BBC.Dangerous.Knowledge. Part 2

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.


The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• bbc
• gods
• messeger
• insane
• david
• malone
• knowledge
• infinity
• maths
• crazy

[kentucksoldiersson]

'Hung' himself? Meat is hung, a picture is hung etc, A person is hanged.

[skylark8008]

The human mind is not the same as a computer and neither is a computer a mind. The problem with the computer is its simply an arithmetic machine, with finite storage at that. Two different notions entirely which you cannot compare.

When it comes to modelling nature and explaining the world IMV the fundamental axioms of maths need review and thorough redraft. One cannot explain nature in its entirety (including infinity) using notions of points which are predominantly used to describe numbers.

[OmarHaleemOne]

What about Intuitive Certainty then?..if there are no absolute certainty in logical thinking, and we have the intuitiveness to evolve, why can't we have a rationale for an Intuitive certainty that will enable this world to finally accept that we have a lot of foundations laid which were rotten and need to be done away with. I think when we have a branch of inter-species communication that will be a good start. especially when whales and dolphins get their personhood. We spark in the wrong ways..

[BigDog91527]

damn haha psychological breakdowns and beefs all over the place. It's like they were gangbanging or something...

[LeCutter]

There's a lot of mounting evidence that the problem isn't the maths but our limited brains that simply cannot process and understand these things, much in the same way a person blind from birth doesn't understand colour beyond it being some concept that others tell him is true. Maybe this illogic from the logical is a sign from the divine. A way of telling us that there is more than what is knowable and known.

[rizhaq7]

None of this makes any sense......

[mitchozog]

And more - Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, on 25 July 1939, in Warsaw, the Polish Cipher Bureau revealed its Enigma-decryption techniques and equipment to representatives of French and British military intelligence, which had been unable to make any headway against Enigma. This Polish intelligence-and-technology transfer would give the Allies an unprecedented advantage (Ultra) in their ultimately victorious prosecution of World War II.

[mitchozog]

It is very interesting video. As video talking about Alen Turing I would like info you that the Cipher Polish Bureau in December 1932, the Bureau began breaking Germany's Enigma ciphers Turing was 20 years old and so he was not working on breaking enigma ciphers but he was working in 1940.

[GeekSquad513]

The real certainty that people need to understand is that human systems are logical because we create them to be so. The universe that created us is not. Uncertainty is the only certain thing in life.

[nabsta05]

If the universe was logical it would cease to exist, there will always be uncertainty asymmetry. There will always be that so the matter that makes up our bodies can exist. In a logical universe everything is ordered if everything is ordered and symmetry is at play antimatter and matter would be at equal partnerships and the universe would be static and lifeless. The universe's quirks makes it beautiful. Thanks to the mind of God to make it happen.