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Comment by sigmavirus24 | Hacker News Reader

Also making claims about typical mathematicians and attempting to apply them to those already determined to be atypical is a bit dodgy in and of itself. Perelman was not your typical mathematician and he behaved atypically as well. I'm not certain but I don't think he travelled and lectured on his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. He even turned down a sizable award size. Just because an atypical scientist behaves atypical doesn't make their work any less valid.

I agree it seems odd but even in my limited exploration into Pure Mathematics I have seen alternative proofs made with ideas not native to the field. Why must that necessarily make this proof invalid?

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I'm far from claiming that the proof is invalid based on my feelings on the subject.

My only issue is that in the article, and in other writing on the subject, nobody is even contemplating the possibility that Mochizuki's work might be unreadable for reasons other than it being too brilliant to grasp.

I wanted to present an alternative possibility which seems to be disregarded at the moment in favor of the attractive "eccentric genius" narrative.

On the topic of Perelman - he did reject the Fields Medal. However, he did give a series of talks at MIT, Princeton and other places a year after publishing his proof.

I must have read the article differently from you. I sensed there was a positive attitude towards him, but I didn't feel they were trying to say he had proven the theorem or was so brilliant no one else could grasp it. On the contrary, it seemed like they were saying "This person has been brilliant for quite some time, but this 'proof' seems entirely nonsensical even to the experts in the field."

So to me, that read more as, this is a curiosity that has a deep and interesting past and an even more interesting present.

> I wanted to present an alternative possibility which seems to be disregarded at the moment

That is entirely fair and valid. I just misread your comment as more along the lines of "Does no one else see how obvious it is that this guy is crazy?!" My fault.

> On the topic of Perelman

Yes I was already corrected. I couldn't remember with certainty whether he did or didn't. I thought he had, but then what I remembered about his personality made me reconsider that.

A lot of professional mathematicians are considering the idea that it might all be nonsense. Popular writing on anything technical is not always representative of what's actually going on behind the scenes.

At the same time, it's important to check the work rather than just dismissing it. Mochizuki's work isn't totally original - a lot of it is derived from existing theory. So it should be possible to validate it despite the complexity.

It's true that serious breakthroughs from individuals working alone are rare, but they are not unheard of. The real test is whether or not this work can be adapted to the rest of mathematics (or the other way around, perhaps).

Perelman did lecture on his proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#Verification

Thanks. Didn't have the chance to check this morning.

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