alt Hacker NewsThis is basically On proof and progress in mathematics by Thurston restated. When Thurston wrote it in 1994, many people didn't understand what he is talking about.
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cmrx64 • today at 9:06 AM
this is what came to mind for me as well.
This is basically On proof and progress in mathematics by Thurston restated. When Thurston wrote it in 1994, many people didn't understand what he is talking about.
this is what came to mind for me as well.
And already on page 2 Thurston cuts the the root of the issue, 30 years ago:
>On a more everyday level, it is common for people first starting to grapple with computers to make large-scale computations of things they might have done on a smaller scale by hand. They might print out a table of the first 10,000 primes, only to find that their printout isn’t something they really wanted after all. They discover by this kind of experience that what they really want is usually not some collection of “answers”—what they want is understanding.
The difference in reactions by the maths community should probably be spit up into those who have read and understood On Proof and Progress and actually thought deeply about why they do mathematics, and those who haven't.