Re: what's happening with mathematics...?



Will Twentyman wrote:
> pit?goras wrote:
> > I am a student of Mathematics and have observed with much interest the
> > messages of this group and am surprised of which I am seeing.
> >
> > How can be Goldbach Conjecture contradictory?
> >
> > How can be Andrew Wiles' LFT proof false?
> >
> > It thought that these things did not happen in Mathematics
> >
>
> Not everything seen here can be considered mathematics, in the sense of
> being mathematically correct statements. People continuously challenge
> Cantor's diagonalization method to prove the uncountability of the
> reals. It doesn't matter that the reals are uncountable, they challenge
> the result anyway.
>
> A lot of what you see is people who are simply mistaken, along with
> attempts to correct those mistakes. Some people see the light, others
> don't.

I wouldn't be so magnanimous towards the koooks who spew hatred towards
Cantor's methods or towards Wiles.

Have you noticed that these people haven't read any serious math books?
What they do is latch on to the issues in math, most understandable by
laymen, and milk them ad homenim.

You may say that by doing that, they engage in the intellectual
adventure of learning math.

Poppycock. If these people enjoyed math and learning, they would have
read math books.

They don't. Why? Because what motivates them is not hunger for learning
or for solving math puzzles. What motivates them is the desire to
instantly become famous without paying the dues of learning.

These people have the arrogance to think that they are naturally
smarter than the big brainstorming brain, consisting of hundreds of
thousands of devoted mathematicians who have lived in the last centruy
or so. And that they can either find a trivial proof of FLT or a
trivial counter-proof or - which happens most often - both at the same
time.

Same with Cantor's diagonalization, although I still cannot understand
why this particular item attracts so many pompous ignorant kooks.

I guess it's safer for the society that these people try to practice
math and not, say, medicine. :-)

.

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