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by outotrai
5855 days ago
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I'm shooting from the hip here, but I think maybe there's a distinction to be made between ideas for a product and ideas as a product. The end result of the ideas of mathematicians is mathematics itself - furthering mathematics was the goal all along. Obviously ideas count when you're working within the realm of ideas alone. However, when the ideas are a means to an end (e.g., a movie, say), the implementation is what counts. You might have the world's greatest screenplay in your desk, but if you haven't gotten to the execution stage, what kind of movie do you have? (None.) Whereas if you'd started with something, anything, like walking trees fighting hobgoblins, say, or the idea that maybe humans are just batteries for supercomputers in the future, your movie might have a chance, depending on its execution. |
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But if I may, it can be expanded on. In mathematics, a theorem is an idea combined with proof. In short, the idea is combined with the knowledge that it is a true and accurate fact (at least within the domain you are working in. Things are true in C that are not true in R), along with some idea why it is true emboddied in the proof. It is this combination of the idea with knowledge it is right that makes it valuable.
To be slightly more concrete, the idea that P = NP is not overly valuable. It is not yet proven either way and it could be true or false. A full proof would be tremendously valuable, and very surprising to many who are very confident P != NP. Creating a proper proof seems much more akin to writing the novel than it is to having the idea for the novel.