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by wmsiler
1712 days ago
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I see this question getting downvoted, and some of the responses are strangely hostile strawman attacks based on what those posters are guessing this person "really" means. I think this is a perfectly reasonable question. A few years ago, I got a PhD in pure mathematics (low dimensional geometry and topology). As someone who loves pure math and spent many years devoted to it, I've had many conversations with mathematicians about whether we should be concerned with practical applications. One common argument, which several people have made here, is that there's been a lot of math that found practical application long after it was done. That really only applies to a very small proportion of math. The vast majority of math done has still never found application. So arguing that we should do that math because it may have applications later is kind of like arguing you should play the lottery since there's a greater than 0 chance that you'll win. Also, from the (admittedly biased) group of mathematicians I've spoken to about this, very few seemed to actually do math in the hope that it would be useful later. Instead, people do math because it's interesting, beautiful, and challenging. I would argue this Mersenne Prime search is almost more like recreation. I could be wrong, since I never did much number theory, but I don't think this is advancing any research. It's just a fun hobby for people who enjoy math. I think doing math for the sake of its beauty is generally fine. I do have concerns about the climate aspect of this particular project though. This is a lot of power being consumed just for recreation. This project may not be big enough to have much of an environmental impact, but in general, I think we should be more mindful of not wasting large amounts of computing power just for fun. |
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