Sunday, February 22, 2009
JSH: Problem of positions
Maybe some of you need an explanation as to how it is possible that mathematicians as a group, around the world, in number theory can be wrong, and even have it proven to them, and keep being wrong, and I say it goes back to European history.
Feudal societies built first around powerful individuals but later institutionalized worth by birth, so a noble could be someone not noble at all!
In those societies people learned that some things were just about position: some people regardless of ability just had these positions and you accepted it for the good of society.
It's easy for us to look down on classed societies from a distance but I doubt peasants spent most of their days thinking about overthrowing their social order. Most probably thought of themselves as good and loyal subjects who accepted things as they are.
While modern dominant societies claim to have escaped arbitrary positional rules, repeatedly reality shows that they have not, like the recent disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, where it is difficult to understand how he ever even became president except for him being a part of a dynastic family. He was, quite simply, born into a family which allowed him to achieve high position.
Clearly, feudal realities still remain in modern societies!
Modern mathematicians have a SOCIAL position, and people are loathe to undermine the social order unless they are pushed extremely hard, as most people in modern societies I think see themselves as good and loyal citizens—they support their societies.
And I think there is an unconscious continuation of feudal behavior, which has put me in the difficult position of facing social structures with mathematical proofs.
The factoring problem unfortunately represents the one area in mathematics where there is the potential to shock people out of the feudal behavior, forcing them to see that there is a major problem in the mathematical field, just like financial woes have been necessary to force people to accept problems with the financial system.
Note that a feudal class had started to evolve in finance as well, where huge amounts of wealth were had by people who not only we later found were not doing anything commensurate with their level of compensation, but worse, they were actually a net negative!
We paid people billions of dollars to wreck our financial systems.
We REWARDED them for failing, which I see as feudal vestiges—unconscious but powerful.
The rich were the nobles: with positions just because, given special rights and dispensations just because.
Feudal behavior in modern societies.
The proof of the easy solution to the factoring problem will indubitably have a massive impact on the world, and it will in time force what other mathematical proofs could not—a shift in the view of mathematicians and probably academics in general, just as there is an ongoing shift of the view of people in the finance industry.
The sad thing is that catastrophe or near catastrophe is the only way to change social inertia on this scale.
We are approaching potential catastrophe with Internet security, as the only way to remove more feudal behavior, and force an upgrade of the academic system—worldwide.
So what finance people are going through now, academics will face next.
Feudal societies built first around powerful individuals but later institutionalized worth by birth, so a noble could be someone not noble at all!
In those societies people learned that some things were just about position: some people regardless of ability just had these positions and you accepted it for the good of society.
It's easy for us to look down on classed societies from a distance but I doubt peasants spent most of their days thinking about overthrowing their social order. Most probably thought of themselves as good and loyal subjects who accepted things as they are.
While modern dominant societies claim to have escaped arbitrary positional rules, repeatedly reality shows that they have not, like the recent disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, where it is difficult to understand how he ever even became president except for him being a part of a dynastic family. He was, quite simply, born into a family which allowed him to achieve high position.
Clearly, feudal realities still remain in modern societies!
Modern mathematicians have a SOCIAL position, and people are loathe to undermine the social order unless they are pushed extremely hard, as most people in modern societies I think see themselves as good and loyal citizens—they support their societies.
And I think there is an unconscious continuation of feudal behavior, which has put me in the difficult position of facing social structures with mathematical proofs.
The factoring problem unfortunately represents the one area in mathematics where there is the potential to shock people out of the feudal behavior, forcing them to see that there is a major problem in the mathematical field, just like financial woes have been necessary to force people to accept problems with the financial system.
Note that a feudal class had started to evolve in finance as well, where huge amounts of wealth were had by people who not only we later found were not doing anything commensurate with their level of compensation, but worse, they were actually a net negative!
We paid people billions of dollars to wreck our financial systems.
We REWARDED them for failing, which I see as feudal vestiges—unconscious but powerful.
The rich were the nobles: with positions just because, given special rights and dispensations just because.
Feudal behavior in modern societies.
The proof of the easy solution to the factoring problem will indubitably have a massive impact on the world, and it will in time force what other mathematical proofs could not—a shift in the view of mathematicians and probably academics in general, just as there is an ongoing shift of the view of people in the finance industry.
The sad thing is that catastrophe or near catastrophe is the only way to change social inertia on this scale.
We are approaching potential catastrophe with Internet security, as the only way to remove more feudal behavior, and force an upgrade of the academic system—worldwide.
So what finance people are going through now, academics will face next.
# posted by James Harris @ 23:30 
