> > I feel like mathematicians are being damned by faint praise here.
> I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
Just that you said …
> mathematicians will need to make their job be about enriching subjective experience rather than generating proofs
This seems to imply that generating proofs (if of value at all) does not enrich or cannot compete with enriching “subjective experience.” Even being generous, it damns the supposed role of the mathematician (“generating proofs”) with faint praise (they’ll be forced to do something useful, like enrich subjective experience). Of course as discussed, proof generation is already a most human of activities entailing language invention and novel expression.
Perhaps further, while proof generation is an important act in mathematics, able to give confidence when taking and refraining from project actions and time allocation, it is universally acknowledged among mathematicians that particular points in proof space are less interesting than the charts produced on the journey to those points. That unlocking new reasoning techniques is more important. Again, referencing generating proofs without the larger context of enhanced human cognition is “damning with faint praise.”
Sorry I’m ranting a bit, but I’m on something of a mission to see mathematics held in at least as high esteem as literature. No one admits to illiteracy (or at least pre-TikTok this was a shameful thing), but will casually assert innumeracy even though it is just as intellectually impoverishing.
> > I think the path here is to decouple human value from economic output.
> I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
I confess I am unable to distinguish between “economic output” and “the economy,” so I will refrain from sowing further confusion on this topic.
> > I feel like mathematicians are being damned by faint praise here.
> I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
Just that you said …
> mathematicians will need to make their job be about enriching subjective experience rather than generating proofs
This seems to imply that generating proofs (if of value at all) does not enrich or cannot compete with enriching “subjective experience.” Even being generous, it damns the supposed role of the mathematician (“generating proofs”) with faint praise (they’ll be forced to do something useful, like enrich subjective experience). Of course as discussed, proof generation is already a most human of activities entailing language invention and novel expression.
Perhaps further, while proof generation is an important act in mathematics, able to give confidence when taking and refraining from project actions and time allocation, it is universally acknowledged among mathematicians that particular points in proof space are less interesting than the charts produced on the journey to those points. That unlocking new reasoning techniques is more important. Again, referencing generating proofs without the larger context of enhanced human cognition is “damning with faint praise.”
Sorry I’m ranting a bit, but I’m on something of a mission to see mathematics held in at least as high esteem as literature. No one admits to illiteracy (or at least pre-TikTok this was a shameful thing), but will casually assert innumeracy even though it is just as intellectually impoverishing.
> > I think the path here is to decouple human value from economic output.
> I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
I confess I am unable to distinguish between “economic output” and “the economy,” so I will refrain from sowing further confusion on this topic.