What are some canonical defenses of pure mathematics a la Hardy's "A Mathematicians Apology"?

Okay good, you are definitely helping isolate the issue.

>absolute truth about the universe
>what is true in math
I'm using true in neither way. An idea is true if it helps me understand myself or the world around me in a way that helps me live better (or understand what it means to live better).

something something I don't actually understand Godel's theorems like 99% of the people who talk about them something something

>something something I don't actually understand Godel's theorems like 99% of the people who talk about them something something
t. part of the 99%

Don't know why you say I'm dissociated. In fact I feel my perspective is very freeing.
But yeah I read some Kierkegaard and some Nietzsche.

I said you seemed dissociated because you have a very top-down, overly self-aware way of talking about yourself.
>entertainment isn't bad
>we all just want fame
>I don't believe in any strong sense of truth
>we are all just men choosing rules and playing games
>it feels rewarding, and so it's entertainment to me
>But it's all just living along
Everything you say attempts to undercut the urgency of life.

Don't mean to be mean, but you sound like a 16 year old.

I don't care if you're mean. Can you expand on that, though? Why do you think this is a bad definition of truth?

So the opposite of being dissociated would be to have some conviction and higher goal?

What I said just mirrors how I see things, but I don't see anything negative in the things I said, as you seem to imply.

>So the opposite of being dissociated would be to have some conviction and higher goal?
Not quite. The opposite of being dissociated would be to care about the world as something beyond an abstraction and to care about yourself as something beyond an object in the world.

>I don't see anything negative in the things I said.
To be honest, there's nothing wrong in what you said per se. I just know that a lot of people who believe the thing you purport to believe are very boring. But I don't know you. Maybe you have a good life.

If you wanted to find transcendent truth and shit you should've went into psychology and the such. The human mind is the fucking wackiest mystery ever. Like concsiousness, what the fuq dat, where it come from?

OP, it sounds like you were already motivated by the pursuit of truth. Why does it matter to you that others don't feel the same?
Also studying math for entertainment and for "transcendent truth" are not mutually exclusive. It seems better that someone pursue truth because they like doing it rather than because of
>muh truth for the sake of truth
i.e. wanting to feel superior to others because your pursuit of math is somehow purer than others

Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology" amounts to much the same thing that you are concerned about, user. In it, Hardy touts his simple winning of competitions, and also the aesthetics. Muh Dick, to an extent, though genuine interest does motivate all of this.

Basically, there's pleasure, aesthetics, and "transcendent higher purpose". You describe Hardy's missive as "canonical" when it's really just an elaboration on the "pleasure" angle which you've been disquieted by in your professors, when they state it so bluntly.

A professsor of mine once described for a non-plussed room how a proof was done first of all because it is "beautiful, like poetry". The room was unimpressed but I instantly understood what he really meant. Later, another professor indicated that Apery showed that the zeta of three is irrational "for the fun of it".

My attitude is that "Math earns its keep". It is unreasonably effective (a popular meme in the real hard sciences), and so its R&D (departments, brains, coffee, amphatemenes, boards) pose no problem. And if the people who actually like math want to be all autistic, they have earned their keep and are left to see about these other problems.

I also think that the OP has some sort of youthful idealism and pretended adulthood which doesn't necessarily square with how people really like to do what they really like to do. Autists just plain like math, myself among them.

We are just now starting to see a lot of pure mathematics being used in Machine Learning & AI. So the justification is that you are accelerating the dawn of a higher consciousness.

At this point you have no reason to not go into physics (or mathematical). If transcendental truths aren't being pursued in mathematics at least you can pursue contingent truths in physics.

I'm not the same user, but I would think he simply misinterprets Godel's results and assumes that incompleteness negates the fact that mathematical results are true, which it most certainly does not.

>I got into this gig because I thought it was the pursuit of some transcendent truth.

And you will be. All mathematicians are in the pursuit of transcendent truth. We know more "truth" than anyone else. The problem is that not all of us can really advance in that direction.

Tell me, how many fields today are really about absolute truths about the universe? Mathematical physics? That today is basically the study of partial differential equations. Literally only the best of the best mathematicians can truly advance in this field nowadays.

If we broaden this "truth" to larger "mathematical truth" then perhaps we include people who study the most general and most meaningful parts of number theory, analysis and topology. But again, only the best of the best can really find new ground breaking theorems on these well established subjects.

What is left for the rest of us to do? To pick one of those fields and then find something really niche only we know about so that we can autistically study that thing.

And that is what I feel when I hear your short story about your professor. If I had to guess I'd say that he either "discovered" a basically structure-less algebraic structure that has a couple of neat properties lying around but nothing truly fundamental (like groups and such) and thus he is now just classifying weird objects that fall in this new category and no one other than himself really cares about. That or perhaps he is studying a really specific kind of function he invented that is defined in a way so weird that will never have applications, but still has some nice properties to be found, and now he is categorizing what kinds of functions satisfy those properties.

Nothing wrong with that really. Not everyone can be great.

Shut the fuck up and just do some tight fucking proofs you little pussy faggot. This is the sort of stupid bullshit I was trying to avoid by not studying philosophy.

>he craves the validity of his inferences wrt to some inference rules that somebody else created long time ago

stay impotent cuck

>An idea is true if it helps me understand myself or the world around me in a way that helps me live better (or understand what it means to live better).
if you must question something, start by questioning your desire to ''explain the order in nature'' like any rationalist for N millennia, instead of directly diving into your mental proliferation and fantasizing about finding justifications for the fantasized order.

That is philosophy, not math, dumby.

Pure mathematics was always about finding a transcendent truth in a religious sense. It was a way to "prove" God, which is why it was favored by the church whereas Physics and Biology were not. Once the religion went out of it, its become what it always should've been, a way for highly intelligent people to entertain themselves. Expecting anything more from it means that you have a God shaped hole in you that you're trying to fill with math.

>Expecting anything more from it means that you have a God shaped hole in you that you're trying to fill with math.

Everyone knows that actually God is a mathematician and he uses mathematics as a way to judge where you belong in the hierarchy of heaven. And after one trillion years in this universe, the highest ranked mathematicians of heaven are called and given 6 problems directly from God. Whoever solves them correctly and with the least amount of time becomes the new God.

you're literally seeking entertainment, just you're too conceited and blind to be able to phrase it like your professor. he was just too blunt and you're too immature about it

...

That has nothing to do with math

babby math undergrad here starting fall. how can you know mathematical results are ''true'' and objective? don't they all rely on the basic axioms take you have to take for granted?

I'm on a similar boat as OP describes. I believe most of current level pure research mathematics is totally detached from any meaningful application and is mostly pursued as some form of competition for smart people. The people giving out grants to these people either do not really understand what these people are working on and/or just do it for the fame of supporting "the next big mathematicians". I consider pure math research as a big jerk off circle.

With that being said one should however note, that these researchers are able to pay their bills and get to do what they love, which is alot more than what most people can say about their work. Although I know that money is often a horrible indicator of worth I think it is somewhat reasonable to think that whenever you can make enough money to support yourself finanically there is some worth in what you are doing. Especially if you can manage to secure 3rd party funding.

>speaking about axioms
>not speaking about inference rules

it takes two to tango

Pure Math is just as gay as modern philosophy

>transcendent truth
what do you mean by this?

OP here. Was at my girlfriend's house last night and so stopped tracking the thread (we've fought about my usage of Veeky Forums before). I will take some time to respond to some of what you guys have said because some of it seems pretty on point.

Here's some more pointed advice, then: dump the bitch immediately.

>psychology
Psychology gives me vertigo. I fall into these solipsistic funks where I view all of science as predicated on my own brain. Then I look to psychology to figure out my own brain. After a few cycles, I've completely forgotten which is the horse and which is the carriage.

One of my two friends from high school is now looking into psychology/psychiatry. To some extent, he's the reason I don't go into it. He's by far the smartest person I've ever met. -- IQ off the charts, reads and argues 16 hours a day. Wittgenstein makes sense when he talks about him. We used to share very similar academic issues, and while he was incredibly enlightening to talk to, I got sick of always feeling like the slow brother.

I realized at some point that I was way more talented at mathematics than he was (and that was probably the only intellectual pursuit I trumped him in) and so went for that. I guess I'm living out Hardy's argument that good mathematicians are only ever good at mathematics -- if even that.

Why's that? Intimacy boosts productivity. And she doesn't cause me any issues.

It's very aggravating to be around people who are doing things you like for the wrong reasons. Do you even have autism?

>My attitude is that "Math earns its keep". It is unreasonably effective (a popular meme in the real hard sciences), and so its R&D (departments, brains, coffee, amphatemenes, boards) pose no problem.

This is an interesting take. The only thing it doesn't take into account is the opportunity cost of smart people not doing something else. Of course, Hardy would disagree that there's any opportunity cost there at all, because all those "smart people" are just mathematicians who would be rubbish at everything else.

>People really like to do what they really like to do. Autists just plain like math, myself among them.
You're right, I find this unsettling. Could you explain why that's
>youthful idealism
>pretended adulthood

Sauce?

I have very little physics background. I got as far as Special Relativity. Seems late in the game.

I thought the point of the post was:
>no matter what means you choose to interpret the world through, there will always be undigestable bits.

> don't they all rely on the basic axioms take you have to take for granted?

yes

Pure Meth Fags.

Why do you waste your time with that shit?

Is it that difficult to understand?

Hardy himself said that a young mathematician who cares about this sort of thing is a fool. He only wrote that book because he was old and wanted something to do.

Mathematics represents a mental territory that requires some level of intelligence to navigate.

Rob young men of their futures. Rob them of property and rob them of diginity. Rob them of hope for a different world.

At least in the mental space of mathematics, you can chart a land and explore frontiers of beauty and imagination.

>Why do you waste your time with that shit?

Because it's not wasted time. Think of the phenomenology of a westerner. His frames of consciousness are constantly interrupted by BEEP BEEP, the robotics of wage slavery, the attempt to pimp out his own consciousness many many many times a day (advertising), and the mass of worry and anxiety. The world is ruled by people who don't give a shit about how much cognition they force you to give up.

I think a smart man would trade those frames for contemplation of fun and/or beautiful games one can play in the mathematical sphere.

>Entertainment isn't nearly as entertaining as pursuing self-transcendence.
how are they mutually exclusive?

Paul erDUNCE was a brainlet LOL

Mathematics is just a pyramid scheme. You pay to get in and only a small group gets to the next level and gets to exploit the people below them, eventually being paid by their entrance fees.
They don't produce anything of value, but they do take credit for technology that was developed by engineers using mathematics that was invented by astrologers centuries ago. It's just propaganda to lure in more suckers.

It's a disgrace that governments subsidize it. That money and smarts could be spent on the development of new technology.

Not everything has a purpose. Some things just exist because they can. Pure mathematics is an example.

They're not mutually exclusive. I just value self-transcendence over entertainment. That's the only way to make decisions: to value different desires differently.

Evidence? disagrees.