Wednesday, January 01, 2003
JSH: A word of appreciation to Magidin
I felt a need to thank Magidin for pointing out the mistakes in my early efforts at demonstrating a key result from my FLT proof with the polynomial x^3 - -3x - 2sqrt(2), as he saved me a bit of time and gave me some perspective.
That is, over the years as I've searched, sometimes desperately, for a mathematical proof, I've found myself with erroneous arguments, which at times it took me some time to realize. With his replies Magidin saved me that time here, and I was able to get to the correct demonstration yesterday.
More than that though I realized in looking back that the work has been extraordinarily difficult not just to find these proofs, but to understand them fully and then to trust them.
I know that the mathematician's dogma may be that a proof as an absolute is just to be accepted, but I understand the human need when faced with extraordinary results to see additional evidence.
So I'm saying I understand how mathematicians, without being malicious or conspiratorial, could have not seen the correctness of my FLT proof, as their minds probably could not let go of some sense of wrongness, despite not being able to find an error in the argument.
Having produced many "proofs" of my own in the past, I can also see how Magidin might have presented erroneous arguments to support his belief that I was wrong, without doing so with malicious intent, or because of incompetence. Our minds control our perceptions of reality, and that's just it.
And the personal things…well, things get heated when people get passionate about their work. The hope is that professionalism rules the day, but conflict can lead to people cutting corners, and breaking social rules, which is not justification, just a statement of reality.
So moving forward, now that I have the demonstration, which I will be talking about more in posts today, both in reply to Magidin, as I noticed he has a reply to the correct argument, and in correcting previous posts, I'd like to remind everyone that it is not like a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem gets found everyday, so the fact that there's been a lot of drama with this one is not a surprise.
So now I can thank Magidin for the positive in the negative, which was pointing out errors that saved me time in finding the demonstration that I realized was necessary. Sure, it'd have been nice to get recognition a year ago, but I'm dealing with reality and we human beings for all our faults aren't that bad, so now I can give people
more evidence, to be considered with the other proofs.
For those who wonder about the errors Magidin pointed out, they were sign errors that wrecked the arguments. I kept making sign errors all over the place, and I keep wondering if it wasn't from fear that I was in actuality wrong, despite my knowledge of the proof meaning I couldn't be wrong. Who knows, not worth thinking about now.
That is, over the years as I've searched, sometimes desperately, for a mathematical proof, I've found myself with erroneous arguments, which at times it took me some time to realize. With his replies Magidin saved me that time here, and I was able to get to the correct demonstration yesterday.
More than that though I realized in looking back that the work has been extraordinarily difficult not just to find these proofs, but to understand them fully and then to trust them.
I know that the mathematician's dogma may be that a proof as an absolute is just to be accepted, but I understand the human need when faced with extraordinary results to see additional evidence.
So I'm saying I understand how mathematicians, without being malicious or conspiratorial, could have not seen the correctness of my FLT proof, as their minds probably could not let go of some sense of wrongness, despite not being able to find an error in the argument.
Having produced many "proofs" of my own in the past, I can also see how Magidin might have presented erroneous arguments to support his belief that I was wrong, without doing so with malicious intent, or because of incompetence. Our minds control our perceptions of reality, and that's just it.
And the personal things…well, things get heated when people get passionate about their work. The hope is that professionalism rules the day, but conflict can lead to people cutting corners, and breaking social rules, which is not justification, just a statement of reality.
So moving forward, now that I have the demonstration, which I will be talking about more in posts today, both in reply to Magidin, as I noticed he has a reply to the correct argument, and in correcting previous posts, I'd like to remind everyone that it is not like a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem gets found everyday, so the fact that there's been a lot of drama with this one is not a surprise.
So now I can thank Magidin for the positive in the negative, which was pointing out errors that saved me time in finding the demonstration that I realized was necessary. Sure, it'd have been nice to get recognition a year ago, but I'm dealing with reality and we human beings for all our faults aren't that bad, so now I can give people
more evidence, to be considered with the other proofs.
For those who wonder about the errors Magidin pointed out, they were sign errors that wrecked the arguments. I kept making sign errors all over the place, and I keep wondering if it wasn't from fear that I was in actuality wrong, despite my knowledge of the proof meaning I couldn't be wrong. Who knows, not worth thinking about now.
# posted by James Harris @ 08:28 
