[lioeters]

> may never be useful at all

Nobody is qualified to judge the usefulness of mathematical, scientific, artistic, or any other kind of research that people choose to dedicate their time doing. And the world is better for it.

> or representative of reality

This so-called "reality" you speak of is some arbitrary representation in your head. It's your theory and patterns of abstraction, as you call it. Who knows how far or close you are to "objective" reality, whose existence we can only know through representations and abstractions. Mathematics and logic are some of the best tools we have of getting closer to that truth and understanding. All the sciences and even some of the arts are based on it.

[tsunamifury]

This is nonsense. Its the shared based case we can all test against, the things you think are the abstraction.

So wildly goofy train of thought here.

[card_zero]

I agree that rigorous logic shouldn't be assumed to get us closer to Ultimate Objective Truth than other forms of reasoning. It just gets us whatever peculiar oddments we can discover through rigorous logic, so far, here in our local, parochial patch of reality. Things that seem crucial powerful theories (theorems, whatever) to us here and now may not seem that way in the future, and arriving at them through logic doesn't provide a royal road to the Ultimate.

This means abstract mathematics is rooted in our current cultural concerns. I guess I'm saying that it isn't really useful or really abstract, but I also agree with the other poster that people can and should do what they like.