I loooove the questions which starts with “whys”, and simply could not just pass by one.
So, shit has already starting to hit the fan.
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/15/why-are-we-even-doing-all-this/
I have seen this before more than once – akshually, this is just another reccuring social pattern waithing to be properly generalized.
Let me first show you where I have seen this pattern before.
The classic and definitive example which I familiar with is the “transition” of Tantic schools of Tibetan “Buddhism” from deity worship and “magic” into doing “social work” – protecting the people by performing endless rituals to apeace and control various deities and for auspicious occasions, and thus maintaining the world peace and the “status quo”, and basically being almost “servants of the people” (despite tax collection and farmland ownership).
The Kalachakra rithual, which clowns like Richard Gere could have heard of, is an elaborate. complex, multi-day ceremony, which requires certain skill and prior experiences.
But the rhetoric, the slogans, the memes and the “messsage” are exactly the same – “we are doing this for (You), so you can _”.
Yes, discrete mathematics, lets say, has a little more merit for the society, compared to the daily, short Mahakala puja, but, it has been ‘done’ long ago.
Yes, teaching allready well-known mathematics, especially teaching it Just Right (by tracing back all the abstractions back to the aspects of reality from which they has been generalized from, and then re-building the whole chain of though which lead to a well-defined abstraction) is a necessary occupation, which must be respected and well-paid.
This requires to teach the way of thinking peculiar to math, in which when a set of abstractions has been established and the axioms has been formulated and accepted and necessary and sufficient, then the whole abstract system “disconnects” and is being “studied” on its own, as an artifact in itself (the Set theory, the Number Theory, Mathematical Logic, you know).
There is, however, no merit in modern Topology and even in the Riemann hypothesis (yes, yes, I expect and am ready for a shitstorm), so these subfields of pure mathematics can be accurately compared to theology and other “humanitarian disciplines” which “study” and even “research” useless crap like Hegelian “philosophy” or writings of Marx.
One could easily become a professor or even an expert in Hegel (or Heidegger), and there is near zero merit to the society in preoccupy oneself with such subjects.
So, what happens when people want to occupy themselves with esoteric ‘knowledge’, Tantric doctrines and rituals, lets say, or Hegel or Marx? Nowadays they usually would use some online forum or social “channel” or discord or whatever.
The real question is this: why the “scholars” of the esoteric (disconnected from anything Real) branches of mathematics deserve an upper middle class lifestyle with lots of perks and privileges they currently enjoy?
How the preoccupation with “higher dimensions topology” (which is totally a social construct, exactly the same as theology or so called Western philosophy) makes one “better” than those who “study” Indian tantric texts?
Here is some social psychology 101. The only non-bullshit psychological model of high-level human behavior is what is called Identity psychology – how an individual identifies himself and what he identifies himself with in a surrounding social context. Athletes, other kinds of narcissistic assholes, you know.
99% of the time preoccupation with the most abstract branches of mathematics (and any kind of esoteric crap) is a direct identification with “I am better, smarter, more refined than you”. (I forgot last time when I meet someone genuinely more intelligent, by the way).
Ok, so be it, the next question is why shall we “protect” them and give them the elevated, special social status? Again, the merit of academics is to propagate the teaching, and. ideally, refine the methodology, not produce hundreds of pages of “proofs” (inevitably and always erroneous) of abstract nonsense.
There is a subtle law (or infallible principle) – Reality does not posses phenomena which require a hundred pages (machine or insanity generated proof) Only social constructions (out of words and concepts) do.
Yes, Prrelman’s proof has been accepted but no one actually validated it. The “sect” accepted it as an “outstanding effort”, and any proper validation is just too tedious and too costly (in well-paid human hours) and, embarrassingly, would yield and error (again, because it is a product of the confused mind, not a properly captured aspect of What Is).
So, shall we “stand for mathematicians” being mogged by a slop generator? Absolutely not.
It is not the mathematics itself which has been assaulted by slop machines, mathematics is fine. It is the sectarian hierarchies of people and their social status which has been shaken by the torrents of slop.
Yes, it is very important and telling “how exactly” this slop has been produced (the next randomly chosen token form a set of the most probable ones, given the current context), and then, by reading the slop, a real mathematician may refine his set of assumptions, abstractions and get a better (at least less wrong) understanding of some socially constructed abstract bullshit.
Yes. yes, there are certain peculiarities about how some abstract systems has been constructed as apparently “logically sound and mathematically consistent”, while being just a nested sequences of expressions (derivations based on “wrong” assumptions), while other systems cannot even be constructed. It is these particular sects with emit the most loud noises and whines today – I would call them the “mathematical theology”.
Let’ the slop machines retire these guys.