People You Suspect Are Frighteningly Overrated But Don't Actually Know Enough About To Say So

*backs away w/o sudden movements*

Most of the time, "genius" is a term for people who simultaneously impress and confuse. All it marks is a refusal to doubt or understand on the part of whoever applied it. Not unlike terming a work of art "a masterpiece" and stowing it in a vault so that it will never be subject to criticism. A mathematician can do very useful work, but I don't think there is any big scheme in which to rank it. Not only will someone make his discoveries if he does not; someone may also make them with equal or much greater efficiency. Ramunajan (sp?) probably had an intuitive understanding of certain areas that far surpassed Gauss', but that doesn't make him the "greater" of the two.

I think I understand the criteria by which Gauss and friends are rated, disagree though I may with them, and still wonder why you consider him higher-rated than he should be. Or were you being iconoclastic for its own sake?

Aren't random googlers funny?

I liked jel's nomination way back of "gothic archies". Would that be the comic where Betty & Veronica become vampires?

(ha. most of the discussion works so far if for mark s Gauss= Coltrane)

Before you try refuting me: are you just a skeptic, or do you have any beliefs of your own about this?

'just' a skeptic!!!!!

The other day I tipped thrice the cost of my coffee in an embarrassed math-panic, so to answer your arch-villainish challenge, falsecrux: no I'm quite out of my league. And yes thanks I get it; math isn't art. Still, in my experience, after "artistic causality" comes a not insignificant amount of reasoning which FITS EXACTLY the criteria by which you discount the idea of genius above. I am skeptical only of the implication that mathematicians are continually calculating from birth, that something doesn't point them down a particular path of reasoning at a given point in time, and that that something may not be called "inspiration".

(I gather this makes me something called a platonist, which can't be good. When i master the craft of the generous-but-not- ridiculous gratuity perhaps i will grow more pragmatic in these more complicated matters too)

And you talk to me about Platonism...

What is art, then? A component of all imaginable universes? Divine aesthetics made manifest? Something other than accident? This would make the over-/underrated distinction a lot simpler, I have to admit.

Some perceive more connections than others, yes, but no correct approach could lead to results different from theirs, and so none of what they conclude depends on them as individuals.

You still miss the point. Of course it is possible for different people to choose different methods, to make missteps, to reach dead- ends. The validity of each step, however--whether or not one perceives it--is determined by the conclusions it implies, not by individual choice.

An artist may do more or less exactly what another has done, but it may still be said that "he just can't do it like [predecessor]". Can you imagine hearing, when someone independently proves the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, "nice, but he's no Karl Friedrich"??

haha crux's position is the sort of position it's usually ME taking!!

Uh, just the fact that this concept doesn't figure in any artistic achievement and only provisionally in other scientific achievements, which suggests that they should be evaluated differently from achievements in which it is nearly the only thing of importance.

however if it will make you happier, whatever it is you saying is totally brilliantly correct and amazingly valid and the route you got there is immensly more/less elegant than everyone's else, were they ever to think this, whatever it is: no mathematician is in any sense better than any other mathematician, or indeed any non-mathematician hurrah!

you in particular are rated exactly correctly: your prize is the chance to study some mathematics at last, or to ignore it, or something equivalent

Thank you.

America has no need for a Robbie Williams whatsoever, though that "Millenium" song was kinda cute.

Only by technicality.

Especially since they have a Timberlake (sadly, this is not an example of trading up).