Terence Tao

Yeah, sometimes you try something and it works super well.

Again, the sense of mathematical smell we talked about earlier.

You learn from experience when things are going too well.

Because there are certain difficulties that you sort of have to encounter.

I think the way a colleague might put it is that if you are on the streets of New York and you put on a blindfold and you put on a car and after some hours the blindfold is off and you're in Beijing,

I mean, that was too easy somehow.

There was no ocean being crossed.

Even if you don't know exactly what was done, you're suspecting that something wasn't right.

Yeah, when I have nothing better to do, which is less and less time, which is I get busy with so many things these days.

But yeah, when I have free time and I'm not, and I'm too frustrated to work on my sort of real research projects, and I also don't want to do my administrative stuff or I don't want to do some errands for my family, I can play with these things for fun.

And usually you get nowhere.

You have to just say, okay, fine.

Once again, nothing happened.

I will move on.

Very occasionally, one of these problems are actually solved.

Sometimes, as you say, you think you solved it, and then you're euphoric for maybe 15 minutes, and then you think, I should check this, because this is too easy, too good to be true, and it usually is.

Prime, I think we'll keep getting more partial results.

It doesn't need

at least one, this parity barrier is the biggest remaining obstacle.

There are simpler versions of the conjecture where we are getting really close.