Max Cohen: Robert Stadler Of Mathematics?

[Randrew]

Hello, all you "Pithemovie" fans. IAMNAPIV and I incorrectly began this discussion under the thread "Life of Pi," so I will paste our discussions here and encourage further contributions.

First, from me:

I loved the movie (as you can probably tell by looking at my profile), but I'm not sure that its ultimate message is compatible with objectivism. I can adduce one argument that it is, and one that it isn't, and I think the latter is stronger. But here goes.

First, the argument against:

Max Cohen, the hero of the story, was a genius who poured his *life* into his work, working himself to the brink of insanity, and finally triumphed, finding an amazing pattern that connected natural processes. But, in the end, he had to give up his work and destroy his results, as the knowledge that he had found was too great to be beheld by a "mere" human. Hence, the message of the movie is incompatible with objectivism, as it says that some knowledge is not meant for men to know, i.e. the truth may be too much for you to handle, it may destroy you, so ignorance is bliss (as can be seen in the look on Max's face in the last scene.)

Now, another interpretation of the movie, one that is more pro-objectivist:

Max Cohen's nature and fate can be more or less summed up in two words: Robert Stadler. Like Dr. Stadler, Max was the greatest genius in his field at the time, but he worked under the premise that there is a realm of "pure" knowledge that is somehow above the "petty materialism" (as he put it) of those working on Wall Street.

In the end, he shared the same fate as Dr. Stadler: he was ultimately destroyed by his own work. Notice the strength of the parallel: he was not destroyed by the work *in and of itself*, but by those whose hands he let it fall into: the Lancet Percy analysts and the religious fanatics, who all wanted power over men in some way or another.

Now, the second intepretation would be not at all obvious to a non-objectivist (or, at least, to anyone who hadn't read Atlas Shrugged.) In fact, it only came to me *just now*, as I was writing this post. The former interpratation seems to be the one most people would take away from the movie, so it is probably does more harm than good as a work of art.

Now, to quote IMNAPIV:

During the movie, I was so pleased with the idea that man had the ability to discover and manipulate such an aspect of nature that Max’s downfall didn’t ruin it for me.

Same with me! Up until the ending, the movie was tremendously inspiring to me and remains one of my favorites, even in spite of its shortcomings.

Though, to be frank, his discovery seems rather unreasonable. I don't know anything about chaos theory, so I'll steer of that.

Chaos theory my ass. Max was attempting to apply Number Theory to the stock market, to look for patterns. The patterns he sought were not the same as those that statistical and financial experts look for: he was looking for some mystical properties of INTEGERS, of WHOLE NUMBERS within a system that is fundamentally continuous. I admit, I don't know much about mathematical finance, but my friend, a Harvard mathematics/economics major who is interning for a hedge fund, says that this is a crock of shit, and I don't think it takes much more than common sense to see that he is probably right.

On the other hand, Number Theory is already starting to find applications in theoretical physics (http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/physics.htm), so maybe we're not so far away from number-theoretical wonders as it may seem...

[IAMNAPIV]

I noticed during the movie that Euclid seems to be doing most of the work for him. Do Number Theorists spend most of their time writing computer programs and entering data?

[Randrew]

I noticed during the movie that Euclid seems to be doing most of the work for him.  Do Number Theorists spend most of their time writing computer programs and entering data?

No, most use only pencil, paper, books, and their own creativity and ingenuity as their research tools. In other words, most number theoriests are considered pure mathematicians, rather than applied.