There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
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There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
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Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#2One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing.
What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#3Related:
There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517619 - May 2015 (32 comments)
There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4769216 - Nov 2012 (36 comments)
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#4[deleted]
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#5One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing. What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
keep the salary. if the goal it to change the world, to understand reality, to have an impactful life, have a good standard of living, etc. math is one of the hardest ways of achieving that. It's such a saturated field. Almost everything you can imagine has been done to the highest possible degree of abstraction. Every stone overturned except for things which may take a lifetime to even try to understand. Writing a blog post is probably way more fulfilling and also a doable challenge. A top mathematician may spend years working on a result that maybe if he is lucky be worthy of a footnote somewhere.
As a field I think math is well past its diminishing returns imho. It's like 'what was the last big philosophical discovery'...yeah...hard to think of one. Maybe the P zombie concept or the simulation hypothesis. But new and important books, fiction and non fiction, are being written all the time.
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#6One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing. What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
I'm still grumpy that I accepted I knew what real numbers were just because I could recite back the definition given by the teacher. There is so much depth there if you go looking...
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#7#2, #3 means being at the stage where you can look at something and be like "no this cannot work" or "maybe this can work" without having to do all the steps.
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#8One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing. What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
One of my biggest regrets is not having studied (more) math. But would I regret not studying CS had I studied math?
You really can't win :/
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#9One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing. What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
keep the salary. if the goal it to change the world, to understand reality, to have an impactful life, have a good standard of living, etc. math is one of the hardest ways of achieving that. It's such a saturated field. Almost everything you can imagine has been done to the highest possible degree of abstraction. Every stone overturned except for things which may take a lifetime to even try to understand. Writing a b…
This is what a imagine late stage security after OS mature there stacks and such. The advent/widespread use of robost memory protections like PAC and Cheri are going to be so depressing for those on the offensive.
I wish I just had more time to do math like the OP but the saturation of the field especially with people who can deeply understand the abstraction is very very intimidating.
Re: There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)
#10One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing. What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...
keep the salary. if the goal it to change the world, to understand reality, to have an impactful life, have a good standard of living, etc. math is one of the hardest ways of achieving that. It's such a saturated field. Almost everything you can imagine has been done to the highest possible degree of abstraction. Every stone overturned except for things which may take a lifetime to even try to understand. Writing a b…
I think the whole point would be to retire and do math for fun, not desiring anything more than the joy of discovery, no footnotes, no recognition, just math.
99.99% of everyone won't be remembered for their "contributions" so why not do something you enjoy?