Re: Landau letter, Re: Mathematica as a New Approach...
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- Subject: [mg128100] Re: Landau letter, Re: Mathematica as a New Approach...
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akozlowski at gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:21:54 -0400 (EDT)
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On 15 Sep 2012, at 09:36, John Doty <noqsiaerospace at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 1:03:16 AM UTC-6, Andrzej Kozlowski wrote:
>> On 11 Sep 2012, at 08:34, John Doty wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>> So what
>>
>>>> exactly is the evolutionary path from a near "laboratory animal" to
>>
>>>> Riemann or Perelman?
>>
>>>
>>
>>> I think it's similar to the evolutionary path from laboratory animal
>>
>> to elite athelete. Sports like ice skating are not really like anything
>>
>> humans evolved to do, but involve physical and cognitive "modules"
>>
>> evolved for other purposes, combined in novel ways. Scientific
>>
>> understanding of this has made it possible to teach atheletes to perform
>>
>> feats once thought impossible, like "quadruple jumps". I see no reason
>>
>> this shouldn't also apply to mathematics.
>>
>>
>>
>> Oh, so presumably you have now explained the "mystery of Ramanujan"
>
> Hardy, who was in a better position than either of us to judge, did not appear to find Ramanujan particularly mysterious. According to Hardy, Ramanujan ombined a power of generalization, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses". That even sounds like the kind of things we say about athletes ("hand quickness", "peripheral vision", ..., and also sounds like the sort of cognitive modules Nunez talks about. Ramanujan did not obtain his mathematical knowledge by magic: he studied for years, but without conventional direction. So, he became a very unconventional mathematician.
>
Well, the real point is that your whole argument (like almost everything else in your posts on this topic) is based on typical pseudo-science, strongly resembling Marxism. Marx asserted the inevitability of the "proletarian revolution" after which human beings will achieve all their latent capacities and will all be able to become Ramanujans (if they only wish). The fact that nothing of this kind ever happened and that everything that happened contradicted Marx's claims was no argument for marxists, since the "prediction" was open ended. So is, of course, your claim that with "proper training" we could produce Ramanujan's at will. The fact that nothing of this kind has ever happened and that nobody has yet succeeded in any such enterprise (as well as the existing mass of evidence against these sort of claims) does matter to you, since your claims are also open ended and no amount of failure will disprove them. In the face of this sort of pseudo-scientific unfalisfiable claim
s all ar
guments are futile so here I end mine.
Andrzej Kozlowski
- References:
- Re: Landau letter, Re: Mathematica as a New Approach...
- From: John Doty <noqsiaerospace@gmail.com>
- Re: Landau letter, Re: Mathematica as a New Approach...