Anurag_Bishnoi comments on The Truth About Mathematical Ability - LessWrong

61 Post author: JonahSinick 12 February 2015 01:29AM

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Comment author: Anurag_Bishnoi 13 February 2015 05:35:18AM 5 points [-]

I think that one issue is that the top ~200 mathematicians are of such high intellectual caliber that they've plucked all of the low hanging fruit and that as a result mathematicians outside of that group have a really hard time doing research that's both interesting and original.

Your standards seem unusually high. I can cite several highly interesting and original work by mathematicians who would most probably not be in your, or any top ~200 list. For example,

  • Recursively enumerable sets of polynomials over a finite field are Diophantine by Jeroen Demeyer, Inventiones mathematicae, December 2007, Volume 170, Issue 3, pp 655-670
  • Maximal arcs in Desarguesian planes of odd order do not exist by S. Ball, A. Blokhuis and F. Mazzocca, Combinatorica, 17 (1997) 31--41.
  • The blocking number of an affine space by A. Brouwer and A. Schrijver, JCT (A), 24 (1978) 251-253.

I would like to know more about the perspective you claim to have gained which makes you think this particular way.

Comment author: JonahSinick 13 February 2015 10:23:44AM *  2 points [-]

Your standards seem unusually high.

Yes, this is true. There are a number of reasons for this, but one is an encounter with Goro Shimura back in 2008 that left an impression on me – I thought about his words for many years.

I'll write more tomorrow.

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