Perelman resigned from his research post in Steklov Institute of Mathematics and in 2006 stated that he had quit professional mathematics, owing to feeling disappointed over the ethical standards in the field. >
Anybody have any idea what the ethical standards might be that he’s referring to? Not sure if there’s a scandal or something or just an overall sense of displeasure with the field.
Yeah, there was some background drama with his parent institution, if I remember correctly. He didn’t have enough money to fly anywhere, his institution refused to donate and he was too embarrassed to ask elsewhere. Or something like that.
Not from that field, and I think it depends a lot of the field, country, etc, but research is not an idilic world at all and deal with huge flaws from the real world, institutions, society and economics, not aside of human being’s flaws, so it can be deeply disappointing in some aspects. I believe is a natural in any guild (there is shit everywhere, e.g. police require internal affairs for a good reason, but not only, they suffer from funding restrictions, metrics for promotion, etc, and the same can be said for medicine, politics, etc) so in the end it may be your ability to deal with real world shit… and luck.
-Perelman gets his phd in russia super young and is hired at NYU/SUNY
-Publishes some groundbreaking stuff on arxiv (a free site to post white papers in math and physics) in 2002/2003
-There is some drama with another scientist who is known for stealing people’s work trying to downplay Perelman’s contribution
-Perelman quits his US jobs and returns to russia to work in math (making wayyyyyyy less money), then quits that job too and becomes a recluse
-Turns down fields medal and millennium prize (1M dollars for solving)
-Says some mathematicians are unethical but the rest of them tolerate it so they’re shit too so the whole thing is shit. Also says he doesn’t want to be put in a zoo or treated like a pet about it.
—
I’m going to go ahead and assume I don’t understand enough about being a math superstar to understand where he’s coming from, but he certainly sounds like a principled guy and now I respect him.
I mean math is the backbone of science and technology. And technology can lead to fucked up things.
Nuclear bombs wouldn’t be possible without fairly recent math.
Not to mention the unethical hell that is the whole financial sector / trader type where mathematicians often end up working.
And finally these days, by making new discoveries in some fields your directly contributing to the growth of AI and LLMs.
An infamous example of someone who quit math over ethical concerns (ironic given the rest of the story) is Ted Kacyznski (the unabomber), who saw math as leading to more and more advanced technology which oppresses people and destroys nature.
I think his issues more stemmed from academia and the rat race within it, not so much the ethical issues of mathematics and what they can lead to. Just shitty crabs trying to escape the bucket.
A fruit vendor receives a shipment of 500 apples. It is known that for every bad apple in a bunch, the entire bunch spoils. The apples are packed into bunches of 10. After inspecting the shipment, the vendor finds that 5% of the apples are bad.
How many bunches of apples will spoil due to bad apples?
And 3 to 25 bunches is between 30 and 250 apples gone bad, so that A few bad apples could spoill half of the apples, and there you have the problem with the police force, especially of the USA where officially it’s not a crime to drive a car whilst having dark skin tone but you can definitely still be summarily executed for it.
Yes, i got it, but it depends from the distribution. If there is correlation on where the bad apples appears (e.g. for cultural or socio economic conditions), it is more likely that we are close to the case of 3 bunches (that is 30 apples, just 5 more than the “original” apples)
If we stop this parallelism (that is what I disagree with) and we move to the actual issue with the police, i think it’s a problem with all power positions: all positions that come with power (no matter how small) attract certain kind of people.
This is true from the folks that check tickets in public transportation to teachers. Police is worse because there is a lot of unchecked power and close to no accountability
The solution is not how to do bin packing of the bad apples, the solution is reducing the power, increasing accountability and add checks (e.g. while body cam have some privacy implications that i don’t like, it’s a step in that direction)
This new Yorker article goes into some more detail. Apparently there was an underlying conflict between rival Chinese academics over succession of university admin postings in Beijing.
According to the article it was one Chinese dude trying to hog credit and Perelman basically went “oh i’m not brave enough for politics” and bailed. If he accepted his choice was basically becoming a conformist or getting involved by trying to improve things. He chose not to choose.
Most problems require the insights of several mathematicians in order to be solved, and the profession has evolved a standard for crediting individual contributions that is as stringent as the rules governing math itself. As Perelman put it, “If everyone is honest, it is natural to share ideas.” Many mathematicians view Yau’s conduct over the Poincaré as a violation of this basic ethic, and worry about the damage it has caused the profession. “Politics, power, and control have no legitimate role in our community, and they threaten the integrity of our field,” Phillip Griffiths said.
p.s. Also between some behavioral tics (very picky eater, refusing to trim nails, trouble socializing) and the elevated sense of justice I nominate him as an honorary autist. we stan
I’m totally for how and why he dipped out. I’ve made a few decisions in life in a similar fashion. But a man as principled as he is, with feelings and ideas that intense, is a hell of a thing to lose in the pursuit of truth. Just imagine, if instead of resigning to almost insurmountable odds where most would be against him, he instead chose to be a stubborn man in the opposite respect and didn’t rest until the truth and was common knowledge or had created groups and institutions to further pursue it if not able to do it himself.
Things like this are way bigger than one person, and to understand the problem and try to tackle it would consume your whole life. Go on and pick some mushrooms my man. You made your contribution to society and decided the rat race isn’t worth it.
From the wiki article :
Anybody have any idea what the ethical standards might be that he’s referring to? Not sure if there’s a scandal or something or just an overall sense of displeasure with the field.
Just speculating, maybe it has to do with belonging to Russian academia.
Yeah, there was some background drama with his parent institution, if I remember correctly. He didn’t have enough money to fly anywhere, his institution refused to donate and he was too embarrassed to ask elsewhere. Or something like that.
Keep reading. It’s in the “Possible withdrawal from mathematics” section.
Not from that field, and I think it depends a lot of the field, country, etc, but research is not an idilic world at all and deal with huge flaws from the real world, institutions, society and economics, not aside of human being’s flaws, so it can be deeply disappointing in some aspects. I believe is a natural in any guild (there is shit everywhere, e.g. police require internal affairs for a good reason, but not only, they suffer from funding restrictions, metrics for promotion, etc, and the same can be said for medicine, politics, etc) so in the end it may be your ability to deal with real world shit… and luck.
I tried to google it and it’s not super clear.
-Perelman gets his phd in russia super young and is hired at NYU/SUNY
-Publishes some groundbreaking stuff on arxiv (a free site to post white papers in math and physics) in 2002/2003
-There is some drama with another scientist who is known for stealing people’s work trying to downplay Perelman’s contribution
-Perelman quits his US jobs and returns to russia to work in math (making wayyyyyyy less money), then quits that job too and becomes a recluse
-Turns down fields medal and millennium prize (1M dollars for solving)
-Says some mathematicians are unethical but the rest of them tolerate it so they’re shit too so the whole thing is shit. Also says he doesn’t want to be put in a zoo or treated like a pet about it.
—
I’m going to go ahead and assume I don’t understand enough about being a math superstar to understand where he’s coming from, but he certainly sounds like a principled guy and now I respect him.
Goals.
I mean math is the backbone of science and technology. And technology can lead to fucked up things.
Nuclear bombs wouldn’t be possible without fairly recent math.
Not to mention the unethical hell that is the whole financial sector / trader type where mathematicians often end up working.
And finally these days, by making new discoveries in some fields your directly contributing to the growth of AI and LLMs.
An infamous example of someone who quit math over ethical concerns (ironic given the rest of the story) is Ted Kacyznski (the unabomber), who saw math as leading to more and more advanced technology which oppresses people and destroys nature.
I too find economists unethical by trade. Statisticians with a gambling problem, the lot of them.
😆
I think his issues more stemmed from academia and the rat race within it, not so much the ethical issues of mathematics and what they can lead to. Just shitty crabs trying to escape the bucket.
When you’re just crabs in a bucket, be the sea slug that got dredged up with the rest.
…and a beautiful sea slug too
Punk rock as fuck. May this dude find many morsels and enjoy the morning dew for the rest of his days.
Damn I didn’t know mathematicians go this hard.
Most mathematicians I know go REALLY hard. There’s something about the field…
Homie really said AMAB.
AMAB?
Just a few bad apples.
Screw you apples, I’m gonna go hang with the mushrooms.
Problem:
A fruit vendor receives a shipment of 500 apples. It is known that for every bad apple in a bunch, the entire bunch spoils. The apples are packed into bunches of 10. After inspecting the shipment, the vendor finds that 5% of the apples are bad.
How many bunches of apples will spoil due to bad apples?
between 3 and 25, depending from the distribution… And your point is? 🤷
And 3 to 25 bunches is between 30 and 250 apples gone bad, so that A few bad apples could spoill half of the apples, and there you have the problem with the police force, especially of the USA where officially it’s not a crime to drive a car whilst having dark skin tone but you can definitely still be summarily executed for it.
Yes, i got it, but it depends from the distribution. If there is correlation on where the bad apples appears (e.g. for cultural or socio economic conditions), it is more likely that we are close to the case of 3 bunches (that is 30 apples, just 5 more than the “original” apples)
If we stop this parallelism (that is what I disagree with) and we move to the actual issue with the police, i think it’s a problem with all power positions: all positions that come with power (no matter how small) attract certain kind of people. This is true from the folks that check tickets in public transportation to teachers. Police is worse because there is a lot of unchecked power and close to no accountability
The solution is not how to do bin packing of the bad apples, the solution is reducing the power, increasing accountability and add checks (e.g. while body cam have some privacy implications that i don’t like, it’s a step in that direction)
You’re very right.
You mathnificent bastard.
How many?
It’s complex.
Don’t be so hyperbolic
https://web.archive.org/web/20200309104931/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny
This new Yorker article goes into some more detail. Apparently there was an underlying conflict between rival Chinese academics over succession of university admin postings in Beijing.
According to the article it was one Chinese dude trying to hog credit and Perelman basically went “oh i’m not brave enough for politics” and bailed. If he accepted his choice was basically becoming a conformist or getting involved by trying to improve things. He chose not to choose.
p.s. Also between some behavioral tics (very picky eater, refusing to trim nails, trouble socializing) and the elevated sense of justice I nominate him as an honorary autist. we stan
I’m totally for how and why he dipped out. I’ve made a few decisions in life in a similar fashion. But a man as principled as he is, with feelings and ideas that intense, is a hell of a thing to lose in the pursuit of truth. Just imagine, if instead of resigning to almost insurmountable odds where most would be against him, he instead chose to be a stubborn man in the opposite respect and didn’t rest until the truth and was common knowledge or had created groups and institutions to further pursue it if not able to do it himself.
Things like this are way bigger than one person, and to understand the problem and try to tackle it would consume your whole life. Go on and pick some mushrooms my man. You made your contribution to society and decided the rat race isn’t worth it.