Comment by drob518
16 hours ago
I’m an engineer, not a mathematician, so I definitely appreciate applied math more than I do abstract math. That said, that’s my personal preference and one of the reasons that I became an engineer and not a mathematician. Working on nothing but theory would bore me to tears. But I appreciate that other people really love that and can approach pure math and see the beauty. And thank God that those people exist because they sometimes find amazing things that we engineers can use during the next turn of the technological crank. Instead of seeing pure math as useless, perhaps shift to seeing it as something wonderful for which we have not YET found a practical use.
Even if pure math is useless, that’s still okay. We do plenty of things that are useless. Not everything has to have a use.
I’m not sure I agree. Pure math is not useless because a lot of math is very useful. But we don’t know ahead of time what is going to be useless vs. useful. We need to do all of it and then sort it out later.
If we knew that it was all going to be useless, however, then it’s a hobby for someone, not something we should be paying people to do. Sure, if you enjoy doing something useless, knock yourself out… but on your own dime.