Re: JSH: Why I am distancing

On Jun 27, 2:31 pm, junoexpress <MTBrenne...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 26, 10:55 pm, jst...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:



I have mathematical results which may eventually show me to be an
important figure in human history, and it should be clear by now that
I am distancing myself as rapidly as I can from the mathematical
community.

Years ago I remember how I excited I was when my computer screen
filled with prime numbers, so excited as I thought, finally I had what
I needed to convince math people that there was value to the problem
solving techniques I used and in my ideas.

Months of arguing where I'd stress point after point only to have
people on newsgroups just deny or ignore those points kind of put me
into shock. It took years for me to work out all the details and
understand how and why people in the math field deny crucial
mathematical results.

Now that I understand completely I also know that there are no results
that can break through with the current community and I'm turning my
problem solving skills to other areas.

I grew up with a "smart" label. Years of being in gifted programs,
doing things like going to Duke University as a teenager, getting a
scholarship to Vanderbilt University, and having a sense of my ability
to learn quickly and apply what I learned to problems and get
solutions got me used to thinking that was just the way most people
experienced the world.

But it's not.

So some people fake it.

And I kept hoping so I talked about my prime counting function, but I
moved on from there and even got published and the people who were
fakes could always just lie. I never knew how people could just lie
until this experience.

I looked in other areas so unlike most of you I was a part of the
discussion in the run-up to war with Iraq, and got a version of a
letter published in TIME magazine where I stressed caution.

As we've learned what the real evidence was and was not, and as people
in this country have continued for the most part without concern as
they have their lives in order I understand so much better how most of
you continue as long as you feel you have your lives in order.

You are not truly human. There is something missing in you. There is
a loss of soul, a loss of that wonder that some of us have with
learning, and being certain we have the truth.

I call you parasitic but you are so much less, as many of you seem to
think that there is something to you valuable, when how can there be?

You eat, you drink, you defecate, you procreate, and you will die, but
when you die, what will you leave?

Animals do more. Many of you will leave nothing but whatever of this
history remains as long as it does that like Bush and others who have
nothing of value in themselves or their lives that they truly
appreciate, to you other human beings are just things that you
manipulate.

You want to know what button to push to make the thing do what you
want. What to say to get the money, to get the praise. So you can do
whatever it takes to get the things--the other human beings--to do
what makes you happy.

Makes you happy for whatever time you have on this planet until you
die, then nothing.

So you are nothing. You believe in nothing.

And the destiny that creatures like you bring to those other human
beings that you cannot see as more than things, as mechanisms that you
try to figure out how to push to do what you want, is death.

Our future looks more and more like death from parasites who look like
human beings, who act like human beings to get what they want from
human beings, but who can kill like Bush without a thought, without
concern about any reason other than to them, it's ok.

Mathematics is more than just a word or some people posturing,
presenting themselves as brilliant.

It is a field where the truth can be determined by mathematical proof.

To the extent that you have broken that field you have broken the
human species itself, and for those who doubt the reality of where we
are, the continuing war in Iraq is a taste of what the future brings
to us all.

A world where death walks freely not because of what we can't do, but
because of what we cannot see--the parasites who live among us.

James Harris


<deleted>

Just out of *genuine* curiosity though (and I'm not trying to be mean
here), why didn't you go on to grad school?

Matt

Not a bad question. I did think about it. Talked with my advisor
about it at various times, but never followed through.

I think I lost the thrill of physics the discipline. Before I went to
college I had this image in my mind, and while my professors were
close they were just far enough away that it lost its appeal and I
couldn't convince myself to do more school.

Thanks for that question. Who knows how much would have changed if
I'd just gone on to graduate school. Wonder what I'd be doing now...


James Harris

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