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Perelman Urged To Accept $1m Prize
krou writes "The Warm Home charity in St. Petersburg, Grigory Perelman's home-town, has urged the math genius and recluse to accept the $1m Millennium Prize for solving the Poincaré conjecture, and donate it to charities. Perelman has refused to accept the award, telling one reporter through the closed door of his flat, 'I have all I want,' and another who managed to call him on his mobile, 'You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.'"
Patron saint of basement dwellers everywhere.
Maybe leave the guy alone like he wants?
Is a total badass, he sets the standard for life.
He probably wants nothing more than being left alone. It's ironic that he doesn't seem to grasp that his eccentric behavior makes that even more difficult to achieve.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
This latest snub follows his refusal in 2006 to collect the maths equivalent of an Oscar, the Fields Medal.
Its sad that the Fields medal is being compared to the Oscars - don't get me wrong, the Oscars are high honors in their fields - but comparing the lifetime of dedication scientists and mathematicians put into their work to the winner of 'Best miniskirt on hot actress in a running scene' doesn't seem right.
Refusing a $1 million prize will, I suspect, generate more, of the attention he doesn't want.
The journalists camped outside his home and calling his cell phone don't give a crap about some obscure piece of mathematics - they care about the weirdo who is turning down a fortune.
Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin' owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to?
Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time.
<b> mine.
I think Perelman is not so much a weirdo, but an aesthetic artist of sorts--he's been hurt by the fact that humans have tried to monetize something he considers to be beautiful...as if you could place a price on Shakespeare or a price-tag on Emily Dickinsons' poems.
"Seriously man, take the million."
I suspect that in Russia, as in other places, large amounts of cash, even if given away, attracts the attention of all sorts of unwelcome characters. The government with taxes; receiving the reward leads to paperwork which if not everything is in order can lead to huge repercussions, like jail time. Criminals who will only hear you received a lump sum, not that you gave it away. Reporters who are only bothering you now but will instead be critical of how you spent the money or attack your decison making (why that charity?). Charities for not being on the receiving end of your generosity. Pesky social people wanting to get a piece, such as women or men (depending on how you spin, and maybe the 'or' should be an 'and') showing up, despite you being in a happy relationship already, maybe even disrupting that.
Right now he's an interesting story. If he accepts the million, he's an interesting story and rich, and the additional story of what he does with the million becomes a reality.
Hell, when the economy went to shit here in the US, just look at the nasty backlash online, even here on /.; people were attacking ALL upper class simply because they were rich, not because they had done wrong. It was guilt by association.
Maybe this recluse has his reasons and understands the world far better than you know.
Is integrity such a rare thing these days, that everybody freaks the fuck out when they see it, call the person exhibiting it "Strange", and "Weird
Of course! Things are only "strange" or "weird" because they are outside the norm. If integrity were the norm, the situation would be quite different. Wouldn't you agree?
This bit is more about our personal dissatisfaction with our lives, as the readers, having to do things we don't like for money. It's more about a dissatisfaction with the economic system and less about this mathematician, or ex-mathematician. This dissatisfaction leads us to react to any declination of money with shock. The real key to freedom is living with very little and very humbly such that we "work" less and live more enjoyably, where "work" is here defined as any activity done more for money and less for personal enjoyment.
Even Richard M. Stallman himself has suggested this:
"I live like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."
-- Richard M. Stallman
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
Pg. 164
Does Perelman not taking the money scare you?
Does he offend you?
Does he entice a violent reaction in you?
Do you hate it, when someone sticks out of the crowd not out of a desire to be more 'cool looking' but simply because he does not need the crowd?
Take the money and give it to charity, you self-important Shit
- why don't you go and find him and beat him into submission to your own standards, that will hopefully satisfy your primordial craving to make sure nobody is different and whoever is different they are destroyed, so that the coherency of the group is in balance yet again?
You can't handle the truth.
He solved the conjecture, his name will be in math books for the rest of eternity, and that is prize enough for him.
I think you're either misunderstanding him, or replacing his wants by your own.
I think it's more like this: he solved the conjecture, and that is prize enough for him.