evolution-is-just-a-theorem: mathematicalmemer:evolution-is-just-a-theorem: Hot take: applicable m
evolution-is-just-a-theorem: mathematicalmemer: evolution-is-just-a-theorem: Hot take: applicable math isn’t the only worthwhile math, but it is, as a general rule, more worthwhile. I don’t think this is unreasonable, but I think it’s definitely worth recognising that something can initially look useless, but end up being useful in the long term, which is essentially what makes pure maths a worthwhile long-term pursuit. (tbh, I assume you recognised this anyway because you said it was a general rule) I agree that happens, but I also expect that in general working directly on problems or one meta level up is a more efficient allocation of resources. The question isn’t “is the practical ROI on pure research positive”, it’s “is the expected ROI of pure research higher than the expected ROI of more applied work”. (Here I’m defining “applied work” as “research that is intended to solve or help solve a real world problem” not “research that is directly focused on the object level problem”. So basic science/pure math still counts if you can say “we’re working on X because we expect it to help with specific real world problem Y”). It’s really hard to predict what things might end up useful at some vague unspecified future date, so I think we can probably do better by working on things whose usefulness is more certain, even if the upper bound of their potential usefulness is lower. This makes sense :) I do often wonder what maths would look like if this was the way it had been approached historically: what would we be missing and what might we have gained/gained earlier? -- source link