[card_zero]

Dismissing purpose, and living in aimless complacency, is also boorish.

I don't want to come off as anti-pig here, pigs are OK. Number theory is OK too, it's probably the branch of mathematics I dislike least. But it's laudable to sometimes ask "what is it all for?", without wanting to attack or threaten anybody's occupation. No easy answer is available, but it's worth asking.

[ndsipa_pomu]

> No easy answer is available, but it's worth asking.

Beyond "expanding our knowledge about 'x'", a lot of disciplines don't have much of an answer, so I don't see the value in asking the question apart from trying to dismiss the relevant discipline.

So many of our technological advances have relied on chance discoveries (e.g. penicillin), so we can't predict ahead of time what the end uses are going to be. This is especially the case with maths as it is so abstract, but where would we be without Boolean logic, public key cryptography, information theory etc.?

[photonthug]

> > No easy answer is available, but it's worth asking.

> .. trying to dismiss the relevant discipline

Yeah. The question is worth asking yourself, your teachers, colleagues, and your friends.. but usually not worth asking (or answering!) strangers on the internet.

This type of “but what is it all for!” question has a huge asymmetry where it’s easy to ask and hard to answer, so it comes across as trolling. And if you’re talking to an adult individual who wants to argue not even about the priorities of basic research but the fundamental point of any of it, you can be pretty sure any conversation about the subject is pointless. People who want to take an anti intellectual stance aren’t waiting to hear a good argument before they change their point of view..