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You can call it survivorship bias, but another way to phrase it is that it's very difficult to forecast the practical benefit of any one piece of mathematics ev
by curt15 9d ago
You can call it survivorship bias, but another way to phrase it is that it's very difficult to forecast the practical benefit of any one piece of mathematics even while the long-term impact of mathematics as a whole is undeniable. And any schemes to further ration resources among mathematicians ignores the reality that for such foundational subject, math research already one of the least funded compared to other disciplines or domestic priorities.
- moritzwarhier 9d agoYou could also say that the purpose of maths is falsifiable philosophy. Calculus (e.g. differentiation), for example, is mind-blowing when taking it seriously, and not only useful. The idea of "speed at an infinitely short moment", for example, is philosophy!
- jfengel 9d ago"Falsifiability" is generally understood in terms of physical observations. Mathematics is ultimately tautological: they are true or false by their own definition, without reference to the physical world. It just so happens that certain kinds of mathematics are unreasonably effective in drawing parallels to the physical world, but as far as mathematicians are concerned those mathematics are neither better nor worse than those that do not correspond to anything tangible.
- deleted 9d ago[deleted]
- brobdingnagians 9d agoFor GH Hardy, the more useless the maths is, the better and more beautiful it is.
- fn-mote 9d ago> those mathematics are neither better nor worse than those that do not correspond to anything tangible. A sweeping generalization. I certainly know professional mathematicians who disagree. Also: many consider “inter-connectedness”, not “tangible” to be a sign that a topic is interesting. That is, it touches branches of mathematics aside from its own.