Dangerous Knowledge
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.
Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.
Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.
The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.
Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today.
Alan Turing probably committed suicide because of the homophobia he suffered in that era.
The theme inside the opening music is from the film Threads
I felt that fear in my teeth again....
Intellect and emotion would, ideally, work together in peace or the creative cannot be free but remain caged by confusion, indecision and depression.
Boltzman, Cantor, Godel and Turing help us understand that there is a cultural domain that operates in prior unity or serves the sociopolitical or economic domain of humankind.
Mathematics, 'mind' or attention itself, is only one of four faculties that make up the cultural domain of humankind.
Body or service
Mind or attention
Emotion or feeling
Breathe or energy
What Boltzman, Cantor, Godel, Turing help us to do is understand that there are other faculties operating prior to mind or attention such as feeling or energy.
!DA
Bottom line we invented language and numbers to represent everything that can be observed . so how could there be something we cant prove, regardless of medium its told through...? We made up the rules observable to us through sight....with somthing that is not found in nature. (words and numbers) to represent the splendor..of course we can make up some new words if we need to or plug in some numbers in a graph. We invented and tweaked these things based on what happened physically first so of course theres always an ability to clarify mistakes or make revalations using language or numbers.... we invented them! I havent even wwatcheds this yet lol but as far as peoples minds, the ability to interperate the system thats been forged by the geniuses before us is the adaptation of todays great minds that is being tested. We have to evolve with the graph or system because it seems to me like gravity pressure speee force what have you....pretty muchc links up to the point where we caan control those things to such accuracy it cant be wrong or we wouldnntbave been able to create the internet or put people in space with massive rockets.
Reading the above review of the doc doesn't seem to indicate exploring how society treated them might have played a larger role in their demise other than their endeavors to solve and understand the mysteries of life.
Probably the best documentary in mathematics. Watched in many times. Unfortunately haven't seen any more such by David Malone.
"He who knows does not speak, and he who speaks does not know" . . . or something like that . . . from ancient Chinese wisdom . . . .
silkop....I hope you will one day take a course in something like discrete mathematics and get an opportunity to realize how there can be different levels of infinities(of course it will appear silly if we do not have prerequisite knowledge), one above the other. Those guys are all geniuses....don't try to judge them without proper knowledge...
Consider the infinities of natural numbers and real numbers...it is very easy to show that they are different levels of infinities....you should properly understand how infinities are defined and measured...it might seem upsurd but it's fun ones you start learning
I'm not sure if math is even real. I think they figured out it's all a hoax and off'd themselves because they wanted to relive with the astral gods above.
The way to judge this documentary in proper context is to realize how
outside the box thinking these great men were. Consider how modern
mathematical physicists, like religious zealots who take for granted a
perfection in creation, also seek a perfection in proving a calculus based order in the universe that does not exist. The irony of these tragic figures is that when their contrary views were rejected by a
mechanical materialist establishment, they had breakdowns or went mad like so many computers that crash from problem solving. What to take away from this is that great thinkers need not be one track minded and must be in touch with heart, soul and intuition to solve existential questions beyond our comprehension. And whether or not infinity or eternity can answer the unanswerable, the concept of God is not a math equation.
This is a terrific documentary that needs to be viewed by everyone, especially those who can only accept that which can be proven. Einstein, and Gödel were both correct, but this thinking can only be embraced by those who possess creativity, and intuition. Definitely a good watch. I leave the readers with a quote from Einstein:
"For me, it is enough, just to wonder at the possibilities of existance".
This is a fascinating documentary that taught me about people and things I never knew about; but I agree with "Guest" who dismisses Malone's premise that "what these men saw" through their unorthodox thinking drove them into madness. I agree with his/her statement that "Sensitively balanced minds have been known to go over the edge." These were brilliant men who happened to have either concurrent psychiatric problems or in Turing's case, a lifestyle that was taboo in 1950s Britain. The psychologist whom Malone interviews himself contradicts Malone's premise in the film when he remarks that in his opinion, it's not so much that these men "could not look away" from the reality they perceived with their innovative thoughts, but that it takes a certain type of personality to go that way in the first place. Malone seems not to have realized that this may well be inconsistent with his premise. There have been lots of brilliant physicists and mathematicians who were psychiatrically more or less normal, e.g. Christian Gauss and Richard Feynman to name but two. Isaac Newton started out peculiar and then seemed to get MORE normal later in life after he'd published his Principia.
Bottom line we invented language and numbers to represent everything that can be observed . so how could there be something we cant prove, regardless of medium its told through...? We made up the rules observable to us through sight....with somthing that is not found in nature. (words and numbers) to represent the splendor..of course we can make up some new words if we need to or plug in some numbers in a graph. We invented and tweaked these things based on what happened physically first so of course theres always an ability to clarify mistakes or make revalations using language or numbers.... we invented them! I havent even wwatcheds this yet lol but as far as peoples minds, the ability to interperate the system thats been forged by the geniuses before us is the adaptation of todays great minds that is being tested. We have to evolve with the graph or system because it seems to me like gravity pressure speee force what have you....pretty muchc links up to the point where we caan control those things to such accuracy it cant be wrong or we wouldnntbave been able to create the internet or put people in space with massive rockets.
This is the most beautiful science documentary I have ever seen(and I have seen many hundreds) True, the emphasis on the sociological aspects may have been overly dramatic, nonetheless, it points out the very deep truth that the need for an anchor or security blanket is one of the primary forms of attachment spoken of by Nagarjuna in his three poisons. It is very interesting to me that Einstein saw Schopenhauer as one of his guiding lights and that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were students of Buddhism(certainly a long ways from being arhats). Godel and Einstein could imagine mathematical intuition but unfortunately they did not have a Bodhi tree to discover Bodhicitta. Martin Heidegger, a contemporary, conceived of emptiness but failed miserably to realize the Bodhisattva vow. This all goes to show the ethical sterility of Western philosophy. It has only been the mystics like Meister Eckhart who had the vision(intuition?) to look beyond the slavish devotion to the written word(Logos) to see a larger reality. Rupert Sheldrake exposes this hypocrisy in his book "Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery" ISBN 978-0770436728. Hopefully, we will all awaken from this multi-millenial sleep to embrace the truly infinite potential of being human and the exquisite beauty of living with a spirit of love and compassion.
Is it absolutely true there are no absolute truth?
YES or NO
Why would someone want to solve a problem that made people go berserk? On the other hand if that was my purpose in life I will go for it.
wow Amazing!
I get tired of the sentimental thesis that genius spurs this romantic thing called madness.
Sensitively balanced minds have been known to go over the edge. So-called madness also results from bipolar disorder, which is found disproportionately among keenly intelligent and creative people. It is a severe illness that can extend to psychosis and puts its sufferers at high risk of suicide.
Did much learning make these men mad? Doubtful.
For the record, Alan Turing died a martyr not to mathematical theory but to British anti-sodomy laws. I note that the posts here are from mathematicians arguing mathematics, not making psychiatric speculations. That suggests to me that they weren't too impressed with the film's thesis.
Beautiful!
ignorance is bliss but only for the weak willed.
George Cantor theory of trans-infinities is right and wrong simultaneously. this calls on the flaw of our basic logic that a statement is either true or false but not both. with infinities and infinitesimals our logic is doomed to failure. in fact it is our logic that is aleph-null and there are higher logics; aleph-one aleph-two e.t.c
1.George Cantor was wrong: The flaw in his theory of trans-infinities is within the ideal of one to one correspondence comparison.
Your monthly salary is twice mine and we are to work forever and ever adinfinitum. the pension is proportional to salary. Who earns more pension?
Very sorry, the question itself is contradictory; there is no pension to infinity employees.
2. Me and you are to race and you can run twice my speed. The race is adinfinitum in time. who wins? 'wins' means there is an end at which we are to be compared who has moved longer distance at that time which endless.
Mathematics is not for finding certainty, but for proving that there are no boundaries for the human brain, when it comes to possibilities.
Certain things are better left unknown it could be too much for the mind to handle.