5 ms·

shame.. i am passionate about discussing this topic but it is hard to 'engage' with unaccompanied downvotes

j2kun 10y ago
I did not downvote your comment, but to me your comment seems to be building up a bunch of straw men, peppered with negativity. It also doesn't clearly communicate anything relevant that I can understand. The original commenter is noticing a difference of culture between the startup community and the academic mathematics community: the stereotypical attitude of startup folks is "establishment be damned," but that attitude doesn't seem to fare well when it comes to mathematics because the process of learning mathematics is so incremental. Disruption and the hackathon mentality won't help you learn math (in the author's opinion). Meanwhile you're nitpicking definitions that seem to me to already have satisfactory informal definitions with no need for that level of scrutiny. It doesn't add to the conversation in a meaningful way. What I can glean from your comment is that if you have the right attitude toward math, then none of the original commenter's points hold. And I think everyone agrees with that. It's just that the people being discussed don't have the right attitudes, so it seems mildly pointless to say "Well if only they had the right attitude!" The same statement applies to most discussions about human behavior. I sincerely hope this helps you communicate your views better in the future.
- justifier 10y ago
  my desire to respond was instigated by this quote from the gp: > However, I truly believe that Mathematics is a discipline that is very hard to engage with outside of formal education - or at least nobody has really found a great model for doing so yet. my views: mathematics is unconstrained by any desired artificial 'engagement' requirement engagement is as easy as acting on and developing an interest and i encourage everyone to engage with mathematics

j2kun 10y ago

I did not downvote your comment, but to me your comment seems to be building up a bunch of straw men, peppered with negativity. It also doesn't clearly communicate anything relevant that I can understand. The original commenter is noticing a difference of culture between the startup community and the academic mathematics community: the stereotypical attitude of startup folks is "establishment be damned," but that attitude doesn't seem to fare well when it comes to mathematics because the process of learning mathematics is so incremental. Disruption and the hackathon mentality won't help you learn math (in the author's opinion). Meanwhile you're nitpicking definitions that seem to me to already have satisfactory informal definitions with no need for that level of scrutiny. It doesn't add to the conversation in a meaningful way. What I can glean from your comment is that if you have the right attitude toward math, then none of the original commenter's points hold. And I think everyone agrees with that. It's just that the people being discussed don't have the right attitudes, so it seems mildly pointless to say "Well if only they had the right attitude!" The same statement applies to most discussions about human behavior. I sincerely hope this helps you communicate your views better in the future.

justifier 10y ago
my desire to respond was instigated by this quote from the gp: > However, I truly believe that Mathematics is a discipline that is very hard to engage with outside of formal education - or at least nobody has really found a great model for doing so yet. my views: mathematics is unconstrained by any desired artificial 'engagement' requirement engagement is as easy as acting on and developing an interest and i encourage everyone to engage with mathematics