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To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

quantamagazine.org

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Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#71

Post by 110011 »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #65
Koshkin wrote: post #45

Well, mathematics is hard. It takes a lot of effort to really learn it, a lot of dedication and (self-)motivation. Not everyone can do it, and, frankly, very few people - even among those who have spent many years studying mathematics - could say that it is the best way to live your life.

I profoundly disagree. I believe that mathematics can be learned and appreciated by many, because mathematics is a language for articulating inner urges and perceptions that are common to a wide range of creatures, not only humans. This idea that mathematics is only for the few is self fulfilling, and perpetuated by narrow ideas of what it constitutes.

There is a huge difference between the pursuit of new mathematics and the appreciation and understanding of existing work. I think OP is talking about the former and it certainly isn't for everyone, at least not the way it is currently implemented. To understand this you need to look at the career track of newly minted math PhDs and what one needs to do to secure tenure.

I do agree that math can and should be widely appreciated.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#72

Post by eru »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

Alas in philosophy you can't even be properly wrong.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#74

Post by cryoshon »

110011 wrote: post #63

As a counterpoint to the overly exuberant article let me chime in as a graduating theoretical computer scientist. Math is hard and despite its beauty and allure academic life doesn't take place in a vacuum- ergo there's a lot of politics and pettiness from your peers. You should expect to invest years of your life into making progress on some hard problem with little encouragement in the meantime, this takes a tremen…

>So the career path of a junior scientist is pretty crushing mentally

this is true throughout the sciences.

it's a big issue.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#75

Post by state_less »

koolba wrote: post #21
state_less wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if s/he had to write a perl script to download it though?

Well funny story because that's how I learned perl ...

The old man likes to jerk us around sometimes ;) Be good koolba, hope you're happy as Larry.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#76

Post by eru »

amelius wrote: post #70
gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

Philosophy, as it is typically taught, contains too much historical annotation and attribution to my taste. I want the factual/logical content only, not the "Wittgenstein said this" and the "Nietzsche said that", because it almost implies that I have to choose a side.

I doubt it is because there might be no such core.

(Or rather, if you believe in the core, you are automatically a analytic philosopher? A school I have many sympathies for, but hardly the only or even mainstream of philosophy.)

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#77

Post by westoncb »

It seems like a lot of the benefits mentioned could arise from many other activities with similar likelihood. I think a lot of it has to do with developing expertise at something you believe is important, and which you are (or can become) comfortable doing.

Totally agree that for people working in abstract technical areas (e.g. software architecture, philosophy, inventing things), however, mathematics has a special sort of value over other subjects. It deals in these super distilled concepts which have very general applicability; so, the concepts you learn end up expanding this pool you can draw from for coming up with new, related ideas, in a wide range of fields.

It's also important to learn it as a sort of literacy, to widen the range of technical material you can read.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#78

Post by johncolanduoni »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

Why is it so hard for people to accept that it's probably a good thing not everybody wants to do exactly the same things as they do? Do you really think that if everybody focused their life on any single intellectual venture you picked, we'd live in a better (or even functioning) world? Or that people who enjoy X and don't like Y (or simply don't like it as much!) should just deal with being unhappy so you can conclude that Y is the One True Intellectual Pursuit?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#80

Post by mlmlmasd »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #65
Koshkin wrote: post #45

Well, mathematics is hard. It takes a lot of effort to really learn it, a lot of dedication and (self-)motivation. Not everyone can do it, and, frankly, very few people - even among those who have spent many years studying mathematics - could say that it is the best way to live your life.

I profoundly disagree. I believe that mathematics can be learned and appreciated by many, because mathematics is a language for articulating inner urges and perceptions that are common to a wide range of creatures, not only humans. This idea that mathematics is only for the few is self fulfilling, and perpetuated by narrow ideas of what it constitutes.

> I believe that mathematics can be learned and appreciated by many, because mathematics is a language for articulating inner urges and perceptions that are common to a wide range of creatures, not only humans

I'm not sure where you're getting the 'wide range of creatures, not humans' part, or even why that matters, but I agree, mathematics is a formalization/projection of our own thinking process, which pretty much every human has.

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