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Comment by Bluestein | Hacker News Reader

> as Wolfram could not have done what he has done without being who he is

Totally on point. I think the synergy makes it doubly interesting.-

Can you repro FrankWilhoit’s full comment? This guy posts insightful, underappreciated stuff .. i cant figure out what you meant by synergy, for example

Synergy (or dependency) between Wolfram's narcissism and his accomplishments. If this is a real and general dependency, we have seen it go wrong much oftener than right; this is why we need to know whether it is a real dependency and if so, how it works.

If I may, I meant the synergy of one mathematical mind such as Wolfram's talking about another.-

And, yes, the amount of self-promotion in anything Wolfram related does get in the way somewhat ...

I am sorry I mistook you. The next step in understanding Ramanujan would be at the level, not of mathematical intuition, but of intuition full stop. To me, he was first and foremost a creative artist. Had he been a composer I would understand him perfectly. As it is, I do not fully grasp his language but I recognize some things about what he did with it.

No problem. By all means, happy to converse.-

> The next step in understanding Ramanujan would be at the level, not of mathematical intuition, but of intuition full stop

Very interesting proposition. At some point, all arts and sciences (and artists and scientists) "meet" at that intuitive level that binds them all - and, us ...

Guys.. If I am not responding to certain points in your posts, it might be because I’m still meditating on them :)

But maybe you have not seen Feynman’s letter to Wolfram: https://old.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/ghmdxb/richard_fey...

Thats an interesting conversation too, as its possible to accuse Feynman of being a narcissist, but it takes effort ;)

> with as little contact with non-technical people as possible, with one exception, fall madly in love!

Sigh

> with as little contact with non-technical people as possible

I enjoyed the anecdote about von Neumann conversing with some colleague's 5-year old child, at which point the colleague idly wondered if JvN might not feel it necessary to employ the very same tolerance and patience and forbearance in their own convos.

Heard about that one. A classic :)

That JvN, why, he’ll never be a narcissist, not even in God’s eyes (though maybe he was personally afraid of that :)

The narcissists are the ones who, when St Peter makes the introductions, tactlessly and without regard for potential embarrassment, demand that God explain turbulence?

https://youtu.be/4-ZblKY48w4?t=184

https://songsear.ch/song/Lupe-Fiasco/Dots-Lines/2615347

a link, a palpable link!

What's next, sampling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_Deadly_Quarrels ?

Sadly Richardson's ardent pacifism was Poisson up a wall :-(

As Ronnie Raygun said: https://youtu.be/EPA9B3YZtlc?t=199

Poisson on the moon, even. Still, could be worse: even Poisson into the wind isn't as bad as being immortalised with the caption "I'm Nailed Right In".

https://blogs.ethz.ch/kowalski/2016/02/14/is-mathoverflow-in...

>fourches caudines, Signori Quids

Poisson and peace-ing, both!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Caudine_Forks

> Its designation as a battle is a mere historical formality: there was no fighting and there were no casualties

If LFR were alive today (assuming* the underlying mechanism of war has not changed) perhaps he would take his argument online, in the hopes that people might be able to play with the data in his patiently gathered .xls files and decide for themselves?

Unfortunately, nothing tends to squick the Spiessbürger/petits bougies so quickly as sheets and peace.

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTBx-hHf4BE

* a justified assumption, I'd say: the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's certainly the way to bet.

EDIT: even BWW (or at least his author?) was once aware of the origin of the infamous yoke: https://blogs.ethz.ch/kowalski/jeeves-and-the-phd/#:~:text=t...

pedantry: of course he can't recall, if he's querying for "this Roman general", as they were "these": Titus Veturius Calvinus ac Spurius Postumius Albinus Caudinus

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