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Comment by pingohits | Hacker News Reader

What's hacky about Ramanujan?

So we dont know anything about his math/theorem generation process. By his own admission he saw visions of math/theorem god, which is a BS claim since god doesn't exist. So "god whispered theorems in my sleep" is just a proxy for "I coped it from someone". Many of his so called theorems are false (by Hardy's own admission). Lot of progress in math depends on the "process", not just the end result. But he shares nothing about the process.

> By his own admission he saw visions of math/theorem god, which is a BS claim since god doesn't exist

Shit reasoning like this from atheists like you is why I cringe to admit I'm an atheist when people ask me about my religious beliefs. It is entirely conceivable that he saw visions of math, produced by his own subconscious, and attributed these visions to a god. It would not be terribly dissimilar from any artist who attributes their creative visions to a muse. Do you accuse any such artist of plagiarism too?

He didnt have formal training in math. So where did his subconscious "learn" the advanced stuff in his visions?

Lacking formal training does not equate cannot understand something. As far as copying something goes, there should have been an equivalent mathematician nearby from whom he can copy, right? Who is it?

As an atheist myself, I do not believe in god and I do not believe Ramanujam got it from god. However, it does not change the fact Ramanujan thought he got it from god because he could not necessarily explain how he made those intuitive leaps.

The results of his collaboration with Hardy (the approximations for the partition function and the circle method) make it clear he knew well what he was doing. Nobody was doing anything similar at the time.

A feline can make a precise jump between two points and be utterly unable to explain how it computed the force signals to send to its legs to make the jump. It probably doesn't even know force or muscles. Formal training isn't everything.

"we don't know anything about his math generation process" My man just look at the notebooks. He did not use formal proofs but he was very organized and most of his equations had quite a logical buildup from equations that he wrote before. And even the ones that came out of nowhere are obviously worthy discoveries.

You seem so sure of yourself. How did you end up like that?

> ... is just proxy for "I coped it from someone".

How can you be so confident in this claim?

Lets just say that I feel "he copied" is more plausible than "theorem god whispered to me in my sleep"

I see that. But you're making it sound like you know that for sure. Do you see that there's a middle ground? I.e. "I had a dream where it seemed that God was describing to me these new theorems"?

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