

Four brilliant mathematicians whose genius has profoundly affected us but which drove them insane. [bbc] - amichail
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3503877302082311448

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mojuba
According to the film, Cantor had mental problems even before he dove into
serious math - voices in his head, etc.

Turing: from the psychiatry standpoint homosexuality is a pathology too, and
again, he had homosexual affairs before he started working on the problems
that made him famous.

Which means, we may be confusing cause and effect here.

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ed
"from the psychiatry standpoint homosexuality is a pathology too"

Not any more, but in Turing's time yes.

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mojuba
Then why you think he is in the list of "crazy" mathematicians, at least
according to the authors? (It may be because of the suicide though, which is
considered pathology even now.)

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mynameishere
I watched the first few minutes of this a while ago. They were making
unrealistic Faustian analogies, and it came off as unpleasantly dishonest.

I would contend that no one has ever been driven crazy by thinking about
mathematics. We like to think that sort of thing, but the branch of science
involved is almost always chemistry...

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steve
I don't know, I start to change for the worse when I isolate myself from all
people while programming for a very long time. Good thing we have the internet
these days.

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henning
Cantor and Nash went through their mental health problems at a time when
diagnosis of mental issues was much worse than it is now. Lots of people
suffered the same thing, genius or not. I don't think it has much to do with
the fact that they were brilliant mathematicians.

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gwenhwyfaer
And Turing's "insanity" has a lot more to do with the diabolical treatment he
received at the hands of the British authorities; indeed, his suicide was
arguably the rational act of a rational man.

(I'd hoped the BBC were above such sensationalism; I guess the memory of that
old fascist Reith has now been thoroughly pissed upon.)

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forgotmylastone
Genius didn't drive Turing insane, society did.

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ranparas
For those interested I would highly recommend "Godel Escher Bach : An Eternal
Golden Braid (By Douglas Hofstadter)"

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asdflkj
I wouldn't. There are many flaws in this book, but the main one is he gets
facts wrong, both biographical and mathematical. For example, he writes that
Turing died of a lab accident when in fact he committed suicide. He also tries
to define consistency for all formal systems, and does so with outlandish
philosophy involving "all possible universes". In fact, consistency (or
inconsistency) is a property only of formal systems based on propositional
logic--a subset of all formal systems--and it's easy to define mathematically.
I can only imagine how many inaccuracies are in it that I wasn't able to spot.

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jsmcgd
I thought the program communicated the material extremely well and I would
definitely encourage others to watch it. I did feel it was a tad melodramatic
but then again because the subject matter is so significant it could be in
danger of being under-sold.

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bct
The math material was interesting, it's a pity they thought they had to spice
it up with the insanity angle.

