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Raoul Bott: Difference between revisions
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''Like, for example, I don't have an advisor for my PhD, but I have to have an advisor as far as something called the Math Genealogy project that tracks who advised whom, down the line. So I am my own advisor, which sets up a loop, right? How many students do I have? An infinite numberāor descendants. They don't want to have that story. So I have to beāto have "formal advisor Raoul Bott". And my Wikipedia entry, for example, says that I was advised by Raoul Bott, which is not true. So you get fit into a system that says, Well, we have to know what your h-index is, we have to know, you know, where are you a professor, if you want to apply for a grant. It makes all of these assumptions. What I'm trying to do is to, in part, to show all of this is nonsense. This is proxy BS that came up in the institutional setting.'' | ''Like, for example, I don't have an advisor for my PhD, but I have to have an advisor as far as something called the Math Genealogy project that tracks who advised whom, down the line. So I am my own advisor, which sets up a loop, right? How many students do I have? An infinite numberāor descendants. They don't want to have that story. So I have to beāto have "formal advisor [[Raoul Bott]]". And my Wikipedia entry, for example, says that I was advised by [[Raoul Bott]], which is not true. So you get fit into a system that says, Well, we have to know what your h-index is, we have to know, you know, where are you a professor, if you want to apply for a grant. It makes all of these assumptions. What I'm trying to do is to, in part, to show all of this is nonsense. This is proxy BS that came up in the institutional setting.'' | ||
- '''Eric Weinstein''', April 13, 2020, on [[Eric Weinstein: Geometric Unity and the Call for New Ideas, Leaders & Institutions (YouTube Content)|The Lex Fridman Podcast]] | - '''Eric Weinstein''', April 13, 2020, on [[Eric Weinstein: Geometric Unity and the Call for New Ideas, Leaders & Institutions (YouTube Content)|The Lex Fridman Podcast]] | ||
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''Man, great stuff happens at Harvard. Make no mistake about it. Harvard is an amazing and horrible place. And we're going to all now focus on how dumb it is and how horrible it is. And like then you're not seeing the tragedy, you're not seeingālook, I didn't have an advisor. I am one of the only people you'll ever meet with the PhD that had no advisor. But the guy who saved me was named [[Raoul Bott]]. And [[Raoul Bott]] discovered something that's so important called [[Raoul Bott|Bott Periodicity]] that, if I could convey it to you, your mind would beāyou'd think DMT was for children. It has to do with the fact that there are only four systems of numbers that have a particular property, and one of those sets of numbers spins a merry-go-round with the other three with an eightfold sort of symmetry. Who knew that this thing was even possible? It's just it's an incredible fact about the world. I associate him with Harvard. That's unfudgable. There's noāThere's no one in the world who can tell me that Bott Periodicity wasn't one of the most important things that happened in the 20th century. And to have a person like that, you know, just feet from John Tate. I could go on and on about all the real things that happened in Harvard.'' | |||
- '''Eric Weinstein''', February 19, 2024, on [[Why Does The Modern World Make No Sense? (YouTube Content)|Modern Wisdom 747 | Why Does The Modern World Make No Sense?]] | |||
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== On X == | == On X == | ||