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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Replying to @johncarlosbaez @xah_lee
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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