Comment by dragonwriter
5 hours ago
Fefferman and the larger math community are not the same actor; a divergence between their concerns is not surprising.
5 hours ago
Fefferman and the larger math community are not the same actor; a divergence between their concerns is not surprising.
I'm pretty sure Fefferman's formulation of the problem got a lot of vetting before the Clay Institute accepted it. As such, it probably does reflect the math community's understanding of the problem. The "problem" such as it is, is that it might be the least interesting case especially given the solution that was obtained.
But Clay chose Fefferman to represent "the larger math community"? I'm calling out Clay/Fefferman here, not the community. Though the community also had over 25 years to contest the problem statement, and had no problem with it until now.
> But Clay chose Fefferman to represent "the larger math community"?
Surprisingly enough, being chosen by another actor as proxy for some group doesn’t actually resolve the problem that an individual may not always be an accurate proxy for the concerns of the group (and especially for the same descriptive aggregate group a generation after the proxy acts on their behalf.)