Jugendtraum

渐近自由。

Last Notes

2026-07-24 06:28:28 GMT

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You mean Deng Xiaoping? Yes, but that's the first name, which is quite common. There're a lot of characters pronounced "Yu," what I meant was that this one, as the last name, was quite rare. Nowadays pretty much exclusively used in rare names.

2026-07-24 05:33:36 GMT

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I was intrigued by your doubts about Deng's work on the Hilbert sixth last year, went on to read the huge papers he cowrote. Now he's tied as the first Chinese citizen to win the Fields Medal. Feels a bit funny because we share the same rare last name in Chinese. I had dreamt of the medal myself in the naive college years, alas, got neither the talent nor the nurture I guess, lol.

2026-02-08 02:06:37 GMT

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Milne is a real legend. I'll be waiting for your write-up!

2026-02-08 00:57:13 GMT

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I have read it! I've even got the book about Grothendieck it was included in; your article is clearly the best of the bunch. (Lots of errors and typos in the others)

2026-02-07 02:24:27 GMT

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Yes, after several attempts, I think I do get the fact that such a "nice and simple" correspondence in what is usually a very complicated and delicate branch of mathematics still hasn't been knocked down is surprising. Maybe I should do the Milne book and put all the painfully acquired knowledge in algebra to some intense use. Wish I could learn as fast as you!

2026-02-06 23:57:52 GMT

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The consequences. The connections that it has with other important notions in AG, in other words, explaining the holy-grail status. If you can do that in your great style, I think it'd be a huge service to graduate students. I don't mind it being 40 pages or something. Burt Totaro, the new Voisin review article last year, Deligne himself, none does it for me. Totaro even self-deprecated several times in his Millennium Prize lecture last year that the slides do look horrible and the best he can do is only so much.
In terms of "looking natural enough in an advanced graduate context", there's a very brief treatment of the Hodge, Tate and standard conjectures in Milne's upcoming book on Tannakian Categories; the 2016 Eisenbud-Harris 2nd-course book attached it as an appendix.
Usually though, I'd expect a good, meaty first course in a math subject should make clear both the naturalness and importance of its most famous problems. In this case I guess it's too much to ask.

2026-02-06 03:23:31 GMT

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I wish somebody could do this for the Hodge conjecture. I learned AG, I tried a bunch of review articles, I watched Deligne himself talk, and I still don't get what's the big deal. Or maybe it's just plain undoable.The cynical me is thinking it was included in The Seven because everybody felt respect was due for what Deligne cares about the most. Is it a stand-in for the standard/Tate conjecture or what. No idea.

2025-07-16 02:23:48 GMT

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I do find it vexing that mathematicians and physicists just repeat the cliche "this term is actually not accurate at all, but for historical and conference talks reasons, you're just gonna have to live with it." I think a concerted effort could rectify much of this kind of confusion in a generation. It's just much easier to repeat the cliche.

2025-02-09 02:34:10 GMT

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Yeah the "Grand Unified Theory" thing was quite misleading. Frenkel's romanticized view of math can be inspiring, but sometimes the Russian in him takes it too far, and bites off more than he (really, anybody) can chew in popularizations. It's very important for young people to have a grounded grasp of technical stuff before you wax grand with them.

2024-12-04 03:23:27 GMT

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On this we agree: he had always been the "I'll do the lecture, but y'all do the typing" kind of guy. I believe at one point he talked about rewriting a large portion of the second volume of FLP, being quite openly unhappy with how he lectured. He eventually lost interest. And all those years of paid lectures at Hughes, never even recorded.

2024-12-04 02:41:31 GMT

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Ofc I'm aware of the harrassment issue, the point is about the man himself. Did people get hurt by his persona? If there's no evidence of concrete harm, or even of reporting of concrete harm, then I don't think this kind of endless revision helps anything.
She could've just said "I don't like him much based on what I know, I'm not charmed" and be done with it. "Sham legacy" by way of listing other people who did things in his name really is too much. He was not Einstein, not Newton, sure, few physicists are saying that anyway, but he was also definitely not Ghostbusters next to The Godfather, c'mon.
I kind of understand now why more and more people are getting uncomfortable with self-serious academics snubbing everything and everybody.

2024-12-04 00:38:37 GMT

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I used FLP to teach myself a second course on college physics a few years ago. I also studied QED and statmech using his lectures.
I know most of the stuff she talked about, and I appreciate a female perspective, especially in such a "dude discipline" as physics. But I think the "sham legacy" bashing is a bit much. The braggadocio, the self-promotion, the sometimes possibly-not-very-appropriate-by-today's-standards contact with much younger female students and colleagues, sure, all true, all male, all the time, but there never was a "mythical" air around these things, plenty of very smart men and women knew and didn't mind. No way to know if anybody actually got hurt. It was the peak of "smart guy charm."
If braggadocio and fantasy about womanizing are still popular today within the still heavily male-dominated field of physics, it's not his fault, certainly not his legacy.
I'll add that the "bro" flavor is probably even stronger in mathematics.