Saturday, February 23, 2008
JSH: Sorry, but exasperated
It's been over five years since I found a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
I still believed enough in modern math society that I questioned and questioned and questioned my own result as people fought successfully against it being accepted.
I even kind of wondered still when I pulled out a piece of it and got that published, only to have math society fail completely when the math journal went against formal peer review, pulled my paper and later died.
You people may have heard the story but may not have realized that I have been right, dealing with people who I continually saw shifting their tactics as I explained as they fought a political battle to make sure no one believed me.
One thing that kept me from simply giving up was that I knew they wanted it. They begged for it, literally.
After all, if I weren't around to champion my ideas then they could keep them suppressed.
Then Andrew Wiles could keep credit for something he didn't do.
And undergrads could keep getting taught crap math which would never work not because it is "pure" but because it's wrong, but not easily testable in a way that can show it's wrong.
The perfect trap.
The way the fight has gone against my research has evolved as my strategies evolved and as the people doing it had to handle my moves in other areas, as I looked desperately for ANY way to prove that I was right and that these people were deliberately lying.
They turned success into a perception of failure.
I've said it's like winning the Olympics and being booed and the gold medal going to someone who didn't even run the race.
They turned everything on its head.
So I turned to the factoring problem.
It still gets to me though, after so many years of dealing with these people to see posters STILL trying the same games, the same ways to distract and deny with an argument so simple it stunned me.
Who knew? Turns out there's this neat thing with abs(nT - 2k^2) where you look at a simple integer minima with k maximal.
Not even I thought the entire world could turn on a result that simple, but turn it will.
Blocking "pure math" is one thing but posters fighting now are trying to stop knowledge of a result that can mean your actual physical life could be in danger, or your financials.
Lying here can mean the ruin of some of you, and isn't it ironic, don't you think?
They will try. As what have the got left now?
Their battle was an all or nothing war against the latest (maybe the last) major discoverer.
They have nothing left to do but fight until the bitter end.
There have only been a handful of people like me in all of human history.
And I wish that I had not been born to face this mess of what humanity has become.
I still believed enough in modern math society that I questioned and questioned and questioned my own result as people fought successfully against it being accepted.
I even kind of wondered still when I pulled out a piece of it and got that published, only to have math society fail completely when the math journal went against formal peer review, pulled my paper and later died.
You people may have heard the story but may not have realized that I have been right, dealing with people who I continually saw shifting their tactics as I explained as they fought a political battle to make sure no one believed me.
One thing that kept me from simply giving up was that I knew they wanted it. They begged for it, literally.
After all, if I weren't around to champion my ideas then they could keep them suppressed.
Then Andrew Wiles could keep credit for something he didn't do.
And undergrads could keep getting taught crap math which would never work not because it is "pure" but because it's wrong, but not easily testable in a way that can show it's wrong.
The perfect trap.
The way the fight has gone against my research has evolved as my strategies evolved and as the people doing it had to handle my moves in other areas, as I looked desperately for ANY way to prove that I was right and that these people were deliberately lying.
They turned success into a perception of failure.
I've said it's like winning the Olympics and being booed and the gold medal going to someone who didn't even run the race.
They turned everything on its head.
So I turned to the factoring problem.
It still gets to me though, after so many years of dealing with these people to see posters STILL trying the same games, the same ways to distract and deny with an argument so simple it stunned me.
Who knew? Turns out there's this neat thing with abs(nT - 2k^2) where you look at a simple integer minima with k maximal.
Not even I thought the entire world could turn on a result that simple, but turn it will.
Blocking "pure math" is one thing but posters fighting now are trying to stop knowledge of a result that can mean your actual physical life could be in danger, or your financials.
Lying here can mean the ruin of some of you, and isn't it ironic, don't you think?
They will try. As what have the got left now?
Their battle was an all or nothing war against the latest (maybe the last) major discoverer.
They have nothing left to do but fight until the bitter end.
There have only been a handful of people like me in all of human history.
And I wish that I had not been born to face this mess of what humanity has become.
# posted by James Harris @ 01:24 
