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Replying to @Meaningness @DRMacIver
An interesting justification for silence on these matters -- and, curiously, one more common among the best elder mathematicians -- is that keeping mum prevents talented young people from wasting their time in hero-worship-motivated yet doomed and misguided attempts at imitation.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @Meaningness
My suspicion is that it is more commonly just vanilla curse of knowledge and people not consciously knowing things that they have very heavily internalised.
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I very rarely find that people are able to articulate most of the heuristics and intuitions they use constantly unless you walk them through it - it requires much more metacognition than most people routinely deploy.
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Replying to @DRMacIver @Meaningness
It requires more motivation than most people usually feel -- and more time and effort that most people are prepared to devote to it. Which is especially odd, when you reflect that, with this particular form of wealth as with all others, you can't take it with you.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @DRMacIver
OK, here’s the plan. We deploy elite special forces units to capture all the Fields Medalists and take them in black helicopters to a purpose-built underground fortress on Svalbard, and use secret CIA psy-op interrogation techniques to force them to reveal what they know
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I agree with what
@DRMacIver is saying here. Decompiling internal representations is a different (and arguably more difficult!) skill from developing and using them, a given skilled mathematician is not necessarily that good at it, and may believe it to be pointless.5 replies 1 retweet 15 likes -
Replying to @St_Rev @Meaningness and
The ancient line about the royal road to geometry seems relevant -- most of the work has to be on the aspirant. Where's the hidden knowledge? It's right there on the page, but we can't learn it for you.
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This is a self-serving lie. Of course it's possible to vastly simplify the process of learning what others have already learned. It requires only the will. It's awfully convenient to declare an unwelcome chore impossible. And, in this case, it's flattering, too.
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OK, leaving this discussion now. Have a great day.
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Please forgive me if I was abrupt or rude. I fear I am often a little prickly when people decline to undertake hard and necessary work, offering as their justification that it is impossible. Humans have done such extraordinary things that I need a proof of impossibility first.
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