• TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    12 days ago

    Wasn’t solving maths problems always a bit pointless? Not sure mathematicians necessarily pursued the field because of its pointfullness

    • lath@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      12 days ago

      No. I can’t give any examples because I personally don’t give a damn, but there have been ‘pointlessly’ solved equations which only became of use much later in modern branches of technology.

      Random crap nobody cares about have a small chance to be useful in the far future for stuff we currently are unaware of.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        12 days ago

        I mean my point being that traditionally, least historically, the idea of maths being solved for the purpose of a useful function was a bit banal, a bit frowned upon or looked down on.

            • blind3rdeye@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              12 days ago

              And by ‘they’, do you mean the hypothetical mathematicians in your mind that would prefer that their maths is not applicable to any kind of practical applications?

              • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                12 days ago

                Specific mathematicians and societies which were critical to the early development of the field. It is at the very core of the culture, at least in its origination.

                Math was pure philosophy and a pursuit for the landed gentry.

                Not sure why anyone thinks this is controversial. Its all there in the history books. This is what they said about themselves.

    • hikaru755@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      12 days ago

      Pointless as in “the end result might not be useful for any real world application”, often yes. But as I understand it, now it’s become a different flavor of pointless, “might not even be able to solve it before an AI steals the work I’ve done so far, solves it before I can, and gets all the credit”, which takes even the intrinsic motivation out of it.

    • Tenderizer@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      12 days ago

      Any maths to do with cryptography certainly isn’t pointless. So P=NP is definitely consequential.