Re: JSH: Big collapse on surrogate factoring
From: Angus Rodgers (angus_prune_at_bigfoot.com)
Date: 03/10/05
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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:15:27 +0000
On 10 Mar 2005 03:58:55 -0800, jstevh@msn.com wrote:
>Total failure is awful. It hurts in the gut, and you feel like just
>crawling into a hole...for a while.
>
>And then the feeling goes away.
Does it? Oh, good. :)
>I learned that years ago when I had FLT "Proofs" that I'd championed
>for months, only to finally accept that the arguments were flawed and
>what I had were not proofs.
>
>I felt terrible. I felt awful. I berated myself for daring to presume
>to have solved the great problem.
>
>And then the bad feelings went away and I felt fine.
That's fine, but don't forget that those bad feelings are a
sign of sanity.
>But we all die.
>
>I'll try my best while I'm here to solve a few problems before I keel
>over, and along the way I'm sure I'll have more spectacular failures,
>as though I already have some behind me, there's no reason given my
>pattern to think there aren't more ahead.
``If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
[...]
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
[...]
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!''
(I've left out the bits that might tempt you to get
all carried away again, such as:
``If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools''
So don't read those bits!)
FWIW, although I occasionally daydream of solving some
Great Problem, what motivates me is the rather modest
(and to me, surprisingly achievable) goal of actually
learning some mathematics - simply for its own sake -
before I keel over. I'll be quite happy, for example,
merely to /understand/ the bleeding Riemann Hypothesis,
never mind [dis]proving the wretched thing!
So I patiently apply myself to learning some elementary
complex analysis and analytical number theory. (And some
other stuff too, of course.) It's surprisingly satisfying
and intriguing, and I don't really care about whether I'm
an idiot or a lunatic or a genius or a total prick or
whatever, just so long as I can make sense of what I'm
reading, solve some problems along the way, and reflect
philosophically on what I'm doing - with the very long-term
aim of writing something that might be of interest to others
who are as puzzled as I am by the foundations of this subject
(and even that is dispensable, should it turn out that I have
nothing original to say).
Sorry if none of that is relevant to you, but I faintly feel
that your rather too-public struggles are relevant to my own
mercifully less public ones, and FAIK it might work both ways.
>Like I feel kind of bad now about surrogate factoring, but you know?
>
>I'm already feeling a little better...
That's fine. Just don't start too feel /too/ good! :)
-- Angus Rodgers (angus_prune@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@) Contains mild peril
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