
Frank Ramsey – The Man Who Thought Too Fast - Hooke
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/the-man-who-thought-too-fast
======
frankbreetz
>>Discounting the interests of future people, Ramsey wrote, is “ethically
indefensible and arises merely from the weakness of the imagination.

Climate change, the federal debt, increasing shareholder value over anything
else, I wonder what Ramsey would have to say about the current state of the
world.

~~~
slivanes
Would he be working at a FAANG trying to get more clicks for advertiser
dollars?

~~~
ppod
Increasing economic growth is the most reliable method we know of to help
future generations.

~~~
shkkmo
I think that increasing breadth and depth of human knowledge is far more
reliable.

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sn41
The Ramsey number R(m,n) is the minimum size of a fully connected graph with
edges colored red or blue such that there is either an m-sized blue clique or
an n-sized red clique. R(3,3) is 6, which is stated as every group of 6 having
3 mutual friends or 3 mutual strangers. Ramsey showed that these exist for
every m and n, I think.

But they grow very rapidly. Ramsey theory has usually the biggest constants
found in mathematical papers.[1] There is a famous quote by Erdos:

"Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year's
time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue
five. We could marshal the world's best minds and fastest computers, and
within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded
the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice
but to launch a preemptive attack."

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number)

~~~
zimpenfish
What always gets me about Graham's Number is that you can't even write down
how many digits it has using the entire observable universe ... but "the last
12 digits are ...262464195387".

I swear mathematicians are witches.

~~~
bonoboTP
It's so big that going from the number itself to the number of digits (i.e.
taking its logarithm) is not even something worth talking about. It's like
blowing a kiss to an exploding nuclear bomb.

You just get dizzy even thinking about it. The observable universe is just not
really that big when talking about this stuff, there are not even 100 orders
of magnitude in the universe from smallest to biggest. Anything that you can
have a conception of (even stuff like the number of possible lottery tickets
or possible books that could ever be written etc) is just indistinguishable
from mundane everyday sizes when dealing with googology. You're trying to roar
but it comes out as a whisper. You have to explicitly design these. Most of
the time if you think "but wouldn't it be comparable if we counted the XYZ)
the answer is no.

It's like an adult equivalent of a kid saying "I get that galaxies are big,
but are they also bigger than really big houses? How about a house with its
own swimming pool? Really really big mansion of a big movie star?"

Edit: Tone is difficult in writing, I don't mean to be condescending, I'm
getting dizzy myself when thinking of this and remember my frustration and
amazement when first hearing about these.

~~~
ppod
>going from the number itself to the number of digits (i.e. taking its
logarithm)

Why did nobody ever tell me to think of logs like this before!!?

~~~
tonyarkles
Another fun property of this is that you can use it across bases. For example,
how many bits would I need to represent 34812923 in binary? log2(34812923) =
25.05 -> round up to 26 bits.

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brianyu8
Makes me think of Ramunjan. It's quite tragic to think about how much more
knowledge humanity would have if these two lived a little longer.

~~~
schintan
Curious if there are any young people with established once in a century kind
of talent alive today ?

~~~
jacobedawson
Terence Tao -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao)

~~~
tempestn
I'm so curious what it must be like to have that kind of mind. Just did a
quick Google and his IQ is around 230. I mean, it's hard enough to really
understand what anyone else's subjective experience is like, but I think it's
literally impossible to get a true sense of what it would be like to be that
intelligent (for those of us who are nowhere close). With that great a
difference it's got to really be a difference in kind, not just degree.

~~~
ben_w
Owing to the way IQ is defined, _nobody_ has an IQ over 200.

IQ doesn’t measure absolute intelligence, but rather assumes it is a normal
curve and maps that to human friendly numbers: mean 100, standard deviation 15
or 16 depending who you ask.

The same thing has the curious side effect that if the number of people in
comas at any given time is greater than 1, then coma patients must have an IQ
> 0.

~~~
tempestn
OK, so if all IQs could be mapped accurately onto a normal curve with a SD of
15-16 you wouldn't expect anyone over 200. But standardized IQ _tests_ can
most definitely give results over 200, and do. And presumably someone who
scores 250 on an IQ test is likely to be more intelligent^ than someone who
scores 200 on the same test.

^in the sense that it measured by IQ tests, anyway. Point being it shows a
real difference; deltas over 200 aren't meaningless.

~~~
harry8
Terence Tao's intelligence is not predicted by IQ. Plenty have higher IQ and
achieve less. Some lower and achieve more.

IQ is total pseudoscience nonsense of zero value to anyone or anything.

It's one genuine use is as a fig leaf for the very worst kind of racism. Treat
it and anyone touting IQ an indicator of anything with extreme suspicion.
Nazis love IQ. Goodwin's. /Thread

~~~
tyho
Why do you consider IQ to be pseudoscience? It's the bedrock of psychometrics.
Just because some people use some IQ data to justify racism doesn't mean the
measure is unscientific. Nazis loved nuclear physics too, it doesn't mean the
field is pseudoscience.

~~~
ben_w
I know this isn’t your main point, and I might just be remembering British
wartime propaganda (my parents told me several things that later turned out to
have been that), but…

Wasn’t the Nazi nuclear program severely delayed by their race-based hatred of
Einstein for being Jewish?

~~~
wutbrodo
This is an argument against doing physics the way the Nazis did (ie deriding
certain theoretical paths as "Jewish physics"), not an argument against doing
nuclear physics at all because the Nazis did.

The latter is what this thread is talking about: it's obvious that we
shouldn't be studying psychometrics the way the Nazis did, but it's not
obvious that we shouldn't be doing it at all because they did (as with nuclear
physics).

Hilariously, even harry8's complaint that the Nazis loved IQ is precisely
backwards: Hitler banned IQ testing for being "Jewish" too.

EDIT: I actually was curious about this last claim, so I checked the source
that the Wikipedia article points to. While this text was written by one of
the most-cited psychologists in history, there's little else out there to
concretely corroborate or refute that IQ testing was _banned_ by the Nazis.
The evidence indicates that their attitude was somewhere between apathy and
hostility towards the tests.

~~~
harry8
No you're a bit too literal. Nazis sadly are not dead and gone, not limited to
1930-45 Germany.

IQ is loved by Nazis as proof of master race bullshit. Really.

Treat IQ with contempt. It's an indicator of idiocy in a discussion. (All of
us are capable of idiocy in discussions, including me, don't fall for the IQ
trap. You're above it. We all are).

~~~
wutbrodo
Environmentalism is an important part of neo-Nazism (and other strains of
fascism) too. Do you think that automatically tars anybody who thinks we
should pollute less? I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but you're
letting labels do the thinking for you (or as I've heard it put recently,
"engaging in idiocy").

I don't personally believe that racial IQ differences are significant or
salient to differences in population outcomes, nor am I convinced that claims
are well-founded that IQ determines individual outcomes to a significant
degree. But I don't advise treating it like a magic word that shuts off the
thought centers of your brain. If you think it's a useless concept, you should
be able to articulate why by pointing to the science (or lack thereof), not by
letting Nazis tell you what you're allowed to think critically about.

~~~
harry8
Support for Nazism is the only use of IQ. It's magic bs pixiedust nonsense
that needs to be called out loudly as such.

It's not only that it is used by Nazis. It's that it is used for literally
nothing else of positive value to anyone. It's a disgrace.

Sorry for dancing around it not not starting it as plainly as possible.

"Anyone quoting IQ scores as justification for anything at all is talking
bullshit. The end."

And they are using a technique of bullshit argument support favoured by
goddamn Nazis.

The jury is back. IQ is guilty. Put it right there next to lobotomy as a gift
from psychology to the world. Stamp it out. NOW!

~~~
wutbrodo
This is getting closer to making a reasonable claim, but unfortunately, an
unsupported assertion is the _beginning_ of making an argument, not the end.

Most of the relevant scientific community disagrees with your assertion that
IQ is purely pseudoscience. From Wikipedia:

> Clinical psychologists generally regard IQ scores as having sufficient
> statistical validity for many clinical purposes.[25][68][69] ... "On the
> whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and
> intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most
> important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be
> measured with some degree of accuracy." Almost all respondents picked out
> abstract reasoning, ability to solve problems and ability to acquire
> knowledge as the most important elements.

There's plenty more on the topic, and as always, Wikipedia is a great place to
start your search for sources.

In what way is your blanket dismissal of the scientific consensus different
from anti-vaxxers ("the only use of vaccines is support for Illuminati mind-
control!!) or flat-earthers ("the only use for a round earth theory is support
for, uh, the globe industry!")? Or for that matter, what makes you different
from IQ essentialists like neo-Nazis, that take a nuanced scientific concept
and flatten it into an all-or-nothing perfect predictor of outcomes? Hell, at
least they're _directionally_ in agreement with the scientific establishment
about the validity of the concept.

~~~
harry8
The onus is on those making the claim to provide the evidence. A claim without
evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

There is no evidence. Dig into anything that is claimed as evidence and it's
clearly invalid, at best. As a statement of the overwhelimingly obvious: the
field of Psychology has issues. It knows this. You've heard of the
"replication crisis." There are those trying to right it and treat it like it
is actually science and rip out all the pseudo-bs that psych is redolent with.
Good luck to them. Maybe they'll even remove the utterly discredited stanford
prison experiment from every single first year psych textbook? Or keep it as
yet another example of collective delusion in the discpline caused by faked
research? Yet another one. But in every textbook. Credibility?

"On the whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and
intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most
important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be
measured with some degree of accuracy." \- Anyone who disagrees and asks for
the evidence is defined as lacking expertise. It's frigging comical. But it
does screw up lives and justify racism so, there's that. Get told you're
stupid as a child, there's a good chance that's self-fulfilling.

There is ovewhelming evidence that vaccines work. Seen a polio case, well,
ever? There is none that IQ is a useful scientific metric. See Egas Moniz's
Nobel prize for how psychology can move as a discipline on mass without
evidence. Or maybe butchering brains and getting nobel prizes for it isn't
clear enough evidence that you can't take anything in psychology "on trust"
anymore than you can physics.

IQ is a disgrace. It is already and will continue to be increasingly sighted
as how bad the discpiline of psychology has been for the past 100 years. May
they own their shame and do better. Your IQ score being higher than mine means
absolutely nothing. My IQ score being higher than yours means nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Zero. But yeah, you can convince people it's has meaning
and use it mess up lives - even if you don't intend to do that. Like the
altruistic motives behind lobotomy and the success they had with the Nobel
committee.

------
gumby
Euler is really the master in terms of sheer volume and mathematical scope.
You supposedly could get a theorem named after you if you discovered it in
Euler’s notebooks (though probably well picked over by now).

~~~
dan-robertson
Not that well picked over. After about 100 years of work and several volumes
being published, the work on producing the complete collected works of Euler
is not done.

~~~
gumby
Wow!

------
papeda
Not the point, but I love this bit:

> Lydia made the mistake of remarking, “What a beautiful tree,” presumably too
> casually, whereupon Wittgenstein glared and demanded, “What do you mean?”
> and she burst into tears.

------
dan-robertson
There’s lots of great stuff in Ramsey theory. In some sense it feels quite
different to a lot of other mathematics. It also has the great property that
it is typically very hard to look at a statement in Ramsey theory and know if
it is likely true or not, or even if it will likely be easy to prove or not.

For example consider a recently disproven long-standing problem of Ramsey
theory:

Is it possible to colour the natural numbers with two colours such that no
Pythagorean triple is all one colour?

This question was asked by Ron Graham many years ago with a $100 prize for the
answer, assuming it would be reasonably easy to prove. It was recently solved
with an absolutely enormous multi-terabyte computer proof. It turns out you
can colour everything up to 7824 fine but no choice for 7825 is sufficient.

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ur-whale
[http://archive.is/zLLj5](http://archive.is/zLLj5)

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pgt
If anyone from the New Yorker sees this, here is what your user interface
looks like to the average reader of your online newspaper:
[https://imgur.com/a/kCoxLHR](https://imgur.com/a/kCoxLHR)

Notice the % that is content.

~~~
jahn716
Given the media industry's history, I'm sure if anyone relevant does see your
post, that white space is simply going to be used as display ad real estate.

------
rv-de
> “There was something of Newton about him,” Strachey continued. “The ease and
> majesty of the thought—the gentleness of the temperament.”

Wasn't he a pretty ruthless and competitive guy?

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mordymoop
> (As an Oxford mathematician, Martin Gould, has explained, Ramsey theory
> tells us, for instance, that among any six users of Facebook there will
> always be either a trio of mutual friends or a trio in which none are
> friends.)

What is the sensible/true version of this? Clearly it’s not correct as stated.
You could have three pairs of two mutuals. You could have five mutuals and a
singlet. Or six mutuals. Is it more a statement about probabilities?

~~~
MaysonL
Three pairs of two mutuals: take one from each pair, that's a trio with no
friendships. Five mutuals: take any three and there's a trio of mutuals.

~~~
mordymoop
Thanks. I still think the wording of the original description isn’t great. If
I point at a group of six people sitting at a table and say “three of them are
friends”, the natural assumption is that three and only three of them are
friends, not that all of them are friends and therefor three of them are
friends.

But I suppose I will choose not to die on the hill of slightly misleading
language and admit I was just wrong.

~~~
renewiltord
This is a classical joke among new students to Mathematics to break the habit
of the English language description being translated to the Mathematical
problem statement.

It goes in a question and answer format something like: "You knew a girl in
high-school. In situation A, you find out years later that she is a stage
actor and a dancer. In situation B, you find out years later that she is a
stage actor. Compare how likely the second one is to the first one" In plain
English there's an implied meaning of "she is a stage actor and not a dancer"
in situation B. But that is not the statement. Situation B is as likely or
more than Situation A but not if you use the English language description
which suddenly is under-specified without real-world information.

Obviously you pick the things to play to the priors of the person you're
asking so that if they think actors frequently dance you put that in there.
That leads them down the false rabbit hole of whether it's "stage actor and
dancer" vs. "stage actor and not dancer" that you're comparing.

