3 ms·
> People do math because it's beautiful That's pretty much the only thing I disagree with* - people do math because you often can't build a freaking bridge wit
by Koshkin 5y ago
> People do math because it's beautiful
That's pretty much the only thing I disagree with* - people do math because you often can't build a freaking bridge without it.
*The rest is not even wrong.
- romwell 5y agoThe entire point of what I was saying is that math that doesn't connect to reality isn't beautiful. There's beauty in figuring out the exact shape a hanging rope takes just by thinking about it. When I say "do" math, I mean "come up with new math". People use math (..and fund math) because you can't build bridges without it, but people do math because it's beautiful.
- romwell 5y ago>* The rest is not even wrong. Would you explain this part of your comment? I write this as a mathematician (math PhD, publications, yadda yadda), and what I wrote above is my attempt to translate Vladimir Arnold's article[1] into laymen terms (my non-math friends found that article inaccessible). Vladimir Arnold is the mathematician (immense contributions to the field that spawned entire branches of math). All the statements concerning math concepts (numbers, card rules, etc) above are correct - and easily falsifiable; so "not even wrong" hardly applies there (unless you meant it to say that it's not wrong, which has a different meaning). [1] https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
- Koshkin 5y agoMuch of what you were saying was hard to agree or disagree with. BTW I find Arnold's piece easy to understand (and appreciate) even for a (somewhat educated) layman.