Is there a difference between what you are describing and simply having a more or less nuanced view on the matter? It seems like you’re confirming exactly what Paul Graham describes. You’ve made your identity as a mathematician smaller and are thus no longer threatened by people expressing certain opinions on math. But there are still things that are fundamental to your identity as a mathematician, that need protecting. If someone says “math is useless” does that not evoke a feeling of needing to defend maths?
When Paul Graham says “smaller” he means chucking out labels entirely:
Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
And no, people saying “math is useless” does not evoke any feeling in me of needing to defend math. For many people it’s just true for them and that’s something I can get behind. Most people throughout history did not learn math and were fine, and even most people today need very little math to get by.
It also just wouldn’t actually hurt me personally for this meme to spread; if anything, to the extent that I think math is useful, other people thinking math is useless reduces my competition. They’re just denying themselves an incredibly useful tool.
Ah, you seem to automatically interpret the “math is useless” as meaning “math is useless to me”. But people can also mean − and that’s what I was trying to get at − that “math is of no use for anything, to anyone”. This would be the X being good threatened as Kaj pointed out.
I still don’t find this threatening. It’s clearly false and I’m not worried about more people believing it; furthermore, again, even if they did, it would only hurt them, not me.
There would come a point where, if a large enough amount of people believe it, it would start affecting you. Would make it harder to find jobs, to find other people to discuss ideas with, to convice people of an argument that relies on statistical significance, etc. It would have a huge effect on economical progress if the majority of people started believing that math is of no use to anyone.
Is there a difference between what you are describing and simply having a more or less nuanced view on the matter? It seems like you’re confirming exactly what Paul Graham describes. You’ve made your identity as a mathematician smaller and are thus no longer threatened by people expressing certain opinions on math. But there are still things that are fundamental to your identity as a mathematician, that need protecting. If someone says “math is useless” does that not evoke a feeling of needing to defend maths?
When Paul Graham says “smaller” he means chucking out labels entirely:
And no, people saying “math is useless” does not evoke any feeling in me of needing to defend math. For many people it’s just true for them and that’s something I can get behind. Most people throughout history did not learn math and were fine, and even most people today need very little math to get by.
It also just wouldn’t actually hurt me personally for this meme to spread; if anything, to the extent that I think math is useful, other people thinking math is useless reduces my competition. They’re just denying themselves an incredibly useful tool.
Ah, you seem to automatically interpret the “math is useless” as meaning “math is useless to me”. But people can also mean − and that’s what I was trying to get at − that “math is of no use for anything, to anyone”. This would be the X being good threatened as Kaj pointed out.
I still don’t find this threatening. It’s clearly false and I’m not worried about more people believing it; furthermore, again, even if they did, it would only hurt them, not me.
There would come a point where, if a large enough amount of people believe it, it would start affecting you. Would make it harder to find jobs, to find other people to discuss ideas with, to convice people of an argument that relies on statistical significance, etc. It would have a huge effect on economical progress if the majority of people started believing that math is of no use to anyone.