hahahahhaa , still not giving us a cake! well, to be nerdy to extreme, this can't possibly happen. So, we had to just pick someone, and the exact detail how or what is part of the beauty of scifi or superhero movies. :D
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Replying to @xah_lee @johncarlosbaez
i tried to phrase this so it need no be a scientist. apparently most my twitter follower chose scientist. but one guy on mastodon picked Laurence D. Fink, apparently a businessmen.
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Replying to @xah_lee @johncarlosbaez
for me i was thinking Alexander Grothendieck. just because i thought that'd give me a encompassing overview of all (or maybe not) modern math. and also he's generally considered greatest (or one of). but i guess for this need, many mathematicians would also work...
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Replying to @xah_lee @johncarlosbaez
so John, am guessing for you knowing another scientist's knowledge may not be that valuable as a magic. but surely, if you could just magically know someone's brain, like a scifi transfer of data, there must be someone you would pick?
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Replying to @xah_lee
Grothendieck was sort of famous for not knowing a lot of stuff.... or at least not *caring* whether he knew a lot of stuff. He never read books, they say, and in a famous story, when someone told him to pick a prime number he said "57".
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Replying to @johncarlosbaez @xah_lee
If I wanted to know a lot of physics and geometry and topology I'd pick Ed Witten. If I wanted to know a lot of analysis I might pick Terry Tao or Barry Simon. If I wanted to know a lot of logic I might pick Saharon Shelah. Etc. etc. etc.
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Replying to @johncarlosbaez
super informative but deeply unsatisfactory answer! lacking the human element!
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Replying to @xah_lee
What, so I'm supposed to pick what I want to know more about? I don't want to suddenly know a lot more about anything: if I did, I'd have to start from scratch figuring out what to do. I've spent about 45 years learning what I want to know, and organizing that knowledge.
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Replying to @johncarlosbaez @xah_lee
I think the hard thing for me would be picking between Riemann and Poincare. In a certain precisely specifiable sense, they both "knew less" than I do. I would gladly give a great deal for their particular sort of ignorance.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @xah_lee
Would you want their knowledge, or their talent? Xah Lee's genie is only offering their *knowledge*.
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I believe he spoke of the complete contents of their heads.
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In the end, of course, we begin to struggle with the question: what is knowledge? (or, equivalently, what does it mean to know something?) I am assuming that our conception of knowledge here encompasses what Michael Polanyi called "tacit knowledge." That's what I covet here.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @xah_lee
Okay: *knowing how to discover things* is something I always want more of. The *facts* I most want to know are the ones that nobody knows yet.
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End of conversation
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