this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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It's not just about primes, it's about proving the technologies and techniques needed to verify such a number is prime, which might then be extrapolated to things unrelated to proving things prime.
For example, GIMPS (the organisation behind this find) was a great example of distributed computing long before people had multiprocessor supercomputers in their homes.
But let's not forget the hobby factor. You don't get to decide what other people do for fun. If they want to lend a portion of their computer's runtime to a distributed computing project, that's up to them.
Some people climb tall mountains, and that's not of much use to anyone either.
Right. Like I shouldn't have a say in Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and others starting dead Nuclear Reactors up to feed the power hungry data centers they run to exactly.
I'M clearly the problem here.
Here specifically, very much so yes.
Nah. I can take the downvote and still be on the right side of things.
Can, but aren't.
Doing just fine 😘
Ever heard the saying "if one guy is an asshole, he's an asshole. If everyone is an asshole, you're the asshole"?
Not saying you're an asshole, but that is to say you're the only one defending your viewpoint, and you are welcome to it. But we'd all appreciate consideration of the information as opposed to the offense you seem to be taking.
Nuance exists everywhere in our complicated world.
The example that springs to mind is when we discovered that Archimedes invented the foundations of calculus long before Newton and Leibniz. The argument typically goes that the foundations of mathematics would be much further along had this discovery been realized but many others argue that we would have had no practical way to apply it in the time that Archimedes lived.
Now the part that I think you are missing is that the interesting part is not only that we now know that a new number is prime, but that knowing that a number is prime involves verifying that a number is prime and the larger the number is, the more difficult it is to verify so this almost always involves landmark advances in math and computing. Especially since prime numbers are distributed asymptotically meaning they are typically a few orders of magnitude larger than the previous one.
Totally.
Have you also heard the saying "Somebody Somewhere is sick of your bullshit'?
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
You really took the downvotes with grace.
No, you're just an idiot, you're not a problem, you're not significant enough to ever amount to a problem, you'll be forgotten 5 minutes after you're dead.
But, at least you have your impotent rage?
Yes, my thoughts and dick no longer work. That covers all of your statements. I still have a problem with this.