Mathematicians inhibit and explore a world that is completely made up and exists only in abstract.
I wonder if this makes them slowly get disconnected from the lived realities of billions of ordinary people.
When thinking about math, Tao is in another world unfamiliar to us. But, he grew up in our world and is a professor in our world and if you listen to him, seems like a pretty normal guy. I think he just made a bad analogy here.
How could a theoretical mathematician not be massively disconnected from the reality of life for the ordinary person? We usually celebrate their quirks until they come into conflict like this.