Richard Borcherds (Fields Medalist) on the Monster Group, String Theory, Self Studying and Moonshine

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/xu15ZbxxnUQ Richard Borcherds is a mathematician known for his work in lattices, group theory, Monstrous Moonshine, and infinite-dimensional algebras, for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998.  Richard Borcherd's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyDqfi_cbkp-RU20aBF-MQ Patreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Help support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:35 How Richard began to become interested in math 00:03:42 Unification in mathematics vs. unification in physics 00:04:38 Daily ritual (or non-ritual) 00:05:19 How much time spent working / studying? 00:07:22 Creativity of the old vs young 00:08:30 Greatest strength is obstinance 00:08:58 Working in isolation, with no collaborators (strength or a weakness?) 00:10:48 Starting mathematics in your 20's, 30's, or 40's 00:11:45 Why must you pick a problem you're interested in? What happens when you don't? 00:12:41 What do you during moments of non-creativity / writer's block? 00:14:40 Dealing with depression as a scientist 00:15:24 On Richard's IQ and nootropics 00:17:02 Richard's creative process 00:18:33 Does he think more pictorially, algebraically, analytically, verbally, etc.? 00:21:11 Not following "deep work" 00:22:00 Reading non-scientific books 00:22:48 Audience Q: What does Richard think of Jordan Peterson? 00:23:31 Audience Q: Have you experience madness, working in math in isolation? 00:23:56 Audience Q: Does he optimize his diet / fast? 00:24:37 How does he learn new mathematics 00:25:42 Solving problems by ignoring them 00:26:51 Audience Q: Advice for someone in their 20's trying to learn math who's not in the field 00:28:03 Why does Richard not like infinity categories? 00:28:44 Does Richard memorize proofs / theorems? 00:29:53 Happiness and meaning in life (math or relationships / marriage / kids?) 00:30:40 What would Richard do without math? 00:31:32 What was it like to win the Fields medal? 00:32:19 What is about math that's meaningful? 00:33:10 Math discovered vs invented 00:34:35 Why is the Monster Group interesting? 00:37:18 "Quantum Field Theory gives me a headache." 00:39:21 Free will? 00:41:17 God, Simulation Hypothesis, and Many Worlds 00:44:53 On the Hard Problem of Consciousness 00:46:28 Favorite mathematicians (Serre, Witten, Tao, Feynman, Weinberg, etc.) 00:48:22 "Ed Witten is terrifying" 00:49:05 The Monster Group and physics 00:52:55 How to contribute to math if you're an outsider (or a neophyte)? 00:55:44 Many Worlds (again) 00:56:15 Audience Q: Is set theory too unwieldy and can we base math off of something different? 01:00:03 Audience Q: Pluralism in the foundations of math or not? 01:02:48 Intuitionist / Finitism / Computational logic? 01:04:29 Audience Q: Can people in their 40's understand advanced math? 01:05:20 Audience Q: Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics 01:06:19 Audience Q: Does it puzzle him that some people don't understand math? 01:08:09 On Ramanujan 01:10:45 Lectures on Number Theory and the difficulty of QFT 01:14:56 On different learning styles, and philosophy of mathematics 01:17:48 Audience Q: How does one know when they're making progress on a solution? 01:19:11 Langland's program 01:21:45 Audience Q: How does one know what to learn when they don't know what they don't know? 01:24:02 Learning math and physics from YouTube 01:29:46 Audience Q: Goldbach's conjecture 01:31:53 On nervousness, performance anxiety, group theory, and chit-chat 01:38:49 "Secret" math techniques 01:39:56 Why "modular forms" are the most mesmeric of all fields of math 01:41:50 Discovered vs. invented (rebuttal from a famous mathematician)

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Exploring theoretical physics, consciousness, Ai, and God in a technically rigorous manner. If you'd like to support this endeavor, then please visit the Patreon ( https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal ). Thank you for your charitable and kindhearted support. My name's Curt Jaimungal, a Torontonian with a degree in mathematical physics from the University of Toronto and I analyze various Theories of Everything from this analytic perspective, though more and more opening up to alternative approaches. The separating factor of TOE from other podcasts is its focus on depth even at the risk of limiting the audience due to how much detail we delve into subjects. Paralleling the intensity found in academic discourse, we're increasingly embracing a spectrum of unconventional ideas to conduct research during this podcast, rather than merely conveying existing information. Contact toe [at] indiefilmTO [dot] com for business inquiries / sponsorship.