Joel David Hamkins: evaluation

Transcript context

…I mean, what’s your own process when you’re thinking through a problem? Yeah, that’s another difficult question. I suppose it has to do with… My mathematical style, my style as a mathematician, is that I don’t really like difficult mathematics. What I love is simple, clear, easy-to-understand arguments that prove a surprising result. That’s my favorite situation. And actually, the question of whether it’s a new result or not is somehow less important to me. And so that has to do with this question of the greats and so on, whoever does it first. Because I think, for example, if you prove a new result with a bad argument or a complicated argument, that’s great because you proved something new. But I still want to see the beautiful, simple, because that’s what I can understand. Also, I’m kind of naturally skeptical about any complicated argument because it might be wrong. And… …If I can’t really understand it fully, like every single step all at once in my head, then I’m just worried maybe it’s wrong. And so these different styles, sometimes mathematicians get involved with these enormous research projects that involve huge numbers of working parts and… …Different technology coming together. I mean, mathematical technology, not physical technology. And sometimes it actually involves now more and more something like the Lean programming language where some parts are automated, so you have this gigantic……

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