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Re:Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time? by goolulusaurs on Friday July 10, 2015 @04:24AM (#9862841)
That is nonsense. We have have no idea what math will turn out to be useful in the future. To say that it has already turned out to be useless presupposes that we already know all uses we might put it to in the future, which we clearly don't.
Re:Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time? by Houshalter on Friday July 10, 2015 @05:21AM (#9862988)
Well empirically most math developed in the past turned out to be useless up until now. Are you suggesting that it will suddenly become useful in the (near) future? Are the past few centuries not enough time for you to generalize from?
Re:Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time? by goolulusaurs on Friday July 10, 2015 @09:58AM (#9863955)
I think it is very plausible that a large portion of mathematics that is not very useful presently could be very useful for problems we have yet to tackle. As science progresses it will be less and less able to make grand unified theories and increasingly focus on the manifold particular. I can imagine much of math being useful only for problems we haven't even identified yet, like algebraic topology being used to study social dynamics, or engineering problems at strange scales. Even beyond that I think it may be the case that much of mathematics will become useful for reasons unforeseen. Unknown unknowns always seem to be where new science pops up.