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Monday, July 14, 2014

Guessing at support

One of the things I finally admitted to myself today is that I have speculations about what kind of support my mathematical ideas might have, which really are just guesses. And, um, I hesitate to admit, but I started this post to admit it, so why is it so hard? Reality is I don't know.

What I do know is there is enough support worldwide that my ideas get picked up by search engines, and I've known that for years and rationalized it, so now I just remind myself: people have to DO something for that to happen, and people other than me.

But then again, why wouldn't these ideas get support?

How many people who love numbers wouldn't be fascinated by a simpler prime counting function that leads to a partial differential equation? Or finally an explanation for the size of fundamental solutions to x2 - Dy2 = 1?

And those are just a couple of things I picked to highlight. There's so much now I actually wonder to myself how I pick any given thing in the moment when I discuss. And wouldn't even begin to try to talk about it all in one post.

I've explained why I changed the name of this blog from "My Math" to "Some Math", and after I did it there was that bit of wondering if that would be it. Maybe it would just disappear and the search engine thing would be an anomaly. But some important people where I've admitted I don't have a clue about them, re-connected with this blog in some way. Re-connected in some way with the ideas presented here, and now the blog regained a lot of its visibility. Though not all.

So some let it go. Why didn't every one of the people mysterious to me?

Part of me wishes to romanticize to some extent the people who stuck with it. What did they see? How do they know? What makes them different from so many others in the math world? Are they even in the math world? What makes them special?

Ah yes, they have to be special, now don't they? Don't you? If you're one of them?

If you can see a world where these ideas are mainstream because they're some of the best ever found by humanity, then one might ask, how?

How do you know?

To some extent that should be an easy question: by the math, what it can do, and by the proof of it.

At times I've wondered, without that support can I be sure I'd have kept going? Would I have kept figuring things out?

I didn't have to find out. And for that I have to be grateful.

There is an oddity to the world of mathematics. People can believe that ideally you know the best math when you see it, or that it's all about proof. That's correct in the abstract.

But discovery is just the start. For mathematics to be accepted there have to be those people who can see the correctness in front of them, and not just something different. Or not just the wild musings of some "crank" or "crackpot" deluding himself.

Certainly I make the effort to be understood, and go to extreme lengths to explain and make sure I step things out carefully and in detail, but someone has to actually go through those steps to even notice.

And thankfully for me, some people must have. As even to read this blog, you have to find it, now don't you?

If you're not one of them, your finding it is all about those people so unknown to me. They found it before you, and somehow knew there was something here.

I do wonder, will I ever know why? For now without further information, I am simply stuck with speculation.


James Harris

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