In contrast to what these philosophical pieces tend to convey, the main crisis in mathematics is a labour one.
Mathematitians exchanged proofs for employment. That was the currency. Now they cannot use that currency anymore, so the question is how does someone know if they should hire an unknow person or not?
Philosophicaly who cares if you like more theory building or theorem proving? You dont need to convince anyone. The only solution is to be curious and follow your interests and naturally humanity will redefine what the new mathematics feels like.
You cannot convince anyone about it, its not something rational.
This is very untrue. Academic mathematicians do more than just proofs. They teach, they conduct research, etc. There are almost no privately employed mathematicians who spend their time doing proofs. And academia has a substantially lower pay grade than things someone good at math can do, like quant or big tech. Academic mathematics and these specific kind of proofs have never held tons of value in our society economically. They have always been more culturally and academically relevant as a symbol of our frontier knowledge, than they have been financially lucrative. I doubt many math departments would even consider paying for the kind of token spend that might have gone into the proofs for some of those "big name" problems
youoy · · focus · HN ↗
Mathematitians exchanged proofs for employment. That was the currency. Now they cannot use that currency anymore, so the question is how does someone know if they should hire an unknow person or not?
Philosophicaly who cares if you like more theory building or theorem proving? You dont need to convince anyone. The only solution is to be curious and follow your interests and naturally humanity will redefine what the new mathematics feels like.
You cannot convince anyone about it, its not something rational.
aprilthird2021 · · focus · HN ↗