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.
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.
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
Yeah that's fair.
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
!neurodiverse recommends using "low need" for this
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.
:wow: