Sunday, October 29, 2006
JSH: What's at issue
At issue is my assertion that given
7*P(x) = (f(x) + 7)*(g(x) + 2)
where f(0) = g(0) = 0,
it can only be true that 7 multiplied through the first factor:
7*P(x) = (7*h(x) + 7)*(g(x) + 2)
where f(x) = 7*h(x).
With the 7 shown next to a function it is clear what I mean, so how can this be a subject of YEARS of argument? How can something so trivial be argued about over and over again repeatedly?
Because you can find a contradiction with the ring of algebraic integers.
It is the kind of weird but neat little problem that should excite the imaginations of mathematicians around the world, but they see mathematics as a discipline of building up.
That result tears down.
Some have noted that mathematics is not a science.
Its practitioners clearly do not behave like scientists. Scientists get excited at a revolutionary result on which one person can build a career, while as that little result shows, mathematicians will fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it, and fight it.
If you dig a bit, you can read BRAGGING about the supposed immunity of the math field against the kind of overturning results that have occurred in the physics field or in other scientific fields.
Math is supposedly nothing but this glacial growth of building on top of what came before.
I shatter that myth, and in response mathematicians deny the mathematical proof, and trivial results like what I showed above.
So the arguing continues as it's not really arguing or debate—it is denial by the math community of a reality it cannot stomach, of a world where even the basic ideas can be wrong, just like in the sciences and their supposed immunity is gone.
I took away a security blanket, and mathematicians refuse to let go.
7*P(x) = (f(x) + 7)*(g(x) + 2)
where f(0) = g(0) = 0,
it can only be true that 7 multiplied through the first factor:
7*P(x) = (7*h(x) + 7)*(g(x) + 2)
where f(x) = 7*h(x).
With the 7 shown next to a function it is clear what I mean, so how can this be a subject of YEARS of argument? How can something so trivial be argued about over and over again repeatedly?
Because you can find a contradiction with the ring of algebraic integers.
It is the kind of weird but neat little problem that should excite the imaginations of mathematicians around the world, but they see mathematics as a discipline of building up.
That result tears down.
Some have noted that mathematics is not a science.
Its practitioners clearly do not behave like scientists. Scientists get excited at a revolutionary result on which one person can build a career, while as that little result shows, mathematicians will fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it, and fight it.
If you dig a bit, you can read BRAGGING about the supposed immunity of the math field against the kind of overturning results that have occurred in the physics field or in other scientific fields.
Math is supposedly nothing but this glacial growth of building on top of what came before.
I shatter that myth, and in response mathematicians deny the mathematical proof, and trivial results like what I showed above.
So the arguing continues as it's not really arguing or debate—it is denial by the math community of a reality it cannot stomach, of a world where even the basic ideas can be wrong, just like in the sciences and their supposed immunity is gone.
I took away a security blanket, and mathematicians refuse to let go.
# posted by James Harris @ 12:42 
