Sunday, July 04, 2010
JSH: Scary sense of responsibility
I use Usenet to talk out ideas, which I repeat a lot as there are all these posters who I used to call attention parasites who stalk my postings—for attention—who accuse me of posting JUST for attention, when I work out problems through posting. And the benefit of that was shown again recently when I focused on k, with my k^m = q mod N, or more succinctly, my mth residues result, and someone brought up discrete logs. And I pondered that for a bit and realized I could find m, when k, q a d N are known in a way that is actually one of my more "clever" results. It feels weird to so designate it myself but as a kid I'd look at certain solutions wondering if I'd been in the position of the discoverer, could I have figured that thing out? I think more so with the discrete log result possibly than others there could be people—like me as a kid—wondering, how did he figure THAT
out?
But here I'm not pushing my mth residue result yet again, having argued out a LOT of the issues with it, but now I'm considering an odd issue of social responsibility, where yes, I know there will be replies of outrage from the attention parasites who I also have called the angry idiots, but when I look at Google Analytics showing me hits from countries all over the globe to my math blog, it's not the same as someone else reading me claim to see that, who does not have his or her ideas out there, pulling that kind of attention.
That is an unimaginable amount of attention. And before the Internet not so easy. Getting ongoing interest from 40+ countries EVERY 30 DAYS for your ideas is not something that seems small to me, nor easily dismissed from my perspective.
I can quite simply project ideas worldwide. And if God help me I am this major discoverer then the social responsibility is what will define much of my life if that becomes widely known. I see replies that seem to think that fame on a discoverer level is about partying, or social prestige, or I guess all kinds of really fun things, when to me, it's about being forced into the position of being something of an icon, when I'm an iconoclast.
Maybe that's the weird contradiction that can destroy you—you fight, fight, fight against established ideas, and challenge other people to think versus just following along, or trusting "experts", only if you're really successful to one day BE the established ideas, and to be the expert. That sort of thing could really hurt a guy.
It's FUN ripping on the establishment. I actually play nice a lot of the time, but I am one of the few people on the planet who can actually go toe-to-toe with top mathematicians at any university in the world, and crush them without effort. Years ago when I was spending more time contacting math departments I was still surprised that I'd usually end up with the head of the math department in some kind of discussion or other, even if it was for him—it was always a him—to politely defer on something or other.
But it's been the same with math journals. With me, it just about always ends up with the chief editor getting involved. There at least there was once a she, but she begged me to quit sending her journal my papers! (I complied.)
No the bigger problem with going from being this angry person hollering on Usenet, and angrily decrying a math establishment that lost its way to being an accepted figure is losing that sense of direction, and having a responsibility to the world, to try and, gasp, be better? And no more hollering! No more letting fly with insults. No more abrupt criticisms.
Already I can push ideas through my various web presences, and it's so weird to contemplate it, and mostly just not do it. My words echo across the Internet, and I drive attention in all kinds of areas, and increasingly I realize that it takes careful thought and consideration when in that position. That there is a steep learning curve. That it's so much more scary than you would think just imagining it in the abstract versus living it.
Sometimes there will be posts where I give out instructions for world leaders or talk about advice to nations because I have a belief that you cannot learn to do something well that you've never practiced doing. IN my opinion God help the world if I sit humbly deciding that I can't be so arrogant as to do tests of giving such messages if later I'm considered the "expert" and such messages are required of me by my society.
If not? So what? Just one more angry idiot mouthing off on Usenet—a fringe zone where people can SAY anything.
In the last week, my ideas have been shown interest from people in over 30 countries.
Sure some Usenet poster whose ideas can't get much interest in his own country can dismiss that, or claim it's all robot programs, but that's because he doesn't have that attention for his ideas. There can't be that feeling of the bizarre when you just read about what some other person is facing.
My postings on Usenet don't impact things much, which is one thing that lets me continue to justify posting here, but even that's strange. Across a wide variety of areas I can see interest for my ideas from a world.
It occurs to me that I need to grow more, learn more, try more, practice a lot more, if I'm to ever live up to the potential responsibility which can some day be rested upon me. So this post is yet again, practice.
out?
But here I'm not pushing my mth residue result yet again, having argued out a LOT of the issues with it, but now I'm considering an odd issue of social responsibility, where yes, I know there will be replies of outrage from the attention parasites who I also have called the angry idiots, but when I look at Google Analytics showing me hits from countries all over the globe to my math blog, it's not the same as someone else reading me claim to see that, who does not have his or her ideas out there, pulling that kind of attention.
That is an unimaginable amount of attention. And before the Internet not so easy. Getting ongoing interest from 40+ countries EVERY 30 DAYS for your ideas is not something that seems small to me, nor easily dismissed from my perspective.
I can quite simply project ideas worldwide. And if God help me I am this major discoverer then the social responsibility is what will define much of my life if that becomes widely known. I see replies that seem to think that fame on a discoverer level is about partying, or social prestige, or I guess all kinds of really fun things, when to me, it's about being forced into the position of being something of an icon, when I'm an iconoclast.
Maybe that's the weird contradiction that can destroy you—you fight, fight, fight against established ideas, and challenge other people to think versus just following along, or trusting "experts", only if you're really successful to one day BE the established ideas, and to be the expert. That sort of thing could really hurt a guy.
It's FUN ripping on the establishment. I actually play nice a lot of the time, but I am one of the few people on the planet who can actually go toe-to-toe with top mathematicians at any university in the world, and crush them without effort. Years ago when I was spending more time contacting math departments I was still surprised that I'd usually end up with the head of the math department in some kind of discussion or other, even if it was for him—it was always a him—to politely defer on something or other.
But it's been the same with math journals. With me, it just about always ends up with the chief editor getting involved. There at least there was once a she, but she begged me to quit sending her journal my papers! (I complied.)
No the bigger problem with going from being this angry person hollering on Usenet, and angrily decrying a math establishment that lost its way to being an accepted figure is losing that sense of direction, and having a responsibility to the world, to try and, gasp, be better? And no more hollering! No more letting fly with insults. No more abrupt criticisms.
Already I can push ideas through my various web presences, and it's so weird to contemplate it, and mostly just not do it. My words echo across the Internet, and I drive attention in all kinds of areas, and increasingly I realize that it takes careful thought and consideration when in that position. That there is a steep learning curve. That it's so much more scary than you would think just imagining it in the abstract versus living it.
Sometimes there will be posts where I give out instructions for world leaders or talk about advice to nations because I have a belief that you cannot learn to do something well that you've never practiced doing. IN my opinion God help the world if I sit humbly deciding that I can't be so arrogant as to do tests of giving such messages if later I'm considered the "expert" and such messages are required of me by my society.
If not? So what? Just one more angry idiot mouthing off on Usenet—a fringe zone where people can SAY anything.
In the last week, my ideas have been shown interest from people in over 30 countries.
Sure some Usenet poster whose ideas can't get much interest in his own country can dismiss that, or claim it's all robot programs, but that's because he doesn't have that attention for his ideas. There can't be that feeling of the bizarre when you just read about what some other person is facing.
My postings on Usenet don't impact things much, which is one thing that lets me continue to justify posting here, but even that's strange. Across a wide variety of areas I can see interest for my ideas from a world.
It occurs to me that I need to grow more, learn more, try more, practice a lot more, if I'm to ever live up to the potential responsibility which can some day be rested upon me. So this post is yet again, practice.
# posted by James Harris @ 16:24 
