[HN Gopher] Disappointment
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Disappointment
Author : nsoonhui
Score : 105 points
Date : 2024-05-23 10:03 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ams.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ams.org)
| n4r9 wrote:
| Danny Calegari seems like that rare combination of humility,
| insight, and empathy. Some really good quotes in this interview:
|
| > If you want to go into mathematics, doing the mathematics
| itself has to be the thing that's the reward, because no one
| cares, and what's considered important doesn't always make sense.
| ... I think 100% of mathematicians think that no one cares, that
| no one even knows anything about their best work.
|
| > G.H. Hardy was once asked what distinguished Ramanujan as a
| mathematician. One of the things he said was that Ramanujan had a
| remarkable capacity for coming up with hypotheses very quickly,
| but that he was also very quick to revise his hypotheses. He was
| nimble: If something didn't work, he was able to pivot and revise
| his way of thinking.
|
| > the same kind of psychological pressures that make it difficult
| for people to deal with failure are at work in making it hard for
| people to carefully and critically evaluate arguments that they
| have a huge personal investment in being correct.
|
| > One of the great, tremendously useful and valuable functions of
| good writing is that it gives you a way of seeing what it's like
| to be other people. You can see inside people's heads. This is
| one of the great gifts of literature: You get to see that
| everyone else is weird, too, not just you.
| nadam wrote:
| "If you want to go into mathematics, doing the mathematics itself
| has to be the thing that's the reward" True. In other words
| mathematics is the biggest 'Nerd Sniping' source ever existed on
| Earth. Math was my hobby when I was younger, and every minute of
| learning and thinking about theoretical math had a huge
| opportunity cost of not learning something more useful.
| Fortunately math is no longer a hobby of mine, so my knowledge is
| becoming more rounded/practical nowadays. I have became an expert
| of detecting any nerd-sniping, which at a younger age I was prone
| to. Surely I still teach math to my children when they need help,
| but otherwise I use math only when needed, not l'art pour l'art.
| Coincidentally I comment much less on public forums too. (Another
| non-useful activity.)
| jebarker wrote:
| I think this idea is true of all human endeavors. You have to
| enjoy the process as the appreciation of an individual
| achievement will fade very quickly and you're just left with
| doing the process again.
|
| So in a way, nerd sniping is great, it hooks you into a process
| you enjoy.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Your post is written with a positive atmosphere, but I can't
| help feeling like you've lost something you once found
| rewarding. And... while it's tempting to think about your own
| life in terms of opportunity cost, I would caution that it
| risks giving rise to constant discontent if you focus too much
| on that. Bertrand Russell has a good quote in "In Praise of
| Ideleness":
|
| > There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play
| which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of
| efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be
| done for the sake of something else, and never for its own
| sake.
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
| nadam wrote:
| I try to find joy in creating stuff that some other people
| find useful or enjoy. Creating something just so that I enjoy
| the process but society do not value at all is something I
| have a very bad feeling about nowadays. Like I am wasting my
| time/life. As an engineer it is more rewarding for me to
| create a videogame that people enjoy than creating a nice
| optimal algorithm or solving a hard math problem.
| aeonik wrote:
| Solving hard math problems is a prerequisite for those
| video games.
|
| While we are in a good spot right now. I'm convinced that
| we need a lot more progress to really make the synthesized
| simulations / games that I see in my imagination.
|
| Hardware, algorithms, and architecture all have huge room
| for improvement.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Creating something just so that I enjoy the process but
| society do not value at all is something I have a very bad
| feeling about nowadays. Like I am wasting my time/life.
|
| This is very understandable, especially in a professional
| setting. But - assuming one has not reached a state of
| total zen - one cannot live a life in complete
| selflessness. I am guessing there are things that you do
| for the sheer enjoyment: watch movies, read books, go for
| walks? Can the reading and practising of pure mathematics
| not fall under such a use of time?
| nadam wrote:
| You are right: it could still work as something I enjoy.
| It is just that I am in a state of my life where I do not
| want to put too much time into such an activity: I have a
| greater desire to create things that people want. But I
| still watch interesting movies and occasionally it could
| be joyful to solve a math problem. But as I do not watch
| movies dozens of hours weekly, I also do not want to
| solve math problems dozens of hours weekly. This has
| probably to do where I am in life currently. This may
| change later in life (I am middle aged.)
| Scarblac wrote:
| But isn't a beautiful solution to a hard math problem as
| enjoyable to some people as a game is to others?
| tdesilva wrote:
| What ends up being useful is hard to predict, so it's
| better just to do what you enjoy. Lots of useful math
| started out as just an idle curiosity, though mostly it
| ends up being useless. Probably most engineering projects
| are the same though (most end up in the dustbin sooner or
| later).
| mathteddybear wrote:
| Creating videogames can be nerd sniping, too
| lubujackson wrote:
| I understand that feeling, but recognize you yourself
| wouldn't play your own game (because it wastes time) but
| get satisfaction from others wasting their time with your
| creation?
|
| Maybe you just want to be more efficient about increasing
| the fun experiences beyond yourself. But don't discount fun
| for fun's sake either!
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think this is basically true but I don't know if it is good
| advice for most people. In the sense that the math that most
| people are exposed to up until the first couple years of
| college is the practical stuff. (Maybe I'm showing my age here,
| are there, like, Math Influencers now that are sending the
| bright kids into the really abstract stuff?)
|
| In most cases a kid that aces all their math classes will make
| a great engineer or physicist, which is a good outcome for
| everybody involved.
|
| And, besides, all the math I use was invented by the 1950's. At
| the time, I'm sure they thought some of it was useless.
| Somebody has to cook up the stuff for the engineers of 2100.
| BeetleB wrote:
| You once found joy in mathematics, and have replaced that
| source of joy with ...?
| nadam wrote:
| Joy with creating something other people enjoy or find
| useful. For example creating a videogame. But formerly I
| enjoyed creating the underlying technology (engine
| programming, which is a nerd sniping too), nowadays I am more
| interested in the game as a whole (more game-design focus and
| less game-tech focus.)
| anyfoo wrote:
| In my experience, you can do both. I recently made a tool
| where I had great fun making the internals as "elegant" as
| possible. What other people perceive though is only the
| usefulness of the tool.
|
| I would have had significantly less fun with a more
| pragmatic approach, and maybe the tool would not be as
| polished as a result.
|
| In German, we say "the journey is the goal".
| bee_rider wrote:
| How theoretical is the math in a game engine? (I'm asking
| because I have no idea but I assumed it'd all be really
| applied linear algebra stuff, that sort of thing).
| nadam wrote:
| Not very theoretical. But with 'nerd sniping' focus I
| tended to create my own tech unnecessarily, and wasting
| too much effort to optimize things that do not
| necessarily need to be that much optimized. Nowadays I
| try to reuse other people's code as what I really enjoy
| is to create the end-product.
| BeetleB wrote:
| As long as it's working for you.
|
| I have somewhat similar feelings on my side. I really enjoy
| mathematics, but at university, I realized how vast the
| field is and how it can be fairly easy to dedicate your
| life to learning something that no one around you cares
| about. As such, if I ever get back into these disciplines
| again, I'll probably focus primarily on the math necessary
| to solve physics problems. Not because I think that's
| inherently more useful or valuable, but merely as a
| heuristic to limit the scope, so I don't go insane with the
| vastness of mathematics.
| digging wrote:
| But someone had to create the underlying technology for you
| to be able to focus on more high-level tasks. Seems it's
| easier for you to share these new tasks than your old
| tasks, but not that one is intrinsically more valuable than
| the other.
| hopa wrote:
| Can I ask if other people care about the game you're
| making? As someone with a fair amount of indie experience
| it seems easier to create a proof people care about than a
| (even reasonably) popular video game.
| nadam wrote:
| It is too early to tell for my current project. I know
| that it is very hard to create a successful game. Certain
| genres are more crowded than others though. Creating a
| successful 2D platformer is almost impossible nowadays
| for example. I am creating a grand strategy game. It is a
| niche where the supply and demand dynamics is reasonable,
| but it is still hard to create something successful.
| jacobolus wrote:
| These activities are "non-useful" in the sense that they
| generally don't bring direct financial rewards to the
| individual people who spend time on them (beyond modest
| salaries for teaching/research for those who work full time on
| it). However, from a societal perspective, such activities in
| aggregate often compound and have very high leverage and
| therefore disproportionately large benefit, especially compared
| to purely consumptive hobbies. The rewards are not carefully
| accounted and are reaped by miscellaneous strangers, sometimes
| far in the future.
| nadam wrote:
| It is not just about the financials. It can be a very lonely
| activity to create something that other people do not care
| about, or just very very few people care about. (As it is
| described in the article.) Besides financial reward, social
| reward is important too.
| BeetleB wrote:
| As the OC mentioned in a sibling comment, it's actually the
| societal aspect that leads people to abandon pursuing things
| like mathematics.
|
| When I was in grad school, I was surrounded by people who had
| these interests. I could work on a cool math problem, and
| people would be interested. I could have a conversation with
| them about it.
|
| Fast forward to the "work" world, and there's not a single
| person I know in my city with whom I can have these
| discussions. And trust me, I looked.
|
| As the OC said, it becomes an incredibly lonely life. If I
| want to study a typical grad level math course after work
| hours, it can easily consume _all_ my free time (trying to
| solve a given problem could take hours).[1] After a few years
| of trying, I had to abandon it for the sake of my mental
| health.
|
| In retrospect, there probably is a middle ground, and if I
| return to it, I'll aim for that middle ground. Intentionally
| choose topics I can do in bite sized amounts, and topics that
| I can share online that have a higher chance of engagement.
|
| [1] And this was when I was single without kids. Imagine how
| much less time you have with kids.
| anyfoo wrote:
| What's the problem with nerd sniping? It's fun, and something
| useful may come out of it. I'd like to say that I'm at a stage
| in my life where I don't need to "forcefully progress" anymore,
| but truthfully that was never actually the case. I came to be
| where I am because I was following a passion, so it was all
| nerd sniping with useful side effects, I guess.
| nadam wrote:
| The problem with nerd sniping is that it is instant
| gratification in a way. Always focusing on tech and math
| problems because you like solving them can lead to neglecting
| other areas. But maybe learning more about those other areas
| could lead to better success in life. At least this is my
| experience. It solved itself in my case. My interest just
| shifted to be more end-product focused gradually.
| ykonstant wrote:
| > But maybe learning more about those other areas could
| lead to better success in life.
|
| Or, more pertinently, prevent catastrophic failure (+_+)
| lanstin wrote:
| Funny contrast to me. I finished getting my kids up into
| college using my "useful enough to others to be paid for it"
| software skills and immediately went back to grad school for
| math precisely because it is such a joyous activity. Why would
| one eliminate a consistent source of transcendent pleasure from
| your life in this hard hard universe full of suffering and
| death?
|
| And I have to say my training in low dimensional topology and
| mathematical techniques as a youngster was extremely useful for
| developing software and software systems.
|
| Practical knowledge has a tendency to overfit and overfit in a
| society where change of technologies and techniques is as high
| as it's ever been.
| makr17 wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my Maths professors in college, Ben
| Freedman. He was a writer and an engineer until his son
| Michael started asking math questions that dad couldn't
| answer. So he went back for his PhD in his 40s. Michael
| ultimately won a Fields Medal.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| That enlightened activity is funded in part because it
| frequently yields massive military benefits/massive benefits
| to other exploitive technologies. There's currently no way to
| control that as a Mathematician, unless you're publishing in
| an anti establishment mathematical activism cell, in which
| case you public mathematical career is halted.
|
| Very few mathematians want to become political enemies of the
| state, but that's what they're forced to do if they want to
| rise to this principle. I guarantee that takes away some of
| the enlightened wonder, and adds back a lot of genuine terror
| and boring bullshit.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| So what do you do with all the valuable time that you save by
| not pursuing this apparently not-so-useful activity anymore?
| data_maan wrote:
| > Fortunately math is no longer a hobby of mine, so my
| knowledge is becoming more rounded/practical nowadays
|
| Rounded for whatever you want to do in less, but less rounded
| in terms of your abilities as mathematician, or even "user of
| mathematics"
| barfbagginus wrote:
| If you're not applying math to whatever endeavor is more
| valuable than math, how do you expect to build and wield power
| in that endeavor?
|
| On the backs of more technical people, I suppose?
|
| I reject that approach.
|
| About half of the successful business moves I do depends on
| developing better mathematical tooling than my competition.
|
| Consider adopting category theory as your lingua franca for
| modeling real world processes. It's universal and it's
| everywhere, from software engineering to business strategy and
| communications.
|
| There's no such thing as nerd sniping when every piece of math
| you do can be transported to every other endeavor you do.
| That's the job of Categories, and if you don't use them, then
| your mathematical education cannot really empower you.
| wslh wrote:
| Again, epistemology and the recommended book "NEW DIRECTIONS IN
| THE PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS"[1].
|
| It is always interesting how the people who were in the
| epistwemology of math could easily predict this. I personally
| participated in Gregory Chaitin [2] conferences.
|
| [1] https://gwern.net/doc/math/1986-tymoczko-
| newdirectionsphilos...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chaitin
| jebarker wrote:
| > Math is so competitive. Most people are struggling to get
| access to very limited resource
|
| Does he mean academic positions and funding or community
| attention? Hard to be sure based on the rest of the interview.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Pretty sure that's what he means. It's one of the more
| competitive academic positions.
|
| Anecdote, but: I knew several math and physics PhD students.
| About half of the physics ones eventually obtained tenure track
| faculty positions in the US. Not a single math one did.
| jebarker wrote:
| It's sad that's the case. Math academics require very little
| funding relative to other subjects.
| BeetleB wrote:
| For the other departments, generally the university does
| not provide that funding anyway. The faculty members are
| expected to fund it themselves via grants. Although often
| for new faculty members, the university may promise one or
| two years of funding for labs. But again, since they get a
| cut of every grant that's coming in, they can afford to do
| so.
| selecsosi wrote:
| This gels with my experience (purdue physics/math grad 2011).
| It also reflected in the composition of staff for the
| departments. I think to field a robust math department you
| don't need the staff levels that you do to field a dual
| theoretical/experimental program in something like physics or
| chemistry.
|
| e.g. at MIT the ratio of grad students in physics/math is 2.4
| even though the undergraduate programs in Math (especially if
| you include Math+CompSci) are much greater
|
| https://registrar.mit.edu/statistics-reports/enrollment-
| stat...
| beyonddream wrote:
| I haven't read the article yet but the moment I saw the writer is
| "Jordana Cepelewicz" I knew it is going to be great! I have read
| few of her past articles and they were excellent think pieces.
| isotropy wrote:
| Danny Calegari's essay "Disappointment" in the Notices
| (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202309/noti2782/noti278...)
| is a nice reflection on how to think - and try to feel - about
| failures.
| ocular-rockular wrote:
| And yet being able to practice that failure while in the
| classroom is all but outright disincentivized. I completely agree
| with the interview... but educational currents do not have the
| space for the type of failure that helps one become a good
| mathematician. In fact, failing can remove a lot of prospects.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >It wasn't common for people to write multiple-author papers when
| I was a grad student; now it's rare for a paper to have fewer
| than three authors.
|
| I thought that's because people are trading. I'll put your name
| on my paper if you put mine on yours.
| paulpauper wrote:
| maybe the material is more complicated and the papers are
| longer
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-
| failure-has-made-mathemat... to the article it's based on, but
| both are worth reading!
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