Monday, February 15, 2010

 

JSH: What puzzles me on twin primes issue

To me the math is easy when it comes to this issue of figuring out when twin primes should occur, but it was easy over three years ago as well.

But I don't get how math people behave on this or other issues. It's like, they have no intellectual curiosity, at all.

But how it that possible?

Sure I can see how competition for grants and a need to write papers could be a big deal, but to get an absolute denial? How?

I try to imagine some mathematician who has said for years he or she wants answers on twin primes and their distribution, who might swear up and down that the answer was what they wanted who could just go weirdly blank if you gave them the solution.

And for those of you who wonder how you can be right, and it not matter, that's how: the people in the field have long since quit caring any more. They've lost that spark. That human curiosity.

I kind of think of them as soulless.

People who have long since quit believing in the search for truth. To them those are just words. They have bills to pay. Status to maintain. There is power in a position. Being a professor is not a bad gig you know. Why should it require that you actually give a damn about your field?





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