[HN Gopher] The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics (2011)
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The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics (2011)
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-12-06 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| These kinds of unplanned impacts are one reason why I think most
| jobs need to have a certain amount of "slack" built in so that
| the workers aren't only spending all their time working, but can
| spend some time pondering ways that they could be doing it better
| or even just relaxing and reading a book etc.
|
| You can't predict what avenues of investigation are going to bear
| fruit, so a good strategy it to encourage people to investigate
| things that interest them. Most of the time it won't lead
| anywhere, but once in a while someone will stumble upon
| penicillin or a microwave oven.
| sitkack wrote:
| When you look at scientific discovery, random happenstance has
| an outsized influence. So much so, that one could make a
| compelling argument of how we could increase the rate of
| scientific discovery.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| When you see some science students mucking around with
| dangerous chemicals etc. then retreat to a safe distance and
| see what happens.
|
| If you see a physicist mucking around with a screwdriver and
| some beryllium, retreat much further away and preferably with
| several walls between you and them.
| sitkack wrote:
| If we have to couch everything we say online to account for
| arm chair illogical extremes, then nothing of substance
| would ever be said.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't really intending my comment to be any
| kind of criticism of your comment, but more of a kind of
| humourous (to me anyway) addition.
| VulgarExigency wrote:
| let he who has never acted blase towards safety protocols
| cast the first plutonium sphere
| mindcrime wrote:
| _These kinds of unplanned impacts are one reason why I think
| most jobs need to have a certain amount of "slack" built in so
| that the workers aren't only spending all their time
| working..._
|
| Indeed. And this is a well understood concept. To the point
| that Tom DeMarco wrote an entire book about the importance of
| "slack" - over 20 years ago.[1]
|
| From the description:
|
| _< DeMarco> reveals a counterintuitive principle that explains
| why efficiency efforts can slow a company down. That principle
| is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that
| allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as
| adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced
| talent spend less time at the photocopier and more time making
| key decisions, or it could mean designing workloads that allow
| people room to think, innovate, and reinvent themselves._
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-
| Effici...
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't recall what specific keyword they use, but this idea
| has been thoroughly explored in manufacturing businesses,
| probably for close to a century now. Having slack in the
| system allows you to adapt to unforeseen circumstances
| quickly and over longer periods of time, gives better results
| than trying to run everything at maximum output. If memory
| serves well, Andrew Grove dissects this idea and how it
| carries over to managing people in his book High Output
| Management from 1983.
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| Yup, see Theory of Constraints[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints
| gobengo wrote:
| This book is a good riff on "The Goal" but for software
| manufacturers https://itrevolution.com/product/the-
| phoenix-project/
| chasd00 wrote:
| I think this concept is where the linux distro Slackware came
| from too. Although Slackware has to be pushing 30 by now.
| malux85 wrote:
| Explore exploit dilemma, it seems 20/80 is about the right
| ratio in many fields
| andai wrote:
| This is interesting. Are those examples of
| inventions/discoveries that probably don't exist in other
| timelines?
| pdm55 wrote:
| The development of the lithium-ion battery is an example of
| how scientific discovery does not have a straight-line
| trajectory.
|
| How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery
|
| "One notable thing about the evolution of the lithium-ion
| battery is how hard it is to predict the trajectory of
| research, and how important it is to allow researchers the
| flexibility to pursue what they feel is promising.
| Whittingham stumbled across an intercalation-based battery
| when researching fast-ion transport through a solid
| electrolyte, an entirely different phenomenon. And his
| invention of the first lithium-ion battery cathodes was the
| result of a serendipitous discovery during work on
| superconductors. Thackeray discovered the manganese oxide
| cathode at Oxford ... for a year's sabbatical so he could
| pursue the battery ideas he found promising. Early research
| on a graphite-based anode, performed by Rachid Yazami, was
| originally aimed at discovering a graphite-based cathode, not
| an anode, and Akira Yoshino's battery efforts at Asahi
| Chemical were pursued in spite of the fact that company
| thought very little of the battery market, and only bore
| fruit because the company didn't actively try and stop him.
| Likewise, the discovery of ethylene carbonate as an
| electrolyte that would allow graphite to be used as an anode
| was an accidental discovery by Moli Energy.
|
| This sort of trajectory, of course, makes it hard to capture
| the value of research, or to have anything like a reliable,
| predictable path by which scientific research gets turned
| into marketable products. Exxon's efforts to develop a
| practical rechargeable battery ultimately failed, though its
| research would spawn a successful battery in the fullness of
| time."
|
| Source: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-we-got-
| the-lithiu...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735236 - July 2020 (57
| comments)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/78Qkb
| bbminner wrote:
| The article is interesting, but I feel somewhat conflicted re
| "explaining motivations behind scientific discoveries". The
| author of the article is trying hard to find simple and elegant
| examples of applications (eg the optimal orange stacking in a
| grocery store), but imho makes a disservice, as mathematics ends
| up looking like a walk in the park taken by complete lunatics
| that were carried away thinking about stacked oranges. When I was
| a kid, there were some science fair-esq events / electives for
| high school kids including sections on mathematics. By stripping
| off all the mind-twisting weirdness and complexity of the real
| math to make problems "more approachable" to students, they also
| stripped them of all the mystery and a sense of discovery that I
| self-discovered and fell in love with much later during my
| undergrad.
|
| Tdlr if we want to get people excited about math, we should not
| strive to erase all the complexity and ambiguity, making it fully
| digestible, because otherwise all that's left are a bunch of
| lunatics arguing over stacking oranges (prove me wrong).
| fluoridation wrote:
| _Do_ we want to get people excited about math? I think that as
| long as they 're competent in it, it's fine if most people are
| mostly indifferent towards it and just see it as a useful tool.
| pjdesno wrote:
| Not included in the article: Boolean algebra, invented by an
| English philosopher in the 1840s, and applied to a new context
| almost 100 years later in what may be the most influential MS
| thesis of all time, Claude Shannon's "Symbolic Analysis of Relay
| and Switching Circuits".
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Claude Shannon's contributions to modern technology can't be
| overstated and yet his name is relatively unknown.
|
| Edit: used "underestimated" when I mean "overstated"
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > In the 1970s, Lang developed a modem with 8-dimensional
| signals, using E8 packing. This helped to open up the Internet,
| as data could be sent over the phone, instead of relying on
| specifically designed cables. Not everyone was thrilled. Donald
| Coxeter, who had helped Lang understand the mathematics, said he
| was "appalled that his beautiful theories had been sullied in
| this way".
|
| Sic semper mathematicis.
| munificent wrote:
| These are fun anecdotes, but I can't help but notice the
| egocentrism of Juan Parrondo calling out _his own work_ as having
| historical impact and noting two terms named after himself in the
| same paragraph.
|
| Sometimes I wish I had a little more of that self-important
| energy.
| revskill wrote:
| Stakeholders don't pay employees to do things for no purpose !
| mecsred wrote:
| Anyone who's worked for a big enough company knows that isn't
| true.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Are you saying employees are paid to do nothing with a specific
| purpose in mind?
| guybedo wrote:
| The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics is a great illustration of
| the mathematical nature of the world.
|
| This is a fascinating relationship, is there a definitive answer
| / theory on this ? Why are Mathematics so effective to describe
| the world ? Are Mathematics a feature of the Universe or merely a
| Human tool ?
|
| I haven't been reading on the subject for quite some time, what
| are good books on this relationship between Mathematics and
| Nature?
| sourcepluck wrote:
| Maybe you're aware of the sort of reference essay on the
| subject, but just in case you hadn't see it, it's very readable
| and beautiful:
|
| http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~johnda/Papers/wignerUnreasonableEf...
|
| Books, I don't know, I haven't been keeping up.
| _mella wrote:
| The one thing that's for sure, is that there is not a
| definitive answer to that.
|
| Nonetheless, I think some proof theorist have a pretty neat way
| to think about all this. The idea goes as follows: our brain is
| a computer programmed by millions of years of natural selection
| and doing math is the activity of trying to decompile some
| program running in it.
|
| Taking that at face value would give element of answer to the
| "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". For exemple, maybe
| geometry is trying to make sense of some driver our brain use
| to interface with our eyes, and this driver better be smart
| about 3d space for us to have chances of survival.
|
| So the answer would be something like it's not necessarily that
| the nature of the world is mathematical, but mathematics is the
| tiny bit of our understanding of what we have best to make
| sense of the world : our brain. Which we herited from
| evolution, hence it can be surprinsingly amazing. With this
| view, saying that the world is mathematical even seem a bit too
| self centered.
|
| What's backing the idea on the math side of things is that
| thinking of math proofs as computer programs really makes sense
| ! There are whole theories on this see Curry-Howard
| correspondence and/or realizability theory. Provocatively, we
| can argue computer science generalizes math :-)
|
| For a non technical covering of those ideas by someone who did
| world class contributions in realizability theory, have a look
| at Jean-Louis Krivine's last book : "Les decompilateurs". I
| think it is only available in french though.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I'm working on a project now where we have to take the topics in
| algebra 1/2 and geometry (high school mathematics) and connect it
| to real-world activities in science, tech, business, etc.
|
| This has been fun -- but harder than anticipated! While some
| topics are clearly and deeply useful, many topics are very
| difficult to connect to practicalities. And, conversely, some of
| my favorite math -- math that underpins key technologies we use
| everyday --just isn't part of the high school curriculum.
|
| It makes me wonder why we teach the high school math that we do--
| and whether there is a more elegant or effective curriculum we
| should consider. (For instance, I'm fond of the classical
| quadrivium)
| owl_vision wrote:
| an easy to read book for the mathematically inclined minds by
| Eric Temple Bell: "Mathematics, The Queen & Servant of Science"
|
| and the xkcd.com notation 135: https://xkcd.com/435/
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