alt Hacker NewsBut why? Responding to vulgar economism/instrumentalism with, "Well actually mathematics is this and that, human understanding/journey etc. etc." does not explain why mathematics ought to be those ways. Without elaboration such assertions amount to professional dogmatic narrative in the other direction. Professionals can be very good at that kind of rationalization too.
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askjdfksdbfhk • yesterday at 10:47 PM
I think I already answered this in my comment. I claimed that I don't see much value in a magical black box theorem-proving oracle whose proofs could not, and would not, be understood by humans.
If you disagree (as the GP does, apparently), I ask you--what value do you see in it?
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Some things are valuable, because they keep people alive and healthy in the short term. Some are valueble, because some people find them inherently valuable. Pure mathematics is in that category. And then there is bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy has no direct value, but it may have indirect value, if it helps us achieve things that are more directly useful. Pure mathematics has had a lot of indirect value until now. It turns out that training people to do mathematics for the sake of doing mathematics, at any level from schoolkid to mathematics professor, teaches skills that transfer to other domains. If human thinking becomes obsolete, that indirect value may be gone, but the direct value will remain.
The results in pure mathematics are largely irrelevant, except as means of acquiring transferable skills. Sometimes they have practical implications, but such situations are exceptional. And there is not much correlation between the practical value of a result and its value as seen by mathematicians.