Perelman – The Math Genius Who rejected the Fields Prize

Grigory Perelman is:

  • A Russian, born in 1966.
  • Careful, disciplined and precise in his thinking, ever since his childhood. Since a young age, he’s already quite uninterested in the “real” world, because the only world to him is Math.
  • Won IMO 1982’s gold medal – and he’s known for “there is no Math question he can’t solve”  (I guess, no high school Math question).
  • A geometry type of Mathematician: he solves problems using shapes, drawing lines, etc. This explains why he’s born for Topology, a field of Math that concerns a lot of shapes and dimensions.

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Changeability and Growth

When we were a child, we grew up unconsciously – we neither resisted nor purposely accelerated the process (of course, our parents probably did the latter)

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When we get older, growth now requires conscious efforts. 

And this is probably the reason behind the widespread phenomenon: the older one gets, the more one resists change. Because as we get older, our ability to adapt naturally declines.

Change is a fundamental ingredient of growth. To fear change means to stop growing, to close our mind to a finer reality and to stop getting closer to truth.

Young people, by definition of the word ‘young’, are well equipped for growth.

But why so many of them decide not to grow, by not leaving any room for change?

Free vs Cheap vs Valuable

In general, we seem to give a lot of credit to “free” stuffs.

This is obviously a mistake in our mind’s processing. Upon a closer examination, what’s important is the difference between the benefit and the price, not just the price:

Value (x) = Benefit (x) – Price (x).

Getting a free rotten tomato is not going to be valuable.
Paying 25$ to buy a book that boosts our morale or inspires us to think is indeed valuable.

No, it’s invaluable.

 

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Free things usually cost us more in the end. Mostly because their benefits are negative. And sometimes because their actual price is > 0, which means it’s practically a loan, not a purchase.

Similarly, being cheap in terms of price is not what really matters, logically speaking. Value is.

Being a big fish

It’s good to be a big fish.

Of course, it’s the small pond that makes the fish look big. A small pond makes us believe we are quite good. And that invariably makes us feel good.

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And that usually traps us into believing that we’re really….big, big even out of the context of the small pond. Absolute big.

And one day, we happen to see bigger better fish. Oh… it’s the pond(!), not the fish, that actually provides meaning for “big”.

But being used to being “big”, a terrible thing then happens: we become defensive, to keep the status quo, which has never been real – except in our mind.

 

Being blind

Most of us are blind in certain areas of life: some are blind in music, some in Maths, some in philosophy.

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Being blind means of course that we don’t know we’re blind.

What’s the cure?

I figure the only cure for this is the acceptance of our fallibility: that although we believe very much in our view, it’s possible that we are wrong.

Only when we haven’t closed the door may sunlight one day reach our mind.

(I always see the light, of course!)