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@QiaochuYuan Much math feels to me like: let's add constraints until nothing really weird can happen. I mean sure, there are unexpected results in say number theory, but nothing like the wild stuff that comes out of iterated systems, which for some reason are far less popular to study...
@yoltartar there's for sure something to this. you need to study stuff that's under control enough that you can prove enough things about it to publish a paper. whole thing becomes very myopic, people don't take risks on big-picture stuff
@QiaochuYuan I'm no mathematician but that's why reading Wolfram's A New Kind of Science hit me so hard that it actually affected my spiritual trajectory. I felt that he was venturing into an exciting wilderness where the behaviors were more like life itself, and most trad math was useless.
@yoltartar yeah i can see that. there's almost nobody trying to do stuff like that that i can think of. david mumford, who is very respected for work in algebraic geometry, pivoted to biology but no mathematician cares about that :/
picture me at the tender age of 18 reeling from my first breakup and, in the total absence of any way to talk about what i was feeling or any person to talk about it with, deciding to spend the summer teaching myself linear algebra instead. real xkcd #55 vibes https://t.co/ac6dUHsVPc
@QiaochuYuan What does it feel like doing it "spontaneously" for the 2nd/3rd time? Wouldn't you build up a pain-avoidance reflex from the 1st breakup already? How did it still happen? (Not saying that one should, but that one would.)
@QiaochuYuan lol when i became a coach, one of my primary reasons was that i wanted to understand everything about myself so that no one could ever “get me” i quickly/painfully learned that my hypothesis was wildly incorrect.