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A lot of mathematicians are oddities that by some stroke of luck, or perhaps by consistent switching of hobbies, somehow figure out that they understood the bas
by mikorym 6y ago
A lot of mathematicians are oddities that by some stroke of luck, or perhaps by consistent switching of hobbies, somehow figure out that they understood the basic premises of mathematics.
After all, the issue is that mathematics is simple. Humans don't like simple things. And when humans think they have found simple things they start wars or some novel iteration of discrimination against others.
- nomoreservices 6y ago> Humans don't like simple things. It's amazing how true this is. You can see it very clearly in your day-to-day as a software engineer. The vast majority of people you will encounter in your career favor fancy, complicated solutions to problems that could be easily solved with fewer resources. And yet when you float those ideas, you're laughed at.
- imwillofficial 6y agoMaybe what you think is simple problem isn’t so simple after all... This is the mark of an inexperienced software engineer in my book. Not understanding the true complexity of a given situation. I still catch myself doing it.
- nomoreservices 6y agoI'm a senior engineer with 15 years of experience. Pretty sure I have a good grasp on "complex" vs. "unnecessarily complicated," and I see the latter a lot more than I would like to.
- jmnicolas 6y ago> Humans don't like simple things. I like simple things, am I not human?
- ccozan 6y agoThe brain obscures a lot of complexities. Just take any simple thing and start thinking of any aspect of it. That itself is not simple!!
- imwillofficial 6y agoYou tell me...
- floatingatoll 6y agoHumans like simple things when they have social signaling value. Creating new complex things is easy, because you can assemble them from existing simple things. Creating new simple things is more difficult, because you must go beyond assembling existing simple things. Simple things lose their signaling value when they become well-known. Complex things lose their signaling value when they are replaced by simple things. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that humans attack simple things: they threaten the signaling value of the easier to create complex things.
- imwillofficial 6y agoI think all of this is vastly oversimplified.
- nix23 6y ago>Humans don't like simple things. I the tech-world i have to say i love simple things, always.
- pasabagi 6y agoI think there are two axes at play here - simplicity/complexity, and familiarity/alienness. Maths might be simple, but it's also incredibly alien. Things that are alien to conventional thought processes are always disliked and disregarded when possible.