EDIT: FFS why does this subject always get people frothing at the mouth before they even read the main point stated, only to go on and accidentally agree with it eventually? Pls read first before getting mad at stuff that I explicitly argued against.
EDIT 2: OK apparently there's still miscommunication, and I think the 1st edit somehow made it worse. When I say "useful" I put it in scare quotes on purpose and as I clarify in the 1st, 4th and 5th paragraps, it is NOT about value but about practical/technological utility.
I originally posted this on R*ddit to an audience of math nerds (so be warned that it is written with reddit STEMlords in mind) because there was a relevant convo going on and it would be fun to also have it here.
Sure, there is a lot of modern math that is practically useful, but the majority of pure math really isn't "useful' in any way, shape or form for now, and probably won't be any time soon, possibly forever. Like, even areas which are apparently "useful", like computer science, is full of things that have absolutely 0 practical utility and are solely of academic interest. Whether P does or doesn't equal NP doesn't really matter to anyone doing practical work. People wouldn't get upset about their discipline getting slighted or whatever if this stupid idea that scientific research should have "practical application" (which generally means "someone can sell it for money") hadn't proliferated, starting from schools.
Even when someone finds an "application" through some kind of far fetched (or not so far fetched) reasoning, it's some application to, like, highly theoretical physics that may or may not actually have something to do with the real world, and even if it does, it is only relevant in extremely niche experimental circumstances to the extent that it can't ever conceivably lead to technological progress. And even IF it does, sometimes it's just progress relevant only to more research about more stuff without application.
So even then you have to resort to saying something like "the result is not useful but maybe one of the methods used to prove it can be used for something else", and then that something else turns out to also not be useful but again "maybe one of the methods used to find that something else is useful for another something else and that other something else is useful for another other something else and then that other other something else has a practical application that is only relevant to research, but then maybe that relates to some other other other...", etc and it gets kind of silly. That or someone says something abstract like "it's useless now but it may be useful some time!". Maybe. Or maybe not.
In the end of the day the same arguments could be used to justify anything being useful via some contrived butterfly effect style conjecture. This of course is usually done because otherwise people can't get grant money otherwise, governments demand that research will produce results they can use to blow up people or sell stuff. Also the result of a bad educational system that emphasizes this kind of "usefulness", which therefore renders it unable to convince students that something is worth learning unless it is "useful". Of course "why should I learn this if it's not useful to me" is a very valid concern of students, but the problem is somewhere else. First, schools DON'T really teach any of the stuff that is useful and interesting to most people. If they did, then math would get a lot less attacks on that front. Schools teach with 30% of the students in mind, the ones who will really apply the things they learned. The other 70% can just go to prison or whatever as far as the educational system is concerned. Second, schools are very boring and antagonistic towards kids and since kids are miserable learning stuff, they need extra justification to learn them. Third, the schools themselves teach kids to think like that so it's no surprise that they do. Fourth, school math mostly sucks and is super boring for most people.
So yes, most modern pure math is indeed "useless". That is not the issue. The issue is, why does this matter? Why is it bad? Should it be bad? I don't think so. It's a false idea that gets perpetuated at many levels starting from school. But then there is the issue of mathematics being very exclusionary and distant from most people, which makes it harder for them to care, which brings us to the issue of outreach but whatever, that's a different matter.
118 comments
You nerds really gonna have a struggle session about math?!
This serves as the arbitrary nth example in my inductive proof that Hexbear will struggle session about any topic. Now I just need the n+1 case to exist.
I'll be publishing my paper shortly in the American Journal of Mathematics.
We will have a struggle sesh over something written in nplusonemag, I have total confidence in this
They're not necessarily an actual troll. I know people like that and I've experienced music that way for brief periods.
Whether P does or doesn’t equal NP doesn’t really matter to anyone doing practical work.
P=NP is monumentally important to practical work. If it's true, all problems are easy to solve.
Leaving aside from that terrible abysmal awful example to address your general point: there's a difference between basic research and engineering. We need to find out basic facts about what sort of world we're in in order to do engineering later. We obviously can't know the "practical application" of things that we don't know yet; we need to find them out first. Did Rutherford think about the "practical application" of his model of the atom? Or did the street eventually find its own use for it?
P=NP is monumentally important to practical work. If it’s true, all problems are easy to solve.
that doesn’t necessarily follow right? like what if all NP problems are solvable in n^googolplex steps or somethinh
Even n^googolplex is still sub-exponential time, and in practice ridiculously shitty poly time algorithms can often be reduced in magnitude, whereas if you have an exponential time algorithm you need to find something completely different.
Yes, not necessarily, but they've pretty much always been up until now. There's like, three or four practical algorithms in n^10.
All of them are approximations of NP-class problems, suboptimal, or literally invented to be intractable.
There’s like, three or four practical algorithms in n^10.
That's usually because the longer ones aren't practical. Or because they can't find them. But I did a google search and there's some algorithms which are theoretically useful for... something, and they're in like n(10100).
The algorithms I found for n10100 are just approximations of non-polytime algorithms.
And by that I mean that they don't solve a practical problem, not that they aren't practical to use.
There was one which was about a neat little word problem which had to do with hanging a picture or something and it was like n^500000 or something. The rest I wasn't sure what they were supposed to be.
The one for hanging a picture was published to a journal about silly computer science solutions, it's a problem that was invented to have a ridiculously stupid polytime solution
The rest were either estimations, or they had to do with combinatorics.
it’s a problem that was invented to have a ridiculously stupid polytime solution
Well many of those kinds of problems are "silly".
Well yeah but the problem was invented just to make the solution harder, NP-hard problems are encountered often.
All of them are approximations of NP-class problems...
Then is it unreasonable to bet that if NP problems are actually P problems, their best algorithms might be n^(something huge)?
It's not, because fundamentally they are trying to approximate non-polynomial algorithms. We saw this play out for other algorithms before a polytime solution was found.
And even if they could, then one could approximate those high exponent algorithms and have a huge speedup.
P=NP is monumentally important to practical work. If it’s true, all problems are easy to solve.
It is not, at least not necessarily. Whether or not such a solution conceivably exists doesn't really matter at all to a programmer. Let's say it turns out that P=NP. Cool, then said fast solution exists. Does that mean the programmer can find?Not necessarily. But they can try. Let's say P does not equal NP. Cool. Then a faster solution may or may not exist. But the programmer doesn't generally know if the solution they found is the fastest one possible, so they probably will still try to find a better one. Nothing really changes for the programmer whether or not P equals NP. The programmer will keep looking for a faster solution to the extent they are willing or able to, unless they know the solution they found is the fastest possible, which is not something P versus NP can tell you alone. Oh, also forgot to mention that even if P=NP, a large number of problems won't have solutions which can feasibly be solved in polynomial time anyways due to other restrictions.
It is an example of something that SOUNDS like it has important applications but doesn't really in itself. This is similar to Navier-Stokes. The act of trying to solve NS will probably give immensely valuable insight into turbulence etc, however in terms of practical applications a strict solution of NS is not particularly important, because the systems involved are massively chaotic and real fluids don't truly obey NS anyways. In Mathematics existence and smoothness of solutions in many kinds of differential equations is a big problem, but anyone who does anything practical just ends up approximating them anyways.
The other argument you make is the same kind of hand wavy thing that people say and never convinces anyone. Some things you can tell are gonna have practical consequences, including Rutherford's model. Others maybe not but they do turn out to have some. But then there's all the other stuff.
Not extensively comp sci in particular except for a few classes (idk if that counts), but applied math in general.
This opinion is not unique to me. Like, many people who actually solely do research on the field will say as much. If P!=NP, well, that's what everyone kind of expects already and nothing much changes. If P=NP but no one finds a polynomial time solution of an NP hard problem, that's big news, but it still doesn't change anything practically. If someone DOES find that, well, it might be useful, or it might not be, depending on a few other things, but just proving P=NP won't give you that.
EDIT: I just saw your edit, hold on a while.
That is not necessarily true, as for many things in math. You don't have to find the thing you want to prove exists to prove that it exists. You can just prove that it can't not exist for example. You may even manage to find some kind of independence proof which states that it can not be decided based on your axioms.
Also "hard" and "easy" mean different things for comp sci and programmers.
There exist problems in P for which no polynomial algorithm is known like "does a given graph belong to a fixed minor-closed family (well, it also depends on method of representation of this family)", although for some such families like planar graphs efficient algorithms are known.
Btw before I said "a fast solution may or may not exist". I meant "a faster solution may or may not exist", in the sense that a solution faster than what the programmer did already may or may not exist. Sorry about that.
It's a little silly to get angry/surprised when you say inflammatory or just straight up wrong things at the beginning of your post and don't clarify until near the end. Like, no kidding people don't want to read the whole thing when the first paragraph makes it look like you have zero clue what you're talking about
We've gone over this. The first paragraph is not wrong. Assuming this is what you are referring to, the process of solving P vs NP may bring something important for practical work, or it may not. But the actual answer to the question, which is considered extremely important theoretically and for good reason, won't change much. IF it turns out that P=NP and IF the proof actually involves finding an algorithm to solve NP hard problems in polynomial time and IF that algorithm is of a practicable form and not something insane like telling you that you can solve NP hard problems but in n^666 time, then alright, yeah. But that's a lot of ifs, and it's not directly linked to whether or not P=NP is solved. I brought this up specifically because it is one of the famous problems that the solution sounds like it may be massively important practically, but in reality kind of isn't.
Also I didn't "only" clarify near the end, the point is more or less contained in the first paragraph. It's just that for some reason this subject instantly pushes the buttons of people.
While the P=NP thing is a bad take for reasons people with more understanding than me have already explained, the worst part IMO is
the majority of pure math really isn’t "useful’ in any way, shape or form for now, and probably won’t be any time soon, possibly forever.
This is a ridiculously presumptuous and weird thing to say, particularly given how fast computing is expanding and making it more relevant than ever.
If I'm understanding your argument correctly, the better way to approach this is to say that all fields of study are useful. Non-STEM things like art and music are important, as are mathematics and physics that are too experimental to find an immediate use for. Like, modern art does not improve people's material conditions in any significant way, does that mean it should be tossed out? Should history? Should philosophy? For all his writing, Marx hasn't improved my life one bit so far, toss him out too.
I know this kind of slippery slope argument sounds silly, but that's the point. It's a really bizarre way to come around to your final point, which seems to be that it should be studied despite being useless.The P=NP thing isn't my personal take. Many people working in the field more or less agree. P=NP is about whether all NP hard problems can be solved in polynomial time. The answer doesn't necessarily tell you how to do it if it is even possible (and most don't believe it is). If it's not true, then not much changes practically. If it is, then there's many many reasons why it may still not really make a difference practically speaking. It could make a difference in some kind of optimal case where it turns out that the proof actually gives an algorithm, that algorithm is something practicable, and it isn't some kind of horribly unwieldy thing that renders any kind of practical solution in exponential time more practical for a typical problem (which is also possible, "fast" means something different to comp sci people and to programmers, for comp sci people fast is asymptotic, but in the real world you don't always care about the asymptotic behavior of something, in the real world many problems in polynomial time are practically not solvable), and a best case scenario solution is getting more unlikely by the day. Mathematical comp sci people don't care if they get that P!=NP or if they get a non constructive proof of P=NP or if they give some kind of independence proof or if they actually do find a constructive proof of P=NP but it is horribly impractical. Just getting any kind of proof is amazing news because it's such a deep result and such an important question theoretically, even though it probably won't change much in practical terms.
This is a ridiculously presumptuous and weird thing to say, particularly given how fast computing is expanding and making it more relevant than ever.
Well computing is expanding a lot but most relevant math is still relatively simple, bar a few niche contexts.
If I’m understanding your argument correctly, the better way to approach this is to say that all fields of study are useful.
See, I kept putting useful in scare quotes for a reason. I also said this in the first paragraph:
[...] this stupid idea that scientific research should have “practical application” (which generally means “someone can sell it for money”)
Usually when presented with something that seems far fetched or hard to apply, people say "why is that useful? What can someone do with this? What can you make? How can you sell it? Why do we need this? Why are we spending time on this if it isn't useful?". This is a consequence of capitalism. Practically useful and valuable are different things. I think all the miscommunication arises from people uncharitably or hastily interpreting what I mean by useless.
Simply P=NP being proven even with no implementation means we have to abandon assymetrical encryption, because there's no way to know if your opponent found it.
Math in computing gets pretty hairy pretty fast, it's just abstracted away from you. Do you know what kind of math is necessary for example to prove that a pseudo-random number generator is of cryptographic quality? Or the kind of math needed to optimise path-tracing algorithms. It gets into what one would call abstract math really fast.
Simply P=NP being proven even with no implementation means we have to abandon assymetrical encryption, because there’s no way to know if your opponent found it.
Only in the case that an actual algorithm is found and it is practicable enough.
Yes, but you can never know if the algorithm has been found or not. All you know is that it can be found.
And if it is found, it's probably going be n^3 to n^4 at worst, see the recent prime factoring attempt.
Yes, but you can never know if the algorithm has been found or not
You already don't know that but that doesn't stop anyone.
And if it is found, it’s probably going be n^3 to n^4 at worst
I'm not sure how someone could know that at this point, perhaps you know something that I don't about this though. I'm not a computer scientist.
We already don't know that but we are 99.999% certain P!=NP, so there is not much point.
As a CompSci student, I know of no absurdly impractical algorithm in polytime that isn't an approximation of an NP-class problem. Worst I've ever heard of is n^19 or so but that could be approximated in n^3 or so.
We already don’t know that but we are 99.999% certain P!=NP, so there is not much point.
I think most think the odds are a bit more balanced than that. Knuth believes P=NP is more likely iirc, although he's kinda weird sometimes (in a good way). But, like, if people were practically certain, well, that's all engineers usually care about. They only care about being 99.9999% certain their plane won't randomly blow up. Just how the world is I guess.
Worst I’ve ever heard of is n^19 or so but that could be approximated in n^3 or so.
Well, we're not talking about approximations here, P=NP is not about approximations. That's kind of the issue with these kinds of problems, you can go a long way with approximations in the real world, but these kinds of math problems are not concerned about them typically. The Goldbach conjecture is an open problem, but it's already been tested for as many numbers as you would conceivably ever "need" it for. No one knows the solution to Navier-Stokes and it is a big open problem, but Navier-Stokes is already just an approximation to real fluids. Very interesting problem, and something good will probably come out of trying to solve it, but the answer is not exactly game changing for practical stuff.
Yeah, Knuth is certainly weird about it.
As for approximations, that's not what I meant. I meant the full on algorithm was n^19 - which is not necessarily horrible in all cases, whereas the approximation of that was n^3.
For many NP class problems P=NP also means that better approximations are basically guaranteed.
Well, where I was getting at was that afaik you could approximate it even if it runs on exponential time, but the conjecture is not about approximations.
Approximations of exponential time algorithms are much worse and sometimes even impossible to useful degrees of proximity compared to approximations of polynomial algorithms.
So what, you put useless in "scare quotes" and that makes it sarcastic or something? Why not just say what you mean very directly? I think most people here are much more inclined to listen and try to understand/reply to you than the average person on reddit, you can be very straightforward and people will take it in good faith. The weird rhetorical devices just make you harder to understand, I'm kinda questioning if I ever actually knew what your point was now.
Why not just say what you mean very directly?
I mean I did, in the first paragraph, then the third paragraph, and then the last paragraph (I specifically thought wow, maybe I should make sure to put that in the first paragraph, and then I did and people still got angry), it's just that it seems like when you say something like that some people are geared to immediately disagree because they think you're attacking science. idk.
Why do people just come here and just comment while having seemingly not read what I said, my post very, VERY explicitly argues AGAINST the idea that is should have an immediate or even non immediate benefit.
Chapo ‘read between the lines’ challenge 2021
You seem to have forgotten to actually read the lines.
but the entire post itself postures itself on the assumed uselessness and lack of immediacy of modern math.
You yourself called the concept of demanding that something NEEDS to have "practical utility" pseudoreactionary, jeez.
or you’re just mad at math.
Yeah I'm definitely super mad at math, which is clearly why that's what I chose to do with my life.
Yes, they are practically "useless". Look at how many times I've put this in scare quotes and how many times I've said the exact same thing you said.
unless you’re deliberately gaslighting or you’re just mad at math.
you’re doing it again
You literally say ‘most of modern math is useless’.
Which is entirely irrelevant to what you said. Also I said most PURE math, not most math in general.
then try and absolve the post with a high level meta-analysis in the last paragraph, sure
What? I made the same point in like 3 different paragraphs:
People wouldn’t get upset about their discipline getting slighted or whatever if this stupid idea that scientific research should have “practical application” (which generally means “someone can sell it for money”) hadn’t proliferated starting from schools.
This is literally the first paragraph.
This of course is usually don ** because otherwise people can’t get grant money otherwise, governments demand that research will produce results they can use to blow up people or sell stuff** Also the result of a bad educational system that emphasizes this kind of “usefulness”, which therefore renders it unable to convince students that something is worth learning unless it is “useful”
This is the 3rd paragraph.
So yes, most modern pure math is indeed “useless”. That is not the issue. The issue is, why does this matter? Why is it bad? Should it be bad? I don’t think so. It’s a false idea that gets perpetuated at many levels starting from school. But then there is the issue of mathematics being very exclusionary and distant from most people, which makes it harder for them to care, which brings us to the issue of outreach but whatever, that’s a different matter.
This is literally the ENTIRE last paragraph.
but the entire post itself postures itself on the assumed uselessness and lack of immediacy of modern math.
Which is entirely irrelevant to what you said.
Whether P does or doesn’t equal NP doesn’t really matter to anyone doing practical work.
if P = NP, it will matter A LOT.
More generally, lots of math sits around, seemingly useless, until it's actually very useful for some practical solution. The Hairy Ball Theorem was written in 1885 and has applications in computer graphics. This deeply uncertain connection to practical applications means capitalism, like always, refuses to invest in long-term benefits for humanity because there's no quarter-to-quarter payout.
if P = NP, it will matter A LOT.
See my reply to the other person who said the same thing. It is important for theoretical reasons and reasons of understanding, but if an angel came and just said P=NP or P=/=NP and then left, no actual real world programming would change.
This deeply uncertain connection to practical applications means capitalism, like always, refuses to invest in long-term benefits for humanity because there’s no quarter-to-quarter payout.
It's kind of the opposite, the fact that there may be some payout eventually is the only reason it gets any funding at all unfortunately, which is why scientists are forced to make these convoluted connections, or go looking for the relatively few weird results that ended up having practical importance after years of no one seeing how they could have any. It's true that no one knows if it's gonna be useful in the future. But that's the issue, no one knows, and chances are it won't, and even if it does, it probably won't be worth it all things considered, or it could have been found later, in the process of solving whatever the relevant problem was.
Like, it's so funny to me that some thought they were somehow gonna make a return on investment on CERN. Even if CERN did find all that it was looking for, it would change physics massively, but in such a way that if someone found a technological application that can be used broadly and not simply for more research on things without practical application, it would probably take like 500 years to become applicable, if we don't die in the mean time. And yet they spent billions on it.
I don't complain that they spent billions. It's simply that unfortunately you can't always trick Porky into giving you a bunch of money for this and maybe that's not what we should be relying on.
if an angel came and just said P=NP
yeah, that wouldn'd be useful. If an angel dropped a proof on the table, everything would change.
the fact that there may be some payout eventually is the only reason it gets any funding at all
Mathematics predates capitalism and will outlast it. People would do it if no one was paying them. It's not some torture that they only endure because they can fleece investors of some money for it. And mostly, math is funded by legacy institutions like universities. Physics is IIRC different and mostly funded by governments who understand the longer-term benefit. It's pretty damning of capitalism.
But that’s the issue, no one knows, and chances are it won’t, and even if it does, it probably won’t be worth it all things considered, or it could have been found later
This is ridiculous, math and physics are invaluable to practical scientific discoveries like cryptography, electricity, software, lasers, etc.
yeah, that wouldn’d be useful. If an angel dropped a proof on the table, everything would change.
Everything as in what? It would depend on what the proof is and what the nature of the problem is. If said angel gave an algorithm AND that algorithm turned out to be a fast one yeah. But odds are against that.
Mathematics predates capitalism and will outlast it. People would do it if no one was paying them. It’s not some torture that they only endure because they can fleece investors of some money for it.
Yes, that is my point.
Physics is IIRC different and mostly funded by governments who understand the longer-term benefit. It’s pretty damning of capitalism.
Except tons of physics research that is extremely well funded doesn't have any such benefits, and it's funded because the people who fund it don't understand that.
This is ridiculous, math and physics are invaluable to practical scientific discoveries like cryptography, electricity, software, lasers, etc.
Thing is, WHAT math and physics were useful for these things? Definitely not string theory.
tons of physics research that is extremely well funded doesn’t have any such benefits
WHAT math and physics were useful for these things? Definitely not string theory.
All physics is useless theoretical physics before a practical use is found. Electricity and lasers were LHC-tier experiments until they became core components of modern society. The steam engine was a useless party trick according to ancient Greeks.
All physics is useless theoretical physics before a practical use is found. Electricity and lasers were LHC-tier experiments until they became core components of modern society.
No, this is a big misunderstanding. Early scientists working on electricity were doing experiments in their homes. What you say about ancient Greeks proves this point. They were far from being LHC tier experiments. They were things that people could easily do. I brought up string theory. Now, it is not known whether or not string theory is right. The issue is that to even tell any kind of difference between it being true or false, you have to have access to something like the entire energy of the sun. Again, that's just for you to be able to see a measurable difference, let alone use it for something.
No, this is a big misunderstanding
Einstein postulated lasers, theoretically, from Planck's work. It wasn't from home experiments, it was from mathematical models. You bring up string theory because it hasn't been proven useful yet, but you're ignoring examples like the theory of relativity being applied via math to correct micro-inaccuracies in GPS satellites.
It wasn’t from home experiments, it was from mathematical models.
Yes, mathematical models of early quantum mechanics. Actually it was a bit "worse" than that in that when he did, QM was more phenomenological than rigorously grounded.
I do not at all debate that you can make theoretical predictions that have practical applications. I know. Except most of these predictions have to do with phenomena that can conceivably be applied, unlike string theory. QM wasn't developed to explain phenomena we don't even know if they exist and would require an accelerator the size of the solar system to detect. It was developed to explain basic fundamental phenomena that you can test in the simplest physics lab, and in fact started out as a phenomenological theory. This is much different. Is it possible to find a few examples of something that no one could see how it could ever be applied which did find an application, however that is extremely rare. And then there is stuff that inherently can't have applications due to the nature of what they are predicting.
If an angel came and P=NP then we would have to abandon assymetrical encryption instantly. Which really matters.
it’s true man. art is boring and meaningless, and music is totally overrated.
the art that you engage with and the music that you listen to, maybe
I don’t engage with art or listen to music. Finally left that shit in 2020.
It’s weird how people pretend to enjoy art/music and find deep meaning in them. Like art is pretty pictures (or not even that), and music is neat sounds. But people pretend they can just sit and enjoy them and find deep meaning in them, like they were on LSD all the time.
They’re fine as background decoration, but they’re powerfully boring as a primary activity. And you can’t go look at Starry Night or listen to some Bob Dylan and honestly tell me that it’s meaningful.
You need to accept other people have different experiences from you mate. They are not pretending.
He's been doing this for at least a month. Either he's 100% committed to the bit or he will never be convinced because he thinks literally the ENTIRE world is lying about this.
Also you can't deny how effective a troll this is. Look at all the replies!
the entire world is lying
yeah it’s kinda like people who pretend to get something out of prayer
Have you considered that perhaps they do get some kind of feeling out of prayer?
Also lmao
Have you considered that perhaps it's not literally everyone who is driving on the wrong side of the road but perhaps it's you?
I'm gonna share an experience I had.
When I was a 12yo kid, for around two hours of my life, music actually felt like you said, it didn't have any meaning or emotion, barely rhythm.
Then I had a horrible migraine and the next day I was back to enjoying music.
From this perspective of having experienced both, it really isn't a delusion.
It really doesn’t have any meaning. It can sound nice, that’s about all there is to say for it.
Yes, that's how I felt in that brief period of time, but before and after I could decode emotion and some meaning from it.
Wtf is delusional about getting a feeling out of music lmao
Most people aren't lying about feeling something because of prayer. Some do lie about it because they have ulterior motives. But generally people do get a feeling out of it because it makes them feel hopeful, it gets things out of their chest, they feel they connect to God and it is a moment of introspection. "But God is fake" cool, that's entirely irrelevant.
With music there isn't even a structure above that can be true or false. You don't feel something out of music because you are "tricked" into believing something false. Like, perhaps you don't feel anything but that's not because you are right and they are wrong. It's just that for whatever reason it doesn't get you, which is way, way more unusual than the opposite.
The analogy of prayer to music/art is that these are all things that are incredibly boring and pointless, but which society says are good, meaningful, and vitally important things.
As far as prayer, “God is fake” is pretty relevant, because it means that most people aren’t really experiencing anything when they pray. It makes the most sense that they’re lying about getting anything out of it because of social stigma/norms. Not accounting for things that alter experiences like schizophrenia or LSD.
The analogy of prayer to music/art is that these are all things that are incredibly boring and pointless
To you.
As far as prayer, “God is fake” is pretty relevant, because it means that most people aren’t really experiencing anything when they pray.
Yeah because you can only experience a feeling if God makes you.
I meant it like be honest and reasonable. if there’s no god then prayer is pointless and people don’t get anything out of it
Doesn't mean they're lying if they feel something. It's called having emotions.
What experience? An emotion? What do you think causes emotions in people? Drugs?
idk, but the experience they’re claiming isn’t real so the emotional response sounds made up too.
like suppose you told me you were very excited because you won the lottery. but then I find out you didn’t win the lottery. I would think that you probably weren’t excited about winning the lottery either.
e: the experience of talking to god
Have you considered that perhaps people who pray don't all claim they had supernatural experiences, but simply that they felt good?
No, I was neglecting that group as I’ve never met or heard of anyone like that, and it seems like a contradiction in terms.
It’s pretty implausible that someone would feel good from intentionally boring themselves for no reason. Just going off own experience and empathy.
Just going off own experience and empathy.
You mean lack of experience and empathy.
I mean I am honest, it's you who for some reason thinks everyone is lying to you about having emotions. You know, perhaps not everyone is lying and maybe your sense of empathy is just kinda out of whack.
You don't have any evidence, you just think everyone is lying to you and ignoring what people are telling you. Your "evidence" is that "I don't feel that way so no one does".
that is evidence, but it wasn’t my only evidence. did you read the lottery analogy?
Oh, I did, it was just bullshit and completely inapplicable lmao. Like what the fuck does it have to do with anything lol
someone says they had an emotional reaction to a thing that happened
we find out that thing didnt happen
this is no cause to doubt the emotional reaction?
What does your silly imaginary scenario have anything to do with anything? How is that remotely relevant?
first we had music/art, then you were like ofc they aren’t all lying about it, that would be absurd. so i brought up prayer as a clear example where it’s boring and people lie about the meaning, and you said they’re not lying even if there is no god. that made no sense, so I needed an even more uncontroversial example.
so i’m all the way down here trying to get you to agree that if someone claims to have an emotional reaction to an experience, and we find out that experience didn’t happen, then we can doubt the emotional response
do you understand the relevance now?
so i brought up prayer as a clear example where it’s boring
YOU find it boring you moron, that's you, that's not everyone. Jeez.
that made no sense, so I needed an even more uncontroversial example.
The example is completely fucking irrelevant. People believe there is a God.
so i’m all the way down here trying to get you to agree that if someone claims to have an emotional reaction to an experience, and we find out that experience didn’t happen, then we can doubt the emotional response
The experience IS the emotion, how hard is that to understand?
To you. But it's pretty much just you. I ask again, what do you think causes emotions? Drugs? God? Can people have emotions at all according to you?
Idk what causes emotions, people have emotional responses to all sorts of things. Of course people can have emotions.
I’m absolutely walking on sunshine because I was elected president of the united states this morning. Do you have any reason to doubt both parts of that sentence?
See if I’m lying about the experience, it casts doubt on the emotional response too.
Why do you keep bringing up irrelevant shit? Do I have to copy paste the same thing again? It doesn't matter if God is literally talking to someone, that is not the experience. The experience is merely an emotional one. It is feeling like you are approaching God, which they believe exists. Just like someone can feel all sorts of ways thinking about someone they love. Obviously you have some issues empathising with people and understanding emotions and that's alright, but maybe you shouldn't assume other people are lying about it? Like, I'm not expecting you to understand this if you can't understand how someone can feel emotion from music, which is, like, one of the most universal emotions humans can have.
Like, people claim to literally talk to God. It’s almost as universal as enjoying music. You’re downplaying it like they claim to just feel good from the act of praying, but that isn’t what they claim. Since this near universal experience isn’t real, why can’t another be fake.
Like, people claim to literally talk to God
They don't say they sit in a room and have a conversation with him you genius. They're not claiming he talks back or whatever. Jeez this argument is so fucking dumb. I don't know if you are pretending to not understand on purpose. You realize that they believe God does exist and can hear them, right?
I still don't fucking know what even praying has to do with music but anyways...
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot everyone is exactly the same as you and believes exactly the same stuff you do.
No, most people believe in God and claim to talk to him by praying, which involves sitting in a room alone and having God speak to them. Have you really never met a religious person?
...yes? How does that contradict what I said?
Have you really never met any person, in general?
Your description of prayer is much more limited than the way most religious people I know describe it.
It's not limited, you just don't understand what they are telling you. Like, what do you think "talk" means to them? Do you think they claim God comes down and then they drink a nice cup of tea together and chat?
Lmao look if you're not an alien you're taking the piss, either way this is futile.
Music has an effect on your brain.
https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/your-brain-on-music/
Much like reading a good book can inspire awe or watching a good episode of the simpsons can give you a solid dopamine hit. Outside stimuli can effect the brain!
it may seem irrelevant, but the seemingly irrelevant examples illustrate a principle that I want to be accepted so that I can use it elsewhere. the point of the examples is to make it so uncontroversial that you can’t disagree
like suppose you told me you were very excited because you won the lottery. but then I find out you didn’t win the lottery. I would think that you probably weren’t excited about winning the lottery either.
This comparison only works if you think they didn't win the lottery, but they think they did. So it makes sense for them to have an emotional reaction because as far as they're aware, they did win!
You are assuming they think they did. If they didn’t win the lottery, this is evidence that they are lying about having won the lottery
People can have mistaken or unproven beliefs, and real reactions based on those beliefs. I would be really excited if I thought I won the lottery. People really believe in God when they pray.
I agree with all of those things.
Would you be excited about winning the lottery if you knowingly didn’t win the lottery? Would you feel awe and wonder at God speaking to you if God didn’t speak to you?
Yes, I can get excited by imagining all of the things I could do with the money from winning the lottery, knowing I haven't won. Yes, I can feel a sense of awe and wonder by putting myself in a reverent spiritual state without hearing a voice or detecting any supernatural change in my physical space.
No, that’s different. That is knowingly imagining these things.
I’m talking about someone who claims to experience these things in reality, but doesn’t.
There's not as hard a line between imagining something and believing it as you're insisting. Wanting something to be true, and thinking they're true bleed into each other. I haven't won the lottery, but I personally have plans for what I would do with that money if I had won. I don't even play lottery? I can also hear voices in the silence, if I'm listening for them. I can concentrate on ambient noise and hear speech, even when I know it's just traffic or wind.
Perception to belief to emotion is not a one-way street. Emotion can affect perception, perception can affect emotion, belief can affect perception.
That's not a different camp. I'm not describing an unusual situation here but describing common human behavior as it appears, as people describe it for themselves. You're making an extraordinary claim, that everyone, billions of people, are lying about prayer and music (and the lottery), so you can't generalise your perspective but individualise my perspective when I'm making an ordinary claim. These are normal, typical, everyday things.
Hearing voices is not common.
what I’ve proven is that it’s really not an extraordinary claim that billions of people are lying.
Could be. Could be a depressed teenager who needs to learn empathy and realise not having emotions is not healthy. I remember thinking similar things in my youth.
I have empathy and emotions, I just don’t pretend to be on LSD all the time.
So all the people making and enjoying all the various forms of art for the entire length of human history were just faking it, because you don't get anything out of it?
Listening to some now! This song makes me feel big and powerful, in a sort of long sweeping cape kind of way, but it's also a critique on masculinity. The next one gives me very mechanical vibes (it's called Conveyer and has a very stuttery rhythm, lyrics seem to be about becoming a cog in the industrial machine), and then it will transition into a short transitionary track that uses the stutter rhythm, as well as samples from Ayesha K. Faines, to talk about Black identity.
lol it’s like talking to a religious person and hearing about how much they love prayer and how much they get out of it
"nearly every single human being who has ever lived was schizophrenic or a liar" is not a take i thought i'd see today lmao
fr though, why do you think music and art are such a big part of culture if they don't elicit a genuine emotional response in people?
nearly every single human being who has ever lived was schizophrenic or a liar” is not a take i thought i’d see today lmao
well it’s kinda trivial to show that much, what with the existence of different religions
As to your question, I can’t do any better than shitty speculation on that. The shitty speculation is that there used to be not much to do, and music is literally better than nothing
if you think religions are the result of mass schizophrenia then i don't think you have any idea what schizophrenia is
I mean you can read about it if you never heard of this. It’s mentioned in some psych lectures I found on stanford’s youtube
send it to me and then explain how it applies to music at all
just because you don't like music doesn't mean the rest of us don't
and you're one of the enlightened few who doesn't like music lmao ok
"everyone but me is lying about liking music" truly a rational mind at work
yeah, we know it’s the case with at least some stuff so it shouldn’t seem so absurd with music
i give up man, you win. everyone but you is a schizoaffective liar who is just pretending to like music and art for seemingly no reason
There is a whole range of emotional states between feeling nothing an feeling everything and if your only experience of feeling powerful emotions is through psychaedelics you are probably depressed. If your reaction other people telling you they experience things differently to you is to call them liars or mentally ill you have not properly developed empathy.
I feel powerful emotions without drugs, just not from looking at picture of paint splatters. The experience that artlovers describe sounds like doing LSD.
If your reaction to my non-enjoyment of boring shit is to diagnose a mental illness, you might need to rethink that.
Cool maybe you aren't depressed then. You made it sound like you didn't expeience any sense of wonder or awe or love. I'm only speaking from my own experience and understanding as you are. I was depressed and found all art boring. I faced my depression and now find art to be wonderful. I do not think my experiences are universal but they are also not unique. If my advice is not resonating with you I'm sorry I'm only trying to help you as best as I know how.
I experience those things, just not from looking at jesus eating dinner or listening to a guitar go doot doot doot
Well then you aren't connecting with the art. Look for artist that are inspired by the same stuff the makes you feel. I love art of space ships because it makes me feel and imagine what exploring space would be like and instils a sense of wonder in me. I don't expect everyone who looks at pictures of fictional space craft to feel what I feel. Art is is entirely personal.
I’ve never written music, but I took piano lessons for a few years. Sung in the choir at mass when I was a kid. It’s interesting in the sense that skills are interesting, but I wasn’t into it. Just too boring.
here you go, stare at this like a smart person: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#/media/File%3AThe_Last_Supper_-Leonardo_Da_Vinci-_High_Resolution_32x16.jpg
Are you sure you don't have some kind of sensory disorder? You're the exception to the rule here.
neither does everyone else? the subjective experience you're describing is defined as anhedonia and it's an atypical and frankly unfun way to experience things, seriously talk to somebody about it
also I'd recommend doing some introspection about why you're averse to the idea of being mentally ill, we're all living through and traumatized by late capitalism, it's perfectly reasonable to be mentally ill in those conditions
lmbo I enjoy fun things, not boring things. It’s a social taboo to point out that art and music are boring, but it’s true.
...or your subjective experience of what is and is not boring doesn't apply universally, and is in fact rather unique?
the thing that's a social taboo is making sweeping generalizations about the validity of the entire rest of the population's experiences just because you don't share them
From my point of view, it is more plausible that nearly everyone who claims to enjoy art is just pretending.
solipsism is broken logic, even in the event that your assertions are true it has no bearing on the practical reality that you exist in a world where other people enjoy art
enjoy your navelgazing I guess, no one will ever agree with you
you don’t have to pretend that paint splatters affect your emotions and life
few people outside of pompous art dweebs will describe art as having "changed their life" and mean it. 98% of the times you'll hear something like that it's the kind of casual hyperbole that comprises a majority of normal communication, like when someone gets back from a music festival and says "man that changed my life!" it's not a literal statement. they don't mean that the course of their life has been forever altered by hearing some bangers performed live, they mean that they had a very fun time and feel enriched by the experience and value the memory of having had said experience.
maybe the disconnect here is that you think people are being hyper-literal when they talk about things, when in fact they're exaggerating for effect.
few people outside of pompous art dweebs will describe art as having “changed their life” and mean it
What? It's not an uncommon thing lol why is it weird to you?
ok great now I'm having to argue the other side of this because I have blundered into a perspective that might be my neurodiversity or just a tendency to downplay my own experiences
so, just so we're on the same page, when people say "man that show changed my life!" how literal is that statement supposed to be and exactly how would that person's life have changed?
I travelled for a show once and I did literally have a life-changing experience - the whole trip was a mountain of firsts for me that was a catalyst in a major perspective shift and breakthrough in my anxiety - and I don't know that I would refer to the music as life-changing. The whole trip, yeah, absolutely, but the music was a small part of a much larger experience.
how literal is that statement supposed to be and exactly how would that person’s life have changed?
For many people it is art giving them meaning and comfort during a really dark period in their life, without which many things may have gone much different. For others it is even more literal in that creating art decisively altered their life course and career. The opinions and outlook on life of some others were profoundly affected by books, or movies or some bands or whatever during their formative years. There's all sorts of stuff like that.
I was talking more specifically about people who just got back from some huge music festival where they were on MDMA for three days straight, which has been where I've heard a majority of this kind of verbiage. Like, yeah, you had a tremendously euphoric experience, I dunno that it changed your life though.
But for like, smaller, more personal things, I totally see that. I would describe Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer? as giving meaning during a dark period in the sense you're talking about, or Anamanaguchi's Power Supply in the way that it informed and defined my sense of taste when I was just finding out that good music existed. I guess that's on me for not realizing that either of those counted as life-changing.
Like there's some people who do salvia once and then their entire personality changes because god knows what.
oh for sure, and I'm not meaning to discount truly transformative experiences, my point was just that people tend to speak in hyperbole when describing their emotional reactions ("this is the best/worst thing in the history of ever", "you'd have to be literally X to think/do Y", "GOAT", etc.) and it's not necessarily indicative of the actual intensity of their feeling
Oh if people who just went to a festival once had their life changed then yeah that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but idk maybe for some it may have been if drugs were involved.
Welcome to the other side. The cracks begin to show when you talk about music for too long.
augh no just because my subjective experience isn't life-changing (due strongly to anhedonic depression!) and I assume everyone is exaggerating about everything (as a coping mechanism for low grade autism) doesn't mean everyone is lying all the time and nobody finds art and music fun or moving
I'd use "low need" to describe myself as an individual or if I was talking about the disorder as a point of comparison. I'm using "low grade" to describe the degree to which I experience the symptoms of ASD in the same way you'd call a temperature that's only a degree and a half away from baseline a low grade fever.
If it comes across as ableist I'll change it though.
I do think people are being literal when they say this. You might be closer to my view than either of us thought.
most of the meaning found in art or music is meaning the viewer/listener projects onto the work, particularly in very subjective mediums like music, and very little of it is "deep" unless it's your first time experiencing those concepts, this is true. The works that do carry a lot of meaning often rely heavily on invoking symbols or imagery with well-known associations in order to get their message across and it can be pretty poignant even if it's not deep.
that said, these things are pleasurable to simply experience (barring a sensory processing disorder or depression). you appreciate starry night for its use of color and for the craftsmanship that went into making it, not because starry night in particular has anything to say on the human condition. for works of greater realism you can appreciate how well the work invokes its subject - you get a genuine sense of the light or the stillness or the cold or hear the sounds of the water and the wind in the same way that beautiful writing can transport you and excite your senses. I can derive a similar sense of pleasure from looking at or using everyday items which were clearly painstakingly designed to be useful and pleasant.
if you don't experience that, you probably should talk to someone about depression. it's one thing to not project tenuous meaning onto art but I can say from experience anhedonia is just a shitty way to go through life
lmbo I’m not mentally ill just because I don’t pretend to enjoy boring stuff
degenerate? idk about that. boring, yes
made by schizophrenic people, probably fairly often.
find deep meaning in them
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/12031212/Scientists-find-link-between-people-impressed-by-wise-sounding-profound-quotes-and-low-intelligence.html
like they were on LSD all the time.
Schizophrenia is not unnatural, it's actually the norm of human cognition. Neural connections between the lobes go bzzzzzz
You're describing amusia/anesthetia.
I experienced it a few times as aurae for migraines. Neither you nor them are delusional.
This thread is embarrassing. I can't take this shit anymore.
...to programmers. Unless in the special case of P=NP actually being true and a constructive proof with a practicable algorithm has been found, which is a separate issue.
Yeah, everything under capitalism is oriented around profit and industrial application. Every damn time I go to undergrad research things or read through a paper or anything in my, theres always a section like "so why should we care?" that's almost always about commercial use. So that's why pure math is often seen as "useless" because a lot of theorems probably dont have an industrial use.
The standard counter example I give about pure math to industrial application though is Fermats little theorem. Fermat was a cool dude but he was one of those types that didnt think your math research was legit if it had any real world applications. His little theorem was especially good in terms of that, lol, he was quite proud how useless it was. Anyway, fast forward a few hundred years and it turns out his little theorem has a really useful application in fibre optics. It's hard to tell without the fore sight of a millenials what will be useful and what wont be, but capitalism is oriented around profit in the next quarter so while that kind of long term stuff is tolerated just on the off chance that one day itll be profitable, it definitely isnt a thing it wants funded in general.
Fermat was a cool dude but he was one of those types that didnt think your math research was legit if it had any real world applications
Yeah there's some mathematicians and physicists like that lol. Just people who aren't even interested unless it is NOT practical. After all, some of them picked their fields because they didn't want to end up helping the military or some evil surveillance capitalist firm.
Personally I'm of the belief that working to understand the universe is a pursuit that's useful in and of itself, it doesn't really matter if it has a physical practical application of not. It's like using philosophy to understand our place in the universe, even though Camus isn't really practically applicable doesn't mean people would describe his ideas as useless.
But I understand other people want practical applications of math so for that I would recommend looking into how pure math, as you would describe it, has led to our understanding of quantum chemistry which has revolutionized a lot of technological applications (semiconductors, USBs, hell even light switches and rely on quantum electron tunneling though we didn't know that at the time). Quantum chemistry is also really useful in spectrosocopic and analytical techniques, which are not immediately obvious in how useful they are to people outside the field but inside the field these techniques are responsible for helping us develop things people use every day such as pharmaceuticals and vaccines.
I think you're right in diagnosing the problems in education, there are significant problems in how math is approached that damages people's ability to appreciate math in their lives. It's a difficult balance in our current society because an education system pushing for more 'practical' ideas is just pumping out workers for capitalism, while a completely conceptual education leaves students unprepared for the reality of life. Conceptual approaches to math are important for developing critical thinking skills, which the capitalists don't really want students to have. But a definite change needs to be made to help students appreciate the applicability of math.
Yeah I mostly agree with this even though I think perhaps you slightly overstate the technological applicability of pure math . But sure, I generally agree, especially with the last part. I also think that there is this false dichotomy between intuitive/approachable and abstract math in education, which combined with the emphasis on practical utility has led to schools teaching math in a very weird and boring way as well as unconvincing word problems to convince students they will somehow use calculus to buy groceries. I don't think there is anything wrong with teaching abstract math, because abstract does not mean unintuitive and hard to approach, and just because some student can't apply it to their daily lives or even to make profit for their boss doesn't mean there is no reason to learn it or no outcomes from learning it. After all, expanding your intuition and understanding abstract rigorous thought are useful skills in and of themselves, and the more abstract stuff can often be much more exciting and fun. Plus it is good for everyone, not just the few kids who will grow up to work somewhere where they actually have to apply the stuff they learned in highschool.
I had some help by the person who posted in the comments that art and music are bad.
I know I'm just joking basically, given the ratio of the thread and people being super serious in here.
