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Comment by andrewmatte | Hacker News Reader

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andrewmatte·

I have long felt like "beauty" in mathematics is just oversimplification.

Ironic that intelligent mathematics types get caught up in what could be analogous to socially hurtful stereotypes.

I am going to follow the author.

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Is't a large part of the history of physics about doing away with wrong assumptions based on beauty? Circular orbits of planets etc.

Except that you've got the point completely upside down! At first people didn't believe in heliocentrism because it used circular orbits, and instead used to believe that the universe is better described from the geocentric point of view which was one ginormous mess from the mathematical point of view. Then people realized that the beautiful addition of conical curves solves the problem completely. I say 'beautiful' because clearly you don't have a sense of mathematical beauty. Mathematical beauty is not only the simplicity of the solutions, but also it's robustness and fluid way in which it fits into the rest of our knowledge. The real simplification that came from it is far deeper than any 'circular orbits' picture you imagine. Naturalness and search for beauty can never be proved wrong. Those principles can perhaps only be applied prematurely, before enough data is collected.

Not recently.

Dirac did believe his equation had to be right as it was so elegant, however it turns out we now interpret it differently now

Can you give an example of beauty (or assumed beauty I guess) just being oversimplification?

Although I admittedly only do mathematics through physics, I can't really think of any. If it's oversimplified, it's wrong and therefore not beautiful. Beauty is often given after discovery rather than on the way

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