Comment

Comment by nilkn

We have thousands of years of precedent that suggests that breakthroughs in mathematics tend to accumulate into broader technology breakthroughs in other domains.

Why does this tend to be the case, even when some of the smartest people in the world have historically predicted incorrectly that certain branches of math would forever be useless (e.g., number theory)? I can only offer my own theory on that, but my guess is that mathematics is simply a predictive framework based on pattern compression. A more powerful pattern compression framework accelerates every single field that relies on pattern recognition or prediction of the unknown based on patterns.

parent nilkn 2 months ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton