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by fragmede 610 days ago
Arguably. Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be?

The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.
3 comments
sealeck 610 days ago
> The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.

There might be a middle ground between the two?

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BobaFloutist 610 days ago
I think they're talking about specifically the Unabomber, who was known to be a math genius too.
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sealeck 609 days ago
I'm aware of that.
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mandmandam 610 days ago
> Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be?

I think that if you tried you could imagine a world where Ramanujans are both supported and respected with nice lives, while also contributing to the future of the species rather than helping dig our own grave.

> The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.

Why in the world would those be the only two options?? What a profoundly strange thing to say.

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fragmede 609 days ago
You mean a world where someone like Terence Tao gets to be a professor of mathematics at UCLA, where he holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences?

That brilliant geniuses have chosen corporate America and to not go into academia is yours and mine and the world's loss, but a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves.

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mandmandam 609 days ago
> a defining feature of the Western world is that they get to make that choice for themselves.

... As if people outside the West have no self-determination? Pretty questionable, on multiple levels. And another indication of absurdly binary thinking/rhetoric. Good luck with that.

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ImHereToVote 610 days ago
Those bombs might have done more good than his potential math career. Considering we just had our first AI millionaire. Perhaps there is hope for humanity to wake up.
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