Nothing kills my motivation more than discovering something new in math and then finding out some dead guy beat me to the punch by several centuries lol
Then again sometimes it’s worse when I expect there to be literature on a topic and then discovering there isn’t even a wiki page for it.
Hell, most recently it was bi-intuitionistic logic. Originally studied in the 40s by one German guy who took bad notes. Main body of work done by a single math grad in the 70s (Rauszer) culminating in her PhD. Turns out there were errors discovered in her proofs and it was proven inconsistent in 2001. Only for two relatively young mathematicians to clear up that there are two separate versions of bi-intuitionistic logic which are consistent. This discovery and proof are found a paper that was published only this fucking year.
I asked a simple question about dealing with uncertainty in a logical system and instead of finding a well studied foundation of knowledge I was yeeted to the bleeding edge of mathematics.
officermike@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Pretty close to zero multiplied by billions of people yields results sometimes.
smithsonianmag.com/…/this-17-year-old-scientist-i…
smithsonianmag.com/…/two-high-schoolers-found-an-…
scientificamerican.com/…/how-teen-mathematician-h…
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
These people went through the process I described above. I’m not saying you need a degree to do scientific work. I’m saying you need to do scientific work to achieve scientifically relevant results.
AlexLost@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
These aren’t coming out of nowhere however. They are obviously being exposed to new material through their education and then extrapolating into some new tangent. These aren’t epiphanies that just happen later in life unless you are working to understand these concepts. Not saying it can’t be done, it just hasn’t been done yet, and every generation builds upon the foundation of what came before it.
Dasus@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
And this would be larger with better education.
Because it’s not always about the “potential of the student” if there’s no support or validation.
Finland didn’t have a gifted program, you’re not supposed to be better at anything than others. Except in sports, where it’s the whole thing.
There were special programs for slow kids. But none for fast ones.
First grade teacher put me in an empty classroom to read by myself when everyone else was just learning what sounds different letters make.
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