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Comment by GDC7 | Hacker News Reader

It's self imposed because mathematicians love to use their own notation.

Math is at its core philosophy and logic, they are both hard too, but they don't get the same level of hatred that math gets because unlike mathematicians philosophers and rational thinkers take the time to explain what goes through their mind instead of condensing very complex thoughts in 20 characters strings.

Turns out there are some social rules which not even math can break, if your attitude is :

"I don't give a damn about people understanding what I am trying to say, they are all dumb and uninteresting because they don't even put the time in to learn my special notation"

You won't be very popular. And your field will be kinda hated, which is what is happening.

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> [philosophy and logic] don't get the same level of hatred that math gets

Because children aren't forced to study philosophy and logic for many hours each week.

And if you think logicians (even of the non-mathematical variety) aren't constantly inventing new notations...

> "I don't give a damn about people understanding what I am trying to say, they are all dumb and uninteresting because they don't even put the time in to learn my special notation"

Those mathematicians aren't calling you "dumb and uninteresting", you're just not in their target audience.

> And your field will be kinda hated, which is what is happening.

Again, it's hated because children are forced to study it, because their parents think it's essential. Most people don't think mathematics is an evil cabal of men intentionally obfuscating their work with crazy symbols just for the heck of it.

What has any of this got to do with "emerging as a field"? Mathematics is alive and well and, indeed, popular. It's not like Mathematics lectures are empty or that huge numbers are shying away from engineering or physics because of the Maths involved. Like, it's doing fine, and clearly "emerged as a field" centuries ago.

I don't give a fuck if people hate Maths, it's doing fine lol. You sound like someone who has literally no connection to the field and therefore can not perceive how it is actually doing, and instead you think "wow Maths must be in a bad state if everyone hates it". But no, that is just not true...

If there is any relevant criticism of Mathematics it is much more about going extremely deep into vastly theoretical domains without any reference to how practical such solutions might be than anything to do with whether or not the lay person "enjoys Maths".

All of this is irrelevant bullshitting. Maths emerged as a field centuries or even millenia ago. Please read the wiki page on "Mathematics".

Well, one of the GOAT mathematicians of our time, Jim Simons thinks math in America is in a bad shape.

And same goes for Terence Tao as he was unsatisfied with the low degree of collaboration between mathematicians and stepped up saying (politely) :"this sh-t has to stop"

Of course the rampant ego which is in the field prevents people from rallying around leaders like that or even arriving indipendently to the same conclusion because all these people see is the di-k measuring contest or slapping their name on a theorem.

You speak about practicality of math, what's more practical than turning Mobile, AL into a Cambridge or a Zurich.

If people in math cared about explaining their thoughts the way philosophers and rational thinkers do, then it could be possible.

Tbh, those people are the ones with huge egos. Mathematics is getting done on the raw ground regardless of if they are present or not. I hate this whining bullshit, if you want people to collaborate, make the tools to help people do so, rather than cringy pointless posturing.

> turning Mobile, AL into a Cambridge or a Zurich.

You are extremely naive if you think that this is something that would happen by raising general mathematics literacy. Nor is it something that we should necessarily even want to happen. Stop living in a dream land, not everyone needs to or should be a mathematician. We should aim for general literacy in statistics at most.

> If people in math cared about explaining their thoughts the way philosophers and rational thinkers do, then it could be possible.

Well, mathematics is in a much better state academically than philosophy, and literally in the UK we have ZERO philosophy education in the entirety of school. Philosophy hardly seems like an ideal to strive for, the average person know even less philosophy than mathematics and academically it is far smaller and less well funded.

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