midgley the Mormon opines on gemli's catholic upbringing

[Gadianton]

When I said that religious believers like Ramanujan may be a counterexample to the naïve assumptions of some arrogant atheists, what I was really trying to say by that is that the religious beliefs of a few geniuses don't imply anything significant. I was trying to say something like, "Well, X does prove the world isn't flat," as a backhanded way of saying that it doesn't tell us anything that most of us didn't already know.

You made your original statement with more fervor than I'd have expected you to, so I should have considered sarcasm, but I missed it.

Would formal training have killed Ramanujan's wonderfully free intuition and made him a dull normal thinker instead of a genius? Hardy considered that view but dismissed it as silly romanticism. It was a shame that Ramanujan hadn't been properly trained, Hardy thought.

Ramanujan wasn't brilliant because he had an erratic way of thinking: he was so brilliant that he produced a lot of good work in spite of his errati

These are some powerful insights. I've only read some online material about Ramanujan and Hardy, and I think I would have also guessed that some of his odd insights were due to his backwater upbringing. The trade off between training and originality is debated a lot in art and music, and I have to think that your point is ultimately valid there, also.

Anyway, this is devastating to Peterson's case. You're saying that the "oddness", in the first place, is due to his isolation, rather than angelic ministry. His odd style as a handicap is a second blow, given Peterson is making the case of the inspired outsider who can think outside the box. (Joseph Smith!)

Probably most satisfying though, is that via your Phd, you have a direct connection to Ramanujan, and thereby it is unlikely that any of Peterson's roadies know more than you do about Ramanujan's math, and yet you think so little of Mormonism. Well, that's the very same kind of point that you're saying doesn't imply anything significant. True, but pretty much the bread and butter of SeN is making such points of non-significance, and so when they are outdone at their own game, it's quite satisfying for me.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hardy agreed on the other hand that Ramanujan often did seem to make bizarre leaps. Many of Ramanujan's most famous theorems are weird answers to weird questions.

This is really interesting. Is there any way you can provide an example in a way that’d make sense to an average Joe like myself? It might be helpful if you make a Big Bang reference where Ramanujan is Sheldon and I’m Penny’s boyfriend Zack who is dumb as a rock, but still interested in topics far outside his wheelhouse.



Wait. Sheldon would just be an asshole. Can Ramanujan be Leonard, instead?

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

Probably Ramanujan's most famously bizarre result was his evaluation of the sum of all natural numbers: 1+2+3+4+5+... on up forever. The result? -1/12. Yes, a fraction. And negative. Sums of this kind don't have any well-defined value for any naïve concept of summation, but it's quite often important to find some way of making sense of infinite sums, and some of the extra rules that give sensible answers in some cases turn out to give bizarre answers in other cases. This is one example like that. In spite of the apparent absurdity of this one example, Ramanujan's idea about interpreting infinite sums has turned out to be useful even in physics.

Another weird thing I know that Ramanujan did was so-called "continued fractions". A continued fraction is another kind infinite sequence but instead of building an infinite sum, you build an infinitely nested fraction. Like, the first version might be 1/(1+a). Then the next iteration is 1/(1+a/(1+b)). Then the third iteration is 1/(1+a/(1+b/(1+c))). And so on, with the succession of a,b,c, and so on being generated via some formula. If you stop the process at any finite point, you have an approximation to the ultimate final answer that would be reached if you went on forever. It's a weird way of thinking about numbers but it can yield some very rapidly converging approximations to transcendental numbers like pi.

The result that I used from Ramanujan was a Fourier transform of a certain kind of function, with respect to a variable (the "order" of the function) that isn't usually even thought of as the thing the function depends on. This is totally hard-core math-geek stuff that you would think nobody could ever actually care about, but it turns out to play a crucial role in the so-called Unruh effect, which is a strange and suggestive connection between thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and relativity. It's a sort of simpler version of the Hawking effect, and what it means is that if you accelerate through vacuum fluctuations then they look like thermal radiation at a temperature proportional to your acceleration. It seems like something that should be the tip of some deep iceberg of future physics, but the way it comes out of those integrals by Ramanujan made me wonder if it isn't just a mathematical fluke with no deep meaning after all. Nobody wants to believe that but it's hard to rule out.

[huckelberry]

Doc, as best as I can tell Young Sheldon is much more intelligent and alert than older Sheldon in the Bang.

[huckelberry]

Physics Guy, I should perhaps apologize for distracting from your thoughtful post. But I was just interested in it enough to allow my atrophied math skills to encourage me in further diversion.

I thought for a bit you were explaining the math solution to that old paradox of the arrow dividing the distance to the target and being stimied from the target by the infinite regress of fractions. You are demonstrating that we can all rest assured that the target is in fact reached. But then you note the process only reaches an almost exact answer. I guess the arrow has to be satisfied with close enough for government work. I was almost satisfied with that state of affairs until I realized that the arrow was dividing the distance to a point just beyond where it stops not the target surface and you are discussing a process showing just how far beyond the target that is. Happy arrow is now safely measured on its journey.

[Res Ipsa]

I've run out of patience with the dick-measuring contest between certain theists and atheists over who is smarter. The variation in each group is so wide that a difference in the medians means little on a practical level. I guess that makes me a Shermerite, at least on this issue.

Genius is quirky. It often seems hyper-focussed in a narrow area. Another word for a genius that doesn't stay in his lane is "crank." If there's any relationship between religiosity and intelligence, I'm betting it's much more complicated than the dick measurers pretend it is.

[Philo Sofee]

I've run out of patience with the dick-measuring contest between certain theists and atheists over who is smarter. The variation in each group is so wide that a difference in the medians means little on a practical level. I guess that makes me a Shermerite, at least on this issue.

Genius is quirky. It often seems hyper-focussed in a narrow area. Another word for a genius that doesn't stay in his lane is "crank." If there's any relationship between religiosity and intelligence, I'm betting it's much more complicated than the dick measurers pretend it is.

That is a genius way to put it!

[Lem]

Some thoughts from gemli:

gemli DanielPeterson •

I may live on a rock, but I don't live under one. I've read what theists write, and I even bought the line the Catholic Church was selling when I was a child. Not being a child anymore, I realized that there was no real evidence for the Jesus myth. There was only a story book that arose from a primitive time in our history when demons and gods were a dime a dozen. We should require more than stories to convince us that wildly improbable and unprovable tales of gods and afterlives are based on anything more than wishful thinking on the part of some, and the sometimes unholy motives of others who prey on and profit from such hopes and fears.

http://disq.us/p/2gjrloo

[Lem]

And the midge ratchets up his fake story about gemli:

gemli wrongly assumes that he knows all about the Roman Catholic Church because he liked some teaching Nuns that he parents sent him in an effort to get the wiggles out of him. gemli knows exactly nothing about the actual faith of Roman Catholics.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Since gemli has taken a break the Midge has shifted his sleuthing to the other ‘problematic’ posters on Mr. Peterson’s blog:

I had an urge to find out what Sledge might mean and this is what I turned up in the online slang dictionary: "to separate oneself from a female quickly due to obvious psychological problems and move on quickly for better dating prospects." However, even this curious remark is apparently questionable. Be that as it may, I urge Sledge to change his handle to Fake Dr. Sledge, and join a certain board, where he can be wrong and no one will notice.

Huh. Online slang dictionaries, you say? Some definitions for midge from an online dictionary:

A very small person in all regards.

Damn, you know that guy Tai. I hearrd some girl say he was a total midge.

Was that girl a classmate of his?!

Flying pests that look similar to mosquitoes.

Even though these things don't bite... the sheer numbers of them in one location can be extremely disruptive. Midge swarms have even been known to cause disruption to traffic and can also appear on weather radars.

Or on the comments section of SeN!

1: a small fly. see myiasis

Etymology: Middle English migge, from Old English mycg; akin to Old High German mucka midge, Greek myia fly, Latin musca
Date: before 12th century

biting midge gall midge

The hair had lice playing jacks, the pupils were sewer-green, all's he needed was someone to mourn him and maybe a biting midge to keep him off his feet.

That ... seems oddly appropriate.

- Doc