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Is there any point in reading about Inter-universal Teichmüller theory (unless one works on it)?

Does IUT have any applications known yet?

I'm mainly interested in it for intellectual curiosity though, not "in order to do something with it". But it could be a waste of time.

mavavilj
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    I am not a number theorist, so I don't have the clearest picture of this, but I believe only a small handful of people (like 3 or 4) feel they have a good understanding of IUT, and while Mochizuki claimed to have used it for the abc conjecture, I don't think much else has been done with it yet; at the very least, all that's been done may have been done by Mochizuki. https://mathoverflow.net/questions/216184/a-road-to-inter-universal-teichmuller-theory has the beginnings of a reading list of prerequisites – Mark S. Jul 30 '17 at 15:16
  • I only became aware of the existence of Inter-Universal Techmuller theory when it was proposed as a way to solve the infamour $abc$ conjecture. Presumably the same methods can be adapted and applied to a wider class of problems in number theory. Do you count that as applications? Or are you looking for applications outside of pure maths? – Daron Jul 30 '17 at 15:03

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