Editing Ed Witten (section)

=== 2019 ===

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|nameurl=https://x.com/SheerPriya/status/1084147220281217024
|name=Priyamvada Natarajan
|usernameurl=https://x.com/SheerPriya
|username=SheerPriya
|content=More recently we talked about dark matter and black holes (2 yrs ago now) he was very excited about astro... b4 when i was a student he was just very encouraging and warm
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084114873376591874
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=One of the world’s greatest men has died. Most of you will have no idea who this is. I just don’t know how to bridge that gap yet to tell you what he did.

I was very close with his top collaborator. They were the Watson and Crick of mathematics to me. They rewrote my whole life.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/royalsociety/status/1083772505934970881
|name=The Royal Society
|usernameurl=https://x.com/royalsociety
|username=royalsociety
|content=[[Michael Atiyah|Michael Atiyah OM FRS]], President of the Royal Society 1990 -1995, died today. He was "a wonderful person who was a true internationalist and a fervent supporter for investing in talent – themes which resonate very clearly today." Read the full tribute https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former-president-of-the-royal-society-sir-michael-atiyah/
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|timestamp=3:48 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|timestamp=3:48 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084127025521033226
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=There is a little known stone wall on Long Island. While flawed, it is a gift to all mankind that should be a pilgrimage site, as an understanding of the contents is nesessary to understand our world. Think of it as transcendent graffiti. Atiyah‘s spray-paint is everywhere here.
|timestamp=4:36 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084132802721804288
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Imagine watery planets with holes and twists. Knotted donut planets  called base spaces. Crazy oceans called “Vector bundles” and “Principal bundles”.

He told us about how the twists and holes determine what waves must live on them and which cannot.

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|timestamp=4:59 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084133772033810437
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=He helped direct [[Ed Witten]] and Graeme Segal to truly tell us what Quantum Field Theory really was beyond being a physical theory. These men took a grab bag of techniques developed for calculation and showed us that they were a mellifluous whole of geometry, topology and physics.
|timestamp=5:03 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084134696127160321
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=If you want to know why I am so passionate about resisting the reign of terror against true scholarship it is this. Universities housed REAL scholarship beyond your wildest dreams. This kind of scholarship is not socially constructed. Almost no one can even do this level of work.
|timestamp=5:07 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/SheerPriya/status/1084144900315275265
|name=Priyamvada Natarajan
|usernameurl=https://x.com/SheerPriya
|username=SheerPriya
|content=Very sad news indeed - I knew Michael from when I was at @TrinCollCam he was brilliant, warm & amazing. Was at a conference where he was supposed to speak on thursday #higgscentre - he cancelled at the last minute....
|timestamp=5:47 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1084146455093248000
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Wow. Did you guys ever talk shop? I have to admit I didn’t always get the most out of him 1 on 1. [[Isadore Singer|Singer]] and [[Raoul Bott|Bott]] were much clearer. [[Michael Atiyah|Atiyah]] and [[Ed Witten|Witten]] tended to tell you something related to whatever you asked but often not in a dialogue. More like a juke box of answers.
|timestamp=5:53 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|timestamp=5:56 PM · Jan 12, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1094010049263849472
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=[[Ed Witten|Ed]] doesn’t make me feel stupid. But he still terrifies me. There is smart and there is [[Ed Witten|Witten-smart]]. I’ve only me one of his kind.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/jordanestern/status/1093968036602757120
|name=Jordan Stern
|usernameurl=https://x.com/jordanestern
|username=jordanestern
|content=Haha, does anyone other than [[Ed Witten]] make you feel stupid?
|timestamp=8:21 PM · Feb 8, 2019
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|timestamp=11:08 PM · Feb 8, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1113538987824545792
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I’m impressed by many many people. But I feel I‘m now getting too old to be in awe of anyone. I think Ed is the only remaining one I still just can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1113537524230631424
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=Edward Witten.
|quote=
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|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/jbrandonhall78
|username=jbrandonhall78
|content=@EricRWeinstein who are you intellectually in awe of?
|timestamp=8:05 PM · Apr 3, 2019
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|timestamp=8:23 PM · Apr 3, 2019
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|timestamp=8:29 PM · Apr 3, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1114598455559593984
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=It would upset (living) people to fill this out. Have to think about the ultimate goal helping this community.
|thread=
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1114593085684572161
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=One of my less popular theories is that the Nobel Prize serves to rewrite the history of science to make it palatable to institutions.

Einstein gets it for the wrong thing.</br>
Dirac &amp; Schodinger split one.</br>
Glashow/Weinberg/Salaam share.</br>
Mdme Wu passed over</br>
Vera Rubin -&gt; nothing
|timestamp=6:17 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1114593089904041984
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=Dyson Gets nothing.</br>
Stuckelberg Gets nothing.</br>
Sudarshan gets nothing</br>
Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga diluted</br>
No rules broken for [[Ed Witten|Witten]]

Etc

So the Nobel prize just completely rewrites physics history for outsiders. Similarly in Peace, Physiology and Medicine, and economics (cough).
|timestamp=6:17 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=In reality: </br>
Dirac was Einstein’s true peer.</br>
Gel-man is a genius but one who attracts credit from others. </br>
Yang deserves more than one. </br>
Mdme Wu and Dyson are inexplicable omissions.</br>
Sudarshan should have more than one and not zero.</br>
Etc..

The prize dilutes or buries our best.
|timestamp=6:17 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1114594379887337472
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=In this theory we beat up our absolute top people to make it easier for the next group to live with the difference in impact &amp; contribution. We have many constraints we can point to for how it is awarded. But it ends up telling a less interesting less terrifying story for us all.
|timestamp=6:23 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/mhartl/status/1114597238750109696
|name=Michael Hartl
|usernameurl=https://x.com/mhartl
|username=mhartl
|content=FWIW, I’d be interested in reading a longer post on this subject, and I suspect I’m not alone.
|timestamp=6:23 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|timestamp=6:39 PM · Apr 6, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1117520090474221569
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Haskell Programmers.</br>
Topos theorists.</br>
King Crimson aficionados.</br>
1980s String Theorists.</br>
Pediatric Heart Surgeons.</br>
BJJ practioners.</br>
Oboe/Bassoon players.</br>
Fans of Eva Cassidy, Shackleton, Coltrane and [[Ed Witten|Witten]]. 

And all for understandable reasons.
Like the amazing French. 🇫🇷
https://x.com/PardesSeleh/st/PardesSeleh/status/1117430684476485640
|timestamp=8:08 PM · Apr 14, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126376935968215040
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=It’s not all Feels. Look at E8 and tell me how you “feel”. Who came up with that? Killing? Freudenthal? Lie? No way. Not even Grothedieck and [[Ed Witten|Witten]] with Feynman and Von Neumann’s help. None of us know what it is. Is hemoglobin socially constructed? Who asks this? No one I know.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/seanilling/status/1126092670529671169
|name=sean illing
|usernameurl=https://x.com/seanilling
|username=seanilling
|content=As a language of signs and symbols, math is constructed. Its physical referents are not.

Am I missing something?
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1125986671663636480
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Today I learned mathematical truth is “socially constructed” from @mattyglesias at @voxdotcom.

Sad? This is great news actually! It just means that these confusing types simply mean “timeless, universal &amp; true” whenever they say anything is culturally constructed. #ProblemSolved
|timestamp=4:51 AM · May 8, 2019
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|timestamp=11:53 AM · May 8, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126348389308780544
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Yes Sean. There are problems of language here. But there‘s a bigger issue. Most of the important parts of mathematics are neither physical nor “socially constructed”. No one could dream them up. The conversation today is however made impossible  by language &amp; politics. To sum up:
|timestamp=4:49 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126349465785257984
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=2/ First there is a careful philosophical tradition that means something precise by “socially constructed” as well as an activist community that means something dismissive and sloppy by the same phrase. Genrerally, the math community has not been overly interested in either.
|timestamp=4:53 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126350282592358400
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=3/ Most research mathematicians traditionally (but not always) oversold the objective nature of the profession’s norms. This causes historians and philosophers of science agitation. I think that’s fair, but I claim they have also oversold their contributions to pure mathematics.
|timestamp=4:56 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126352693860061187
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=4/ The feeling most solid research mathematicians have is that they’re studying an abstract reality that is independent of the way in which we study it. They can find being called Platonists, intuitionists, mystics etc, kind of weird if labeled by outsiders. Then come activists..
|timestamp=5:06 AM · May 9, 2019
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|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=5/ The activists can try to emphasize the part of mathematical culture, language and practice that are not fully objective in order to cast doubt on claims of universal knowable objective shared reality and primacy that scientists advance over, say, claims of “lived experience”.
|timestamp=5:12 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126355722969608192
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=6/ The biggest problem comes from people who go back and forth talking about say “decolonizing STEM” because “science is socially constructed” but who then retreat to “oh we just mean that philosophically” and it is this move with which many of us have lost patience. A “deepity”.
|timestamp=5:18 AM · May 9, 2019
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|content=End/ So to sum up. There is a mildly interesting issue w/ the cultural practice of math. There is a major issue with activists trying to emphasize a marginal issue to attack a functioning system of universal truth. And there is an acultural aspect to pure mathematical structures.
|timestamp=5:22 AM · May 9, 2019
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|content=I understand what you are saying but this doesn’t capture the issue. 

Imagine you are pretty sure you know the world’s smartest people well. And you know their work and yours. The problem is that it isn’t constructable by any of you because it is well beyond all your abilities.
|timestamp=6:27 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126373642475003905
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Imagine you‘re in a desert and you start dusting off a sand dune to find something that looks like Petra. You are pretty sure that you didn’t construct it. Only nobody else did either. That’s the feel of great mathematics. We just don’t worry too much about philosophical labels.
|timestamp=6:29 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1126375531669102592
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Are gears culturally constructed? Are Platonic solids? Wheels? You might think so. But no. They are selected for Long before humans found them. Now please don’t lecture me on the exact nature of ‘gear’. It’s not as interesting as the point: These are canonical acultural forms.
|timestamp=6:37 AM · May 9, 2019
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|timestamp=6:42 AM · May 9, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1159302692616802305
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize As for Super-Gravity, I don’t think you can make the argument that it is fully natural mathematics without a physical application. You can make that argument for SUSY after Kac/[[Ed Witten|Witten]]/Etc..., but even that is not totally clear to me.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1159295088763129857
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize Hey John,

Why do you think the SUSY/SUGRA math was there to be found if the physical world isn’t using it? Does it connect deeply elsewhere? The physics argument has always been that it must get used physically because it would be too weird to exist and not to be made use of.

E
|timestamp=2:47 AM · Aug 8, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1159302097684189184
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize I‘m reading your &amp; @skdh’s responses and don’t think Tweets are the right place to argue this. But I‘m still impressed how neither math nor physics has fully naturally accommodated fractional spin to my thinking. We find it everywhere but we still give a semi-‘magical’ treatment.
|timestamp=3:15 AM · Aug 8, 2019
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|timestamp=3:17 AM · Aug 8, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1198298631826096128
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I would say the one who awes me most is...[[CN Yang]]. I don’t understand why I never hear his name as candidate. He has at least 3 of the greatest achievements: chirality for the weak force (w/ Lee), non-Abelian maxwell theory (w/ Mills), and the bundle revolution (w/ [[Jim Simons|Simons]]/Wu).
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1198298626952290304
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=My personal &amp; overly condensed view of mathematics and physics in the 20th century would be summarized like this. 

Mathematics began as a stool on the three legs of Algebra, Calculus, and Geometry where the last appeared to many to be the weakest leg. It turned out otherwise.
|timestamp=5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1198298630618107904
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Repeatedly we find that any important problem from math or physics which we consider to be outside geometry/topology has a hidden geometrical nature to it. And there are only so many times you fall for that before you start to see geometry absolutely everywhere.
|timestamp=5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1198298631217930241
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=As for Weinberg, he is one of three people I can make the case for as our “Greatest Living Physicist”. I’ve met him. But he still has big bets which are undecided (e.g. asymptotic safety). [[Ed Witten|Witten]] is somehow even smarter but less accomplished in standard predictive theory. But...
|timestamp=5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019
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|timestamp=5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1201952965323444225
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=One of the greatest minds of our time, [[Michael Atiyah]], eulogized by his true still-active peers including [[Ed Witten|Witten]] &amp; Donaldson. With all the confusion/hype of this moment in time, it's worth reminding ourselves of what achievement sounds like w/o inflation:

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1834.pdf
|timestamp=7:54 PM · Dec 3, 2019
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