9 ms·
Disappointment
- n4r9 2y agoDanny Calegari seems like that rare combination of humility, insight, and empathy. Some really good quotes in this interview: > If you want to go into mathematics, doing the mathematics itself has to be the thing that’s the reward, because no one cares, and what’s considered important doesn’t always make sense. ... I think 100% of mathematicians think that no one cares, that no one even knows anything about their best work. > G.H. Hardy was once asked what distinguished Ramanujan as a mathematician. One of the things he said was that Ramanujan had a remarkable capacity for coming up with hypotheses very quickly, but that he was also very quick to revise his hypotheses. He was nimble: If something didn’t work, he was able to pivot and revise his way of thinking. > the same kind of psychological pressures that make it difficult for people to deal with failure are at work in making it hard for people to carefully and critically evaluate arguments that they have a huge personal investment in being correct. > One of the great, tremendously useful and valuable functions of good writing is that it gives you a way of seeing what it’s like to be other people. You can see inside people’s heads. This is one of the great gifts of literature: You get to see that everyone else is weird, too, not just you.
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- nadam 2y ago"If you want to go into mathematics, doing the mathematics itself has to be the thing that’s the reward" True. In other words mathematics is the biggest 'Nerd Sniping' source ever existed on Earth. Math was my hobby when I was younger, and every minute of learning and thinking about theoretical math had a huge opportunity cost of not learning something more useful. Fortunately math is no longer a hobby of mine, so my knowledge is becoming more rounded/practical nowadays. I have became an expert of detecting any nerd-sniping, which at a younger age I was prone to. Surely I still teach math to my children when they need help, but otherwise I use math only when needed, not l'art pour l'art. Coincidentally I comment much less on public forums too. (Another non-useful activity.)
- jebarker 2y agoI think this idea is true of all human endeavors. You have to enjoy the process as the appreciation of an individual achievement will fade very quickly and you're just left with doing the process again. So in a way, nerd sniping is great, it hooks you into a process you enjoy.
- n4r9 2y agoYour post is written with a positive atmosphere, but I can't help feeling like you've lost something you once found rewarding. And... while it's tempting to think about your own life in terms of opportunity cost, I would caution that it risks giving rise to constant discontent if you focus too much on that. Bertrand Russell has a good quote in "In Praise of Ideleness": > There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
- nadam 2y agoI try to find joy in creating stuff that some other people find useful or enjoy. Creating something just so that I enjoy the process but society do not value at all is something I have a very bad feeling about nowadays. Like I am wasting my time/life. As an engineer it is more rewarding for me to create a videogame that people enjoy than creating a nice optimal algorithm or solving a hard math problem.
- aeonik 2y agoSolving hard math problems is a prerequisite for those video games. While we are in a good spot right now. I'm convinced that we need a lot more progress to really make the synthesized simulations / games that I see in my imagination. Hardware, algorithms, and architecture all have huge room for improvement.
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- wslh 2y agoAgain, epistemology and the recommended book "NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS"[1]. It is always interesting how the people who were in the epistwemology of math could easily predict this. I personally participated in Gregory Chaitin [2] conferences. [1] https://gwern.net/doc/math/1986-tymoczko-newdirectionsphilosophymathematics.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/math/1986-tymoczko-newdirectionsphilos... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chaitin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chaitin
- jebarker 2y ago> Math is so competitive. Most people are struggling to get access to very limited resource Does he mean academic positions and funding or community attention? Hard to be sure based on the rest of the interview.
- BeetleB 2y agoPretty sure that's what he means. It's one of the more competitive academic positions. Anecdote, but: I knew several math and physics PhD students. About half of the physics ones eventually obtained tenure track faculty positions in the US. Not a single math one did.
- jebarker 2y agoIt's sad that's the case. Math academics require very little funding relative to other subjects.
- BeetleB 2y agoFor the other departments, generally the university does not provide that funding anyway. The faculty members are expected to fund it themselves via grants. Although often for new faculty members, the university may promise one or two years of funding for labs. But again, since they get a cut of every grant that's coming in, they can afford to do so.
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- selecsosi 2y agoThis gels with my experience (purdue physics/math grad 2011). It also reflected in the composition of staff for the departments. I think to field a robust math department you don't need the staff levels that you do to field a dual theoretical/experimental program in something like physics or chemistry. e.g. at MIT the ratio of grad students in physics/math is 2.4 even though the undergraduate programs in Math (especially if you include Math+CompSci) are much greater https://registrar.mit.edu/statistics-reports/enrollment-statistics-year https://registrar.mit.edu/statistics-reports/enrollment-stat...
- beyonddream 2y agoI haven't read the article yet but the moment I saw the writer is "Jordana Cepelewicz" I knew it is going to be great! I have read few of her past articles and they were excellent think pieces.
- isotropy 2y agoDanny Calegari's essay "Disappointment" in the Notices (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202309/noti2782/noti2782.html https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202309/noti2782/noti278...) is a nice reflection on how to think - and try to feel - about failures.
- ocular-rockular 2y agoAnd yet being able to practice that failure while in the classroom is all but outright disincentivized. I completely agree with the interview... but educational currents do not have the space for the type of failure that helps one become a good mathematician. In fact, failing can remove a lot of prospects.
- DeathArrow 2y ago>It wasn’t common for people to write multiple-author papers when I was a grad student; now it’s rare for a paper to have fewer than three authors. I thought that's because people are trading. I'll put your name on my paper if you put mine on yours.
- paulpauper 2y agomaybe the material is more complicated and the papers are longer
- saulpw 2y agoIs it though? I've not seen evidence of that.
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoIt is definitely the case in mathematics.
- dang 2y agoWe changed the URL from https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathematics-stronger-20240522/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathemat... to the article it's based on, but both are worth reading!
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- ricardobeat 2y agoThe original content at https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathematics-stronger-20240522/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathemat... was replaced with a link to the essay. Writing a separate comment as it is not possible to reply. IMO the magazine article was a much more accessible read, and a different story about the author himself and the essay. Replacing the story feels disrespectful to both the journalist, for his work that certainly only amplified the reach of the essay, as well as the author for denying him the spotlight.
- zem 2y agoI agree, the essay was a perfectly fine personal reflection, but the quanta article was way better - the reporter was a skilled interviewer, and helped bring out far more of the essence of what the author was trying to say in his essay, and relate it to the overall state of mathematics today.
- wanderingmind 2y agothe biggest disappointment is the absolute contempt with which the society treats high end knowledge work. Math, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science, these are the highest form of art and sophistication created with human brain, but people who love these subjects have to forgive financial independence, endure poverty, have less than 1% job prospect in academia, social snubbing & ridicule, for what, inner joy? Screw that. These days, my main advice is the same as what Scott Galloway gives to avoid long term disappointment. Follow the bucks, once you have enough of it, you can then think of satisfying your inner curiosity.
- mostly_a_lurker 2y agoYou might find this article interesting food for thought: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/business/gen-z-college-students-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/business/gen-z-college-st... > Some students talk about turning to a different career later on, after they’ve made enough money. “Nowadays, English concentrators often say they’re going into finance or management consulting for a couple of years before writing their novel,” said James Wood, a Harvard professor of the practice of literary criticism. > Mr. Desai said all of this logic goes, “‘Make the bag so you can do good in the world, make the bag so you can go into retirement, make the bag so you can then go do what you really want to do.’” > But this “really underestimates how important work is to people’s lives,” he said. “What it gets wrong is, you spend 15 years at the hedge fund, you’re going to be a different person. You don’t just go work and make a lot of money, you go work and you become a different person.”
- lupire 2y agoWhy should the people pay you to entertain yourself? Do you pay people to entertain themselves? You can write up your "highest art and sophistication" and sell it to whoever wants it.
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