Monday, July 10, 2006
My central disappointment
I talk about problems that I think are in modern math society or about what I say are my own mathematical discoveries that are being ignored, but what really bugs me is the inability to get support after explaining the situation.
There are any number of dramatic elements to the story, and facts that lead credence to my position, like that electronic math journal that published one of my papers, withdrew it after some emails from sci.math people falsely claiming error, and then only managed one more edition before dying.
Or how I wrote the first prime counting function article for the Wikipedia.
My wide mathematical interests don't fit into the box for a "crackpot" so math people just act like I talk about only one thing: Fermat's Last Theorem. As you can see by doing a search on "James Harris", just to see how big their opposition to me is, and wonder about why.
If I am just some crackpot, why all the energy?
If you dig into what my paper that got published was about you find out that I discovered an odd flaw in some very old mathematical ideas—ideas that go back over a hundred years—and acknowledging the flaw could be a major embarrassment to the mathematical community.
So I can show my mathematical arguments. Give dramatic demonstration that at least some mathematicians accepted them—enough to publish a paper—and give motive for other mathematicians to fight my research.
That journal may have died because the editors did believe my paper, and faced with fighting to push the result, or continue to publish research dependent on the flawed ideas—they decided to shut-down, which is speculation on my part.
What is not speculation is that I had a paper, I had that paper published in a math journal, and after withdrawing my paper under pressure from sci.math people who sent emails, the journal died.
I find it remarkable in this day and age that so many people can listen to my story, and do nothing constructive to help the situation.
Yet without mathematics you would not have this technology. We would not have the scientific advancements we do. And our civilization would not exist.
I've heard people I've explained my situation to, say that often people are not recognized for their accomplishments until long after their deaths, as if I'm destined to be this tragic figure.
But hey people, now I am alive, and I don't like accepting this calm acceptance of my failure up until death to be recognized for my discoveries.
It may be easy for you to think about me not being known for my discoveries until after my death, but to me, it's an unsettling and very much undesired outcome.
So I have a disappointment in intellectual society that such a dramatic story could happen in our modern age, and so many people just quietly decide that it's not their problem, and leave me to figure out a way to resolve the situation.
Where are the intellectuals? Where are the thinking and caring adults?
Where is our brave new world?
There are any number of dramatic elements to the story, and facts that lead credence to my position, like that electronic math journal that published one of my papers, withdrew it after some emails from sci.math people falsely claiming error, and then only managed one more edition before dying.
Or how I wrote the first prime counting function article for the Wikipedia.
My wide mathematical interests don't fit into the box for a "crackpot" so math people just act like I talk about only one thing: Fermat's Last Theorem. As you can see by doing a search on "James Harris", just to see how big their opposition to me is, and wonder about why.
If I am just some crackpot, why all the energy?
If you dig into what my paper that got published was about you find out that I discovered an odd flaw in some very old mathematical ideas—ideas that go back over a hundred years—and acknowledging the flaw could be a major embarrassment to the mathematical community.
So I can show my mathematical arguments. Give dramatic demonstration that at least some mathematicians accepted them—enough to publish a paper—and give motive for other mathematicians to fight my research.
That journal may have died because the editors did believe my paper, and faced with fighting to push the result, or continue to publish research dependent on the flawed ideas—they decided to shut-down, which is speculation on my part.
What is not speculation is that I had a paper, I had that paper published in a math journal, and after withdrawing my paper under pressure from sci.math people who sent emails, the journal died.
I find it remarkable in this day and age that so many people can listen to my story, and do nothing constructive to help the situation.
Yet without mathematics you would not have this technology. We would not have the scientific advancements we do. And our civilization would not exist.
I've heard people I've explained my situation to, say that often people are not recognized for their accomplishments until long after their deaths, as if I'm destined to be this tragic figure.
But hey people, now I am alive, and I don't like accepting this calm acceptance of my failure up until death to be recognized for my discoveries.
It may be easy for you to think about me not being known for my discoveries until after my death, but to me, it's an unsettling and very much undesired outcome.
So I have a disappointment in intellectual society that such a dramatic story could happen in our modern age, and so many people just quietly decide that it's not their problem, and leave me to figure out a way to resolve the situation.
Where are the intellectuals? Where are the thinking and caring adults?
Where is our brave new world?
# posted by James Harris @ 13:40 
