The Humbling of the Maths Snobs | Hacker News Reader

The Humbling of the Maths Snobs

ft.com

16 pointsBerislavLopac16 comments

It's not a great piece from FT.

It argues that "the root of maths chauvinism is a childlike craving for certainties, or at least probabilities, amid the flux of adult experience", which I kind of agree with. Certainty is indeed one of the appeal of mathematics.

Using Liz Truss as an example - she studied PPE at Oxford, not exactly a math heavy major - is beyond weird.

I don't understand the broader point Ganesh is trying to make.

I actually think this is a pretty good (opinion) piece. We've moved to a society that over-values math/analytical competence --and FYI, my background is in numerical simulations, so I am/was mathy myself. This is also related to the Andreesen Techno-Optimist claptrap: technology and analytics as the primary driver of human progress.

I would argue that the primary driver of human progress is /politics/ not math. It's societal values and organization and how those leverage technology as an enabler to move societies forward. Math and technology exist /everywhere/ in every corner of the world. Why do startups flourish in SV but not in (for example) Southern Europe where the climate is better, the standard of living is just as high and math/tech education is at least adequate? Politics (in the classical sense, not the party/election sense), values, infrastructure.

But by pushing tech as the end-all-be-all, the solution (and goal) of all endeavor, we're forgetting why we /want/ progress. We don't want a faster iPhone or a better search engine. We are pursuing happiness, having life and liberty.

https://archive.ph/hO1YJ

I was unable to convince the archive.ph CAPCHA that I'm human. Googling the title seems to enable rendering of the article[0].

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=The+humbling+of+the+maths+sn...

Try changing your dns to 8.8.8.8 or anything else that isn't cloudflare.

Weird to write an article about Liz Truss as a math snob (a description that seems rather stretched to be honest) without mentioning that her father, John Truss, is a fairly well known model theorist! (Even though they're not really very close from what I've been told by students of the latter)

PPE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy,_politics_and_econo...

I'm not sure what's your point, that hardly looks like a math heavy degree

I don't have a point, I was linking for those who aren't aware of the British term "PPE"

Oh I see, I was confused because I didn't mention PPE in my comment, maybe you meant to answer to the other top level comment which does use this abbreviation!

Calling SBF "a math snob" kind of implies his problem was just a miscalculation.

No, he's a swindler.

Not really sure what the point of that was. FT is usually a lot better. Using a politician and a scammer as examples of "math snobs" just doesn't work.

Math is certainty. There's nothing snobbish about it.

Unless you believe goëdel or the action of choice

Paywalled.

12ft.io

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