Randomness

[trentk]

No, I haven't heard of Typskin. But I am familiar with Pavel Florensky (died in 1937) who absolutely epitomizes the polymathic intellectual. He was an electric engineer, a physicist, a mathematician, an aesthetician, a priest, a philosopher, and more.

It gets worse than lack of empathy... too much math / not enough literature and you could (at one almost impossibly radical extreme) end up like this guy. lol. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...s-ex-wife.html

[Faust]

Ah, yeah, there was a big piece on this in the Times magazine.

[morsto]

While the bond between math/science and culture in Russia may exist, it's definitely not everyone - see Perelman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman).
Probably the brightest mathematician currently alive, lives in poverty with his old mother after declining - among other prizes - the $1 million prize for proving the poincare conjecture. I can assure you he does not watch ballet.

[Faust]

Maybe he watches it on TV. Have you read this piece?

http://brettforrest.com/articles/shattered-genius/

[morsto]

I doubt they have a TV, but you are right he might.
A read that piece, and his story in general is really fascinating. Most people - while complaining about the system, their surroundings, the workings of their environments - are barely willing to sacrifice the slightest convenience for the sake of rebelling. He detached entirely, in every sense pulling out the rug from under himself to make his point (which truth be told is somewhat vague to me).

[trentk]

I don't understand why Perelman is sometimes portrayed as slightly mad. Making a significant contribution to mathematics is its own reward (with regards to both beauty & truth) and refusing the 1 million shows to people who don't understand the value system of passionate mathematicians that he isn't bluffing. However... I do think it would be a better idea to accept the 1mill and use it to fund researchers (say, in areas with no practical applications where they're having trouble getting grants) and to improve math education. Perhaps he's inclined to extreme solitude in part because (I'm speculating) he was influenced by the reclusive mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, who wrote things on solitude like:
"I've had the chance, in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my "elders" and among young people in my general age group, who were much more brilliant, much more "gifted" than I was. I admired the facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling them as if familiar with them from the cradle - while for myself I felt clumsy. even oafish, wandering painfully up a arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things that I had to learn ( so I was assured), things I felt incapable of understanding the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious competitions or assimilates, almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding subjects.
In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of 30 or 35 years, I can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They've all done things, often beautiful things, in a context that was already set out before them, which they had no inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've remained prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these bounds they would have had to rediscover in themselves that capability which was their birth-right, as it was mine: the capacity to be alone.
The infant has no trouble whatsoever being alone. It is solitary by nature, even when it's enjoying the company surrounding him or seeks his mother's tit when it is in need of it. And he is well aware, without having to be told, that the tit is for him, and knows how to use it. Yet all too often we have lost touch with the child within us. And it's often the case that we pass by the most important things without bothering to look at them...
If, in Récoltes et Semailles I'm addressing anyone besides myself, it isn't what's called a "public". Rather I'm addressing that someone who is prepared to read me as a person , and as a solitary person. It's to that being inside of you who knows how to be alone, it is to this infant that I wish to speak, and no-one else. I'm well aware that this infant has been considerably estranged. It's been through some hard times, and more than once over a long period. It's been dropped off Lord knows where, and it can be very difficult to reach. One swears that it died ages ago, or that it never existed - and yet I am certain it's always there, and very much alive."

[Faust]

Trent, I think you are misunderstanding Perelman's nature yourself when you suggest that he'd get involved in anything involving dealing with other people and the necessary bureaucracy and politics that come with it. The whole point of his reclusion is that he obviously finds the world repulsive (he obviously agrees with Sartre that hell is other people). Unless you were saying he should've taken it and given it as a gift to some math institute.

I'd think why not take the $1mil so you can live comfortable doing what you do. But looks like he doesn't care for that either.

[Faust]

Trent, I think you are misunderstanding Perelman's nature yourself when you suggest that he'd get involved in anything that entails dealing with other people and the necessary bureaucracy and politics that come with it. The whole point of his reclusion is that he obviously finds the world repulsive (he obviously agrees with Sartre that hell is other people). Unless you were saying he should've taken it and given it as a gift to some math institute.

I'd think why not take the $1mil so you can live comfortably doing what you do (and your mother too). But looks like he doesn't care for that either.

[theetruscan]

I just saw mers tagged on a pylon while driving home.

[interest1]

Since this seems to be the thread of choice for commencement speeches,

George Saunders' outlook

I find to be 20/20.

[Faust]

I literally posted it this morning in the "writing worth reading" thread :-) Great minds think alike, and so do we, interest1!

[mrbeuys]

Thank you both for sharing this, best piece of advice I have read. Although not based around the idea of kindness, it reminded me of this:

[endorphinz]

I've been preaching this for a long time. I've been old for a long time.

[Faust]

You are welcome, mrbeuys. I loved "err on the side of kindness."

[cjbreed]