3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics [video] | Hacker News Reader

3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics [video]

lexfridman.com

187 pointsoska21 comments

Worth looking at Grant's graphics library made for and used in his videos: https://github.com/3b1b/manim/

If Grant is not on NPR or PBS within five years I would be very surprised. He has a very distinctive voice. I find it kind of annoying but it's one of those voices that as soon as you hear it you know who it is.

> If Grant is not on NPR or PBS within five years I would be very surprised.

Do you mean as an appearance or with his own programme?

He's the next Robert Krulwich!

> Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.

Seems like a misconfiguration for Lex to embed his videos in his site then disable embedding.

- Why is the nature of reality so compressible into clean beautiful equations that are for the most part simple?

- The only things that physicists are interested in are the ones that are simple enough they could describe it mathematically but as soon as it's sufficiently complex system that's outside the realm of physics, that's biology or whatever have you...

So true!

While Lex gets interesting people on his podcast, he seems to focus so much on "beauty" in his interviews that nothing substantive ever gets said. He's constantly asking "what do you find to be the most beautiful about X?" and asking other highly speculative and un-substantive questions. I wish he would ask questions aimed and allowing the interviewer to spend the most time delivering high yield information. This is meant as constructive feedback not as mere complaining.

If a man is concerned with abstract ideas then perhaps that's all he contributes to the world. Some people want to see things a certain way and will sacrifice their lives for seeing it that way, that's the beauty of life, people are free to choose the good, the beautiful, and the true or any combination of each which is their own beauty, truth, or good in whatever order they choose it. No one can step in are correct them if they think they are wrong, it's not their right. It's the right of people to choose to live a certain way and to experience the world in whichever way it's handed to them with whatever premises that they have in their minds.

Take for instance a starving artist. In art it's in fact the case this this is common:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_artist

Some artists due to their state may for instance cut off their ears like Pablo Picasso. This is a common co-occurrence with art. Society has done nothing to alleviate this problem in that other than a few recognized artists, the large morass go completely unsupported and fall into obscurity. In fact when society tries to rehabilitate such artists they attempt to do some by giving them remedial jobs that do not do justice to their perspective or talent, but such is the fate of the artist in that either they get market recognition or they fall into their own obscurity and may not even be known in their lifetimes.

(van Gogh)

This is a funny mistake, since Picasso is a contradictory example: he was immensely successful during his lifetime.

Another relevant thing I learned about recently is that Dali was apparently considered massive sellout by his peers and seems to have gotten so famous thanks to a strategic move to America.

Lex is a softie that loves love and asks some disarming softball questions with the goal of giving the reader a window into the mind of the guest instead of rehashing points from keynotes/awards speeches. I admire that dedication in this age of internet beef and it's likely part of why he has an endless stream of qualified guests.

What would you count as delivering “high yield information”? Why does finding out what people find beautiful not qualify? I think that this kind of emotional content is quite valuable and interesting.

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of "interesting" but whether it's an ideal way to showcase these guests (which I surmise is what outlace is trying to get at). The guests he's had on his podcasts is astounding, no doubt about that. But suppose you knew nothing about Susskind/Kahneman/Knuth/Stroustrup/etc's prior work and listened to these podcasts, could you have deduced (given the conversation/questions asked) the mountain of work they'd produced to be worthy of their accolades in the first place? I don't think I could've and in some way that's a letdown and a bit of a missed opportunity. In the end it's Lex's podcast and he should have w/e conversations he wants with his guests. That's alright too.

I've got to shake my head at these segments where the interviewer asks a philosophical question without seeming to have the conceptual maturity and framing to reliably go beyond delineating semantics. Luckily, Sanderson goes above and beyond.

10:31 – Is math discovered or invented?

The way it was posed sounds like it was asking for a dogmatic judgment on the nature of doing math, but I like Sanderson's take on how it looks to him, that certain mathematical problems seem discovered, and the mathematical tools developed to solve them and the frameworks they become seem invented.

14:30 – Difference between physics and math

Rather than tackling the philosophical question directly, Sanderson talks about the motivations mathematicians and physicists have when they do math / do physics, and that different people will give different answers.

17:24 – Why is reality compressible into simple equations?

Again, Sanderson provides a saner view: this feeling comes from that once you analyze out all your irrelevant details that you don't care about, or that you give up about (chaotic systems), what's left is what you can focus on by describing in simple equations.

>10:31 – Is math discovered or invented? >The way it was posed sounds like it was asking for a dogmatic judgment on the nature of doing math

I don't think that's a fair representation of Lex's question. Or at least it didn't come across that way to me. Lex was asking it in the context of his earlier question regarding whether math would be a common 'language' we share with aliens. The 'discovered/invented' question bears on that concern.

Fans of Lex would do well to checkout this podcast https://fs.blog/podcast

What do you mean by "fans"? Should I check it out if I actually like the way he asks question, or if I like the guests and wish somebody else asked them better questions? I guess I can find out for myself after listening a couple of episodes of what you recommend, but it still would be nice if you could elaborate.

"Is math discovered or invented?" is a question that underlies a lot of math philosophy writings I've read (of the popular science variety) and so I could immediately understand where Lex was going with it. It is a simple question which can elicit as much depth one is willing to dive into.

Similarly I thought all of Lex's questions came from deep understanding of what he was asking, and he would've known clearly what Sanderson would've replied (minus his personal insights) and what other competing answers are out there.

I love Lex Friedman's interviews - he simply asks a small but fertile question and then lets the guest talk.

Me too, I really enjoy the perspective he takes, quite unique, but not to everyone's liking.

According to the provided by the UN, genocide requires acting with intent to destroy.

> ... committed with intent to destroy ...

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

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