The Geek Forum

Main Forums => Entertainment => Topic started by: 12AX7 on October 12, 2010, 03:59:21 AM

Title: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: 12AX7 on October 12, 2010, 03:59:21 AM

BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CACA0E97E3FD3BB5)

  In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

Title: Re: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: Novice on October 12, 2010, 09:27:42 AM

Nice vid. I always wish these types of programs would go into the math or the theory a little more.

Title: Re: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: 12AX7 on October 12, 2010, 02:05:58 PM

I know. It always leaves me searching for more vids or articles.

 Heh... maybe they were afraid to get close to the details; what with suicides and all, lol.

Title: Re: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: Novice on October 12, 2010, 03:14:52 PM

I was glad to learn about one of the more seemingly simple and cool ideas, though, with the infinite points in a circle and how a larger circle would seem to have even more points.

From there, I was able to better grasp how Cantor figured out there were different levels of infinity. That was really the only thing they elaborated on.

Cool stuff.

Title: Re: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: pbsaurus on October 12, 2010, 03:48:53 PM

Fucking Nowledge

Title: Re: BBC Horizon - Dangerous Knowledge
Post by: 12AX7 on October 12, 2010, 03:51:17 PM

The circle idea was a good way to get started wrapping your head around it. It's easy enough to understand one circle; and that it is made up of an infinite

number of discrete points. But then...  a bigger circle and suddenly "infinite" is not enough...  

It's not hard to see why no one even tried to figure it out until then.