> isn't there a slightly more fine-grained way to quantify that every nook and cranny of such a problem has indeed be researched by researchers?
Sometimes there is (the map coloring theorem), sometimes there isn't (the rest of math.)
> I simply assume that a rigorous research by the best minds of the world has happened, but I never see any data on it, not even anecdata.
Most mathematicians work on areas that interest them, ie. alone or with a colleague in another university.
Never heard of anything systematic involving "the best minds of the world" outside perhaps military projects, and some cooperative research is being done on forums now.
Comparing math and Open Source software development is kind of strange and not helpful.
Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort and successfully write a profiler, if they wanted to. Few people make a career in math.
If you're not a native English speaker, you might want to get checked for ADHD, since your post wasn't very coherent.
> Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort and successfully write a profiler, if they wanted to. Few people make a career in math.
Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort to write a profiler... but few people make a career of it. Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort on math... but few people make a career of it.
> If you're not a native English speaker, you might want to get checked for ADHD, since your post wasn't very coherent.
That's a strange suggestion to make after reading a single HN comment, especially when you're basing it off of your own subjective interpretation of said comment.
I thought the parent made a coherent point that people may avoid hard problems because of the assumption that 1) they need expertise that they don't have and 2) someone else is already working on it. The question raised was: how, in general, do we verify those assumptions?
> I thought the parent made a coherent point that people may avoid hard problems because of the assumption that 1) they need expertise that they don't have and 2) someone else is already working on it. The question raised was: how, in general, do we verify those assumptions?
This is what I meant. Though, I do remember I was a bit fuzzy on how to phrase things and opted for a conversational style instead.
Sometimes there is (the map coloring theorem), sometimes there isn't (the rest of math.)
> I simply assume that a rigorous research by the best minds of the world has happened, but I never see any data on it, not even anecdata.
Most mathematicians work on areas that interest them, ie. alone or with a colleague in another university.
Never heard of anything systematic involving "the best minds of the world" outside perhaps military projects, and some cooperative research is being done on forums now.
Comparing math and Open Source software development is kind of strange and not helpful.
Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort and successfully write a profiler, if they wanted to. Few people make a career in math.
If you're not a native English speaker, you might want to get checked for ADHD, since your post wasn't very coherent.