[srean]

I will emphasize your point more forcefully. All mathematicians I know work on what they work because of the beauty and aesthetics in their field.

Much like sex. Sex has reproductive utility but that's not why most people engage in it. Those who do are are missing much.

Notion of beauty for a mathematician is quite specialized. It's the difference between spaghetti code that works and an elegant and efficient code that is correct. They are easy to build upon efficiently.

[almostgotcaught]

> Much like sex.

My guy you know lots of people in here have read Feynman right? You should cite him instead of pretending you were clever enough to come up with the analogy yourself.

[srean]

Quite the contrary. I expect majority of HN readers to know the quote, base 0 if you will, and not harbor thoughts that by having read it they are a part of an exclusive club.

Channeling Good Will Hunting much huh? Most HN'ers would have watched that too.

[almostgotcaught]

I have no idea what you're trying to say - it is generally understood everywhere in the world (ie all forms of human culture) that it's pathetic to pass off someone else's insights as your own.

[srean]

Only when there is an expectation of being perceived as original. When people use differentiation people don't cite Newton or Leibnitz, do they ?

[almostgotcaught]

.... Of course they do? You can still find citations of those papers to this day.

For all of your "forceful" comments on math, I think probably you don't actually know much about it.

[srean]

> You can still find citations of those papers to this day.

That's not what I contested. What fraction of people who use differentials in their published work still cite Newton or Leibnitz was the point. You can count number of such citations in last 10 years of say neural nets literature, or applied maths literature and report. Thats plenty of use.

Citations to their differential calculus that are still made are mostly in the context of history of math.

Seems numeracy or comprehension is not your strong point. LOL.

> I have no idea what you're trying to say

Now I don't doubt it. LOL