‘We should be as unlike machines as possible.’

So writes IBM mathematician Gregory Chaitin in a New Scientist review of “How Mathematicians Think” by William Byers. Chaitin says mathematics today is obsessed with “rigour…but also rigour mortis: it is not creative, it leads nowhere…

“To create a new field of mathematics, you have to feel comfortable with paradox, with
creative tension, with sloppy and dangerous new ideas, and you have to want to rock
the boat.”

Sounds like a description of starting a new business.