainian
| cousins if a full scale Russia-NATO war was to break out.
| They would have less qualms nuking West Ukraine as there
| are fewer cousins in the west so that would be free to be
| part of NATO.
|
| There is the premise that Russia would not honor such an
| agreement of neutrality and I don't agree with that
| premise for a raft of reasons. If the premise that an
| embolden Putin will go on a concurring rampage I would
| have to disagree with that as well for another raft of
| reasons.
|
| I don't have time to go into the whole history of it now
| - but I think an outcome where Ukraine splits in two
| where West Ukraine is a neutralized entity or absorbed
| into their surrounding NATO countries would have been and
| is still possible. Yes that would mean NATO on Russia's
| boarder but there is already a huge NATO boarder on
| Russia - that wasn't the problem.
|
| I was looking to move to Ukraine in 2020 because I think
| it's a lovely country and Lviv is a lovely city. Very
| cheap where I could exist cheaply and spend my time
| reading books. It's a very corrupt country which does
| keep prices down but makes business difficult - but since
| my source of money is foreign I could effectively hide my
| wealth and avoid attracting attention. I decided against
| it because I did expect this war to break out as people
| were not taking Russia's warnings seriously. They had a
| lot of 'fixer-upper' housing that looked like they were
| already bombed, the housing was cheap but the problem is
| if you turn up with a bunch of money to fix the housing
| you're going catch the attention of the corrupt mobsters.
| I think Lviv would be an even nicer city if governed by
| Poland as it has been before in the not so distant past.
| ben_w wrote:
| The impression I have is that right now, this war is seen
| as existential for both Russia, Ukraine, and several EU
| states.
|
| For Ukraine, they need to win by such a severe margin
| that Russia doesn't even think to lick its wounds,
| rebuild its strength, and try again.
|
| For Russia... well, it's really about Putin. And he dares
| not show any sign of weakness, which would include ceding
| the "loss" of the territory which he has officially
| claimed to recognise as part of Russia.
|
| The EU has several ex-Soviet and ex-Warsaw-pact states
| which openly regard a Russian victory to be an
| existential threat (as in "we're next"); this would
| remain the case regardless of what happens with NATO. But
| NATO does also exist, and even if the USA leaves the UK
| has a significant arms industry that would come in
| addition to that of also-EU members like France.
|
| I don't think China cares beyond the degree to which it
| might take focus away from whatever it is they want to
| do. They seem to be quite content to rapidly ramp up
| their industrial capacity and general economic output, be
| the world's factory and hypermarket.
|
| The west collectively is, I think, worried about
| escalation precisely because of the nuclear option. Our
| leaders want Russia to leave Ukraine in peace and
| recognise its sovereignty, while also itself remaining
| stable as it does so... which I don't think is possible,
| but I'd like it to be (and what do I know anyway, I'm
| software engineering, not international geopolitics).
|
| Personally I _suspect_ that the Russia nuclear arsenal is
| in a bad state: the main armed forces at the start of the
| invasion were terrible because they weren 't expecting to
| not need to have to do more than show up, and similar
| logic applies to nukes.
|
| But!
|
| 1) One small nuke is enough for a high-altitude EMP to
| cause severe issues.
|
| 2) I wouldn't want to risk an entire country on a dice
| roll.
| racional wrote:
| _And they were told then not to negotiate for peace
| because they didn 't have to_
|
| This is a rather condescending attitude which assumes the
| Ukrainians have no agency over their situation, and are
| just doing what their Western puppet masters tell them to
| do.
|
| _I was looking to move to Ukraine in 2020 because I
| think it 's a lovely country and Lviv is a lovely city.
| Very cheap where I could exist cheaply and spend my time
| reading books. BTW it'd be an even nicer city if it were
| governed by Poland._
|
| Please don't, as you plainly don't respect the country or
| the people living there.
|
| If you'd prefer to live under Polish administration, try
| Wroclaw.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It's not condescending it's reality, and they're now
| dealing with the consequences of that reality. What is
| that leftist refrain, 'freedom of speech not freedom from
| consequences'. They're exercising their sovereignty which
| is their right, I think better choices could have been
| made but that's just my opinion.
|
| In life we must deal with reality, the strong do what
| they can and the weak endure what they must. Most of us
| don't get to live life from a constant position of
| strength and must be able to negotiate from a position of
| weakness which involves picking the least bad choices.
| The West has enjoyed an extended period of being able to
| negotiate from a position of strength and unfortunately
| the West isn't strong enough to keep things that way.
| Weakness is dangerous, I wish the West was stronger, but
| I must deal with reality.
| racional wrote:
| _It's not condescending it's reality_
|
| It sounds rather more like something you believe as
| matter of faith.
|
| _I think better choices could have been made_
|
| That's very different from what you said initially.
|
| What you said (in essence) was that _the Ukrainians are
| incapable of making their own choices_ , and just do what
| their Western handlers tell them to.
| jholman wrote:
| It'd be more apt to write "fomented divisions", rather
| than "fermented divisions".
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Ah thanks, thats what I meant to write, I think a typo +
| autocorrect got me there
| atombender wrote:
| You make it sound like Germany weaponised an oblivious
| Lenin by letting him loose on Russia. In reality, Lenin
| observed the February revolution from afar and realized
| it was a critical time to rejoin the struggle, and
| petitioned the German government to leave; the Germans
| agreed because it was strategically advantageous for them
| to allow dissidents to travel into Russia. The so-called
| "sealed" train was a cover story [1].
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/lenin-
| and-the...
| waynecochran wrote:
| Should have followed Patton's desire to make sure the
| Russians had no part in Europe outside of Russia. I guess
| cold pragmatism aligned us with Stalin to defeat Germany.
| surfingdino wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The West used Stalin
| to break Hitler's neck. It was a pact with the devil
| against another devil.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No
| less." (Schlock Mercenary Maxim #29)
|
| It was mutual, by the way. Stalin (or one of his
| generals?) said "even with the devil you may walk to the
| end of the bridge". That is, to them the west was the
| devil, and they were using the west just like the west
| was using them.
| danielvf wrote:
| The early USSR was at least two orders of magnitude worse
| than the czars, if you score either by yearly executions or
| by yearly sent to Siberia.
|
| And that's not evening counting the USSR's millions
| "resettled" in ethic operations, with about a 20%-25% death
| rate.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov.
| ..
|
| And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from
| screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing
| ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths
| under the czars.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a
| considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle. Do
| this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of
| magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France?
|
| Russia during the czarist era suffered severe famines about
| one each 11 years, and the death toll was on the order of
| millions, all happening while Russia exported grains [1].
| It could be argued that the modernization happened in the
| post-revolutionary Russia prevented new famines after some
| time, despite the initial drawbacks caused by revolutionary
| changes. It would be very difficult to do a proper land
| reform with a regime backed by a rural nobility.
|
| [1] http://www.domarchive.ru/history/part-1-empire/61
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a
| considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle.
| Do this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of
| magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France?
|
| Post-revolutionary France was Napoleon causing somewhere
| between 3.25 million and 6.5 million deaths across
| Europe. Then back to the monarchy, so very little net
| change from pre-revolutionary France, except for all the
| dead bodies.
|
| But I agree with your first sentence. Any real revolution
| will cause a great deal of death. Can you build back
| something enough better to be worth all that? For many
| revolutions, the answer is no.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were
| basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt
| the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is,
| it did lurch Russians into the 20th century.
|
| The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They
| deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the
| only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into
| the modern era that other European nations had attained,
| centuries earlier.
|
| Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and
| balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by
| tyrants and dictators.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| A NASA saying; "there is no situation so bad that it cannot
| possibly be made worse"
|
| Which I think applies to people who think communism will
| somehow save them from their predicaments.
|
| Communism has that special something that destroys the
| soul. It's hard to describe if you haven't seen it or
| talked to those who have lived it. The attempt at the
| impossible in creating the 'new man' free of greed in
| combination with a secret police that pits friends against
| friends, family member against family member such that all
| personal relationships are voided.
|
| I get that our current system of 'capitalism' is more of an
| oligarchical corporatism than 'true capitalism' and is
| really failing people. But communism is not the answer
| because it'll be the same oligarchs in charge and there
| will be far fewer ways to escape them. I understand that
| 'true communism' would obviate the need for greed and
| corruption but in trying to get there from here by crossing
| a river of blood in an continuous revolution it's far more
| likely to get stuck in the corrupt communism state which is
| far worse than our current corrupt capitalism state.
| antonf wrote:
| > Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were
| basically living in Medieval conditions
|
| FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into
| Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who
| became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as
| class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming
| Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different
| from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were
| forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-
| owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance
| (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not
| allowed to legally leave.
|
| > Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society,
| kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other
| European nations had attained, centuries earlier.
|
| It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through
| 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.
| ahdjkfnf wrote:
| >to be fired
|
| well that's an understatement
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| Russia was of course incredibly backwards by European
| standards, but in the run-up to WW1 it was industrializing
| rapidly. Part of German strategic calculation was that if
| they waited too much longer after 1914 to fight a war with
| a modernizing Russia that they would lose.
|
| Plus, it wasn't even the Communists who deposed the Czar.
| He was already gone after the February Revolution, 7 months
| before. The main contribution of the Communists to the
| cause was to spend the next two decades committing mass
| murder and achieving mass starvation.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Historical footnote:
|
| 'What also surprised me in the biography was the striking
| difference between Jews in Italy and in Poland. [...] Leopold
| Infeld's autobiography [...] describes the Jewish ghettos in
| Poland as being almost completely isolated from the general
| population. [...] She was utterly surprised when she first saw
| the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, remarking: "The Jews in side curls
| and kaftans made me feel that I was living in two different
| nations.'
|
| I wonder if she was failing to distinguish between various kinds
| of Jews. Compare the majority of American Jews today, and the
| Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn, for example. This, too, was the case in
| Poland, home to the vast majority of the world's Jews at the
| time. On the one hand, there were a number of assimilated Jews
| and Poles of Jewish ancestry (like Tarski, Brzechwa Steinhaus,
| and so on). On the other, there were plenty of religious Jews of
| a more orthodox strain. And given that 1/3 of the population of
| Warsaw was Jewish, it would be difficult to imagine otherwise.
| surfingdino wrote:
| She was likely seeing Hasidic Jews, who are quite distinct in
| the way they live and dress
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism
| akolbe wrote:
| Hasidic teaching stories are charming. Here is one:
|
| When Rabbi Zusha was on his deathbed, his students found him
| in great distress. They tried to comfort him by telling him
| that he was almost as wise as Moses, so he was sure to be
| judged positively in Heaven. He replied, "When I pass from
| this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they
| won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses?' They
| will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?'"
| YZF wrote:
| I would guess to some extent?
|
| I am far from an expert but I don't think late 19th century or
| early 20th century Europe would be directly comparable to 21st
| century USA. It's an interesting topic and maybe some starting
| points are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_secularism
| https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-pop...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl
|
| Part of my ancestry is European Jewish and I'm sure my
| grandparents and great grandparents would have stories to tell
| but I was never interested in this while they were still alive.
| Kind of funny how that works. They were not religious.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is the plot of flubber with Robin Williams...
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds do
| well to "remember where the off switch is" to quote Ian Banks'
| "Excession". It's also helpful to characterize a person not just
| by their character, tenacity or energy, or age, but also a number
| between 0 and 1 that indicates how much of their time they've
| spent in the real world, vs in their happy fun space. Call it the
| "imagination factor". A bright, capable mind of 40 with an
| imagination factor of .75 may only have the cumulative real-world
| experience of a 10-year-old.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| It's unclear to me what you're defining as real. Coal mining?
| Childcare? Community centers? Through hiking? Interesting
| theoretical realms can have enormous consequences in the
| physical/tangible world, as I'm sure you know :). Maybe it's
| more of a "presence factor" in relation to this story: a
| measure of how aware you are of the roles and responsibilities
| you have and how engaged with them you are.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| Of course, there is disagreement on a person's roles and
| responsibilities.
|
| To someone, my responsibility might be answering the doorbell
| quickly when Amazon drops off a package.
|
| To another, it might be how responsive I am to email.
|
| These are in conflict, and sometimes it's worth missing an
| Amazon package to finish an important email.
| mandibeet wrote:
| Absolutely, the concept of roles and responsibilities is
| highly subjective
| simpaticoder wrote:
| I make no value judgement here. I thought the OP's post was
| interesting as an example of how humans can mediate their own
| "VR" experience, and have done so for all of human history.
| The "absent-minded professor" is a stereotype for a reason.
| It can be disconcerting for someone with high imagination
| factor to interact with someone with an imagination factor of
| 0, even if all other qualities (age, culture, language, etc)
| are the same, since the paths they have both walked are so
| very different. The error modes that arise from impedance
| mismatch go in both directions. It's not clear what nature
| will select for. Certainly over short periods of time, nature
| has selected for heavy abstraction and all the
| military/economic power it yields. The longer time frame has
| not yet played out.
| codingdave wrote:
| The path everyone has walked is different from everyone
| else. You seem to be trying to reduce it to a formula, coin
| new terms, and literally apply numeric values to people. I
| don't think anyone is that simple in reality.
|
| If you have struggled to interact with people who are
| different than you, that is also part of the human
| experience, not something we need to devise measurements
| for.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Your strawman assumes a reductive user who will replace a
| person with a number. This of course happens in real
| life, with IQ, Meyers-Briggs, and so on. This is wrong.
| It is a kind of wrongness exemplified by "Animal Farm",
| the nuanced ideals of revolution that eventually reduce
| to "4 legs good; 2 legs bad".
|
| IF is a tool mostly to remind high IF people to cherish
| the value of both real and imaginary experience, and a
| tool to help people who dwell mostly in either realm to
| respect each other. If a high IF person forgets to
| respect the real, he's liable to forget his wedding. If a
| low IF person forgets, he's liable to miss out on the
| wonder and value of abstract thought.
| delichon wrote:
| > Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds do
| well to "remember where the off switch is"
|
| If this world _is_ a simulation, and someone among us is the
| player-character, forgetting that there is an off switch is a
| feature for them that increases immersion by making any failure
| to suspend disbelief (which I as a probable NPC suffer from
| regulary) a moot issue. As long as we think that this is
| reality, its believability is subordinate to its survivability.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| "If this world is a simulation" then anything can follow,
| which makes it an uninteresting hypothetical.
| tocs3 wrote:
| You might be right but...
|
| If this world is a simulation knowing the nature might let
| us work with it better. Hacking the universe (maybe or
| maybe not if a simulation). It would in some ways just
| become an extension of physics (in effect).
|
| This gives me an opportunity to bring up a favorite story
| of mine.
|
| Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang%27s_Carpets
| mpalmer wrote:
| You take a strange lesson from an anecdote about artificial
| super-intelligences. In the book, the AIs can spend time in a
| limitless virtual universe, better than reality.
|
| Time spent in "infinite fun" (as they call it) has no value
| because it has no impact on what happens in the real world,
| hence the importance of remembering where the off-switch is.
| It's about having an effect on the world, not the world having
| an effect on you.
|
| Someone who spends a lot of time (and in all likelihood is
| _wired_ to spend a lot of time) thinking about their work is
| not wasting their time; they are preparing to have an effect on
| the world.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Where did you see a value judgment? The imagination factor is
| a trade-off, neither good nor bad in itself. It's normally
| distributed, and selection pressure will push the median up
| or down. The utility of the concept comes in personal
| interaction - those with high IF speaking with low IF people
| should respect the value of (perhaps multiples) of real-world
| experience that they have. In effect, the concept of IF is a
| tool of both humility and empathy.
| mpalmer wrote:
| "Those who spend their time flying through imaginary worlds
| do well to remember where the off switch is."
|
| And you didn't say anything about "real-worlders" having
| humility and respect for the other party.
|
| I think a reasonable person infers a value judgment from
| those two things together.
| kovezd wrote:
| > A bright, capable mind of 40 with an imagination factor of
| .75 may only have the cumulative real-world experience of a
| 10-year-old.
|
| While provocative, that argument does not take into account the
| development of the brain. Processing early experiences are far
| different from the ones when the brain is fully developed. This
| includes the storage of memories (knowledge).
| simpaticoder wrote:
| The fact that our identities are a path integral through a
| unique 4 dimensional spacetime curve does not undermine the
| utility of first-order characterizations of the resulting
| value. We do it all the time: where are you from? When were
| you born? What did you study? What's your favorite ice cream
| flavor? I am simply adding, and characterizing, an additional
| factor: how often do you dream? None of the answers to these
| questions tell the whole story of a person, but they are
| useful nevertheless.
| adammarples wrote:
| I like the cut of your jib and I'm assuming your factor is
| north of 0.5?
| mandibeet wrote:
| Overall I find the "imagination factor" as an useful tool for
| self-reflection and understanding others
| thih9 wrote:
| The story about the wedding is one short paragraph at the end -
| with almost no extra information and not referenced elsewhere in
| the article. Very anticlimactic.
|
| > But the story in the book that I liked the most is this one:
| Zariski was, of course, very much obsessed with mathematics. On
| the day he and his fiancee Yole were getting married, with Yole
| already dressed in white and veiled and the rabbi standing by,
| the bridegroom was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was
| working on a mathematical problem. Luckily, Yole was neither
| angry nor surprised; she was amused. Ha! I need to tell this to
| my wife.
| apples5000 wrote:
| I talked to one of Zariski's students about this... He mention to
| me that the article said he studied "real" algebraic geometry,
| which is a different subject --he studied "complex" algebraic
| geometry as well as algebraic geometry without a limiting
| adjective.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| For whomever might be interested in anectodes about
| mathematicians' personal lives:
|
| My girlfriend's family was related to
| https://planetmath.org/kallevaisala and she told me this story
| which was part of the family lore. The family and friends were
| having some kind of get-together celebration maybe a wedding or
| so and prof. Vaisala's wife had bought him a brand new suit to
| look good for the occasion.
|
| During the party they were playing croquet in the garden and
| prof. Vaisala got really into the game, but had the realization
| that suit-pants may not be the best for playing croquet. He could
| have stuffed the end of his pant-legs into his socks but that
| didn't really work, maybe socks were too tight and pants too big.
| So, he found a pair of scissors somewhere, and cut his pant-legs
| short. His wife started crying. She didn't really appreciate the
| genius of mathematicians.
| mandibeet wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this story! The story brought a smile on
| my face. Needed it today.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Thanks
| parpfish wrote:
| Im always conflicted about stories like these.
|
| All of the mathematicians I've known ARE weird - really into
| technicalities and finding loopholes.
|
| But for some of them (particularly undergrad math majors)... I
| think the weirdness is a bit of an affectation that they adopt
| having heard so many stories about oddball geniuses. They fear
| that if they were able to behave and relate to normal people it
| proves that they lack the otherworldly genius they want to be
| know for.
|
| Let's also normalize genius being normal people
| mandibeet wrote:
| These anecdotes not only humanize these brilliant minds but also
| offer a humorous and endearing look at the quirks that often
| accompany such intense intellectual focus.
| rendall wrote:
| > _On the day he and his fiancee Yole were getting married, with
| Yole already dressed in white and veiled and the rabbi standing
| by, the bridegroom was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was
| working on a mathematical problem. Luckily, Yole was neither
| angry nor surprised; she was amused. Ha! I need to tell this to
| my wife._
|
| Fellas and ladies, get yourself a spouse who understands when
| you're late to your own wedding because you are inspired by your
| passions.
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