> Out of curiosity as an adult how much category theory have you learned? Why aren't you doing more to find applications for the complex and abstract math? Don't you feel a duty and skill to advanced the state of play? Don't you feel an inherent gift and ability to do so? Why or why not?
I don’t enjoy math as a hobby (recreational math puzzles can be fun, but may as well just be Sudoku—I don’t like doing real math as a hobby). I feel dyslexic reading proofs and formulas—algorithms feel natural, I have to translate everything into those to make any sense of it and that’s painfully tedious.
The jobs I’ve had have never really needed it. I’ve seen people who go casting about for reasons to MATH mostly be frustrated and make things worse. Maybe like once every five years I’ve seen something come along that benefits from some not very advanced college level math and everyone in the team gets a little thrill that we have an excuse to use any of that even a very little bit for a day or two, and that’s that.
I’ve been measured in the top 1% of spatial reasoning ability which you’d think would make me suited to math, but I kinda hate it and don’t actually seem to have a knack for it, so instead I use that ability to skate by doing pretty damn OK for myself but without seeking out reasons to use math more—and, for something allegedly so ultra-useful, such reasons rarely manifest on their own. I dunno, show me the job and a big raise first and I might brush back up, but I’m not gonna do something I find about as fun as pulling floor staples simply out of some sense of duty (duty to… do what? Do more math? Why? I want the motivation first, I’m not interested in forcing it)
I don’t enjoy math as a hobby (recreational math puzzles can be fun, but may as well just be Sudoku—I don’t like doing real math as a hobby). I feel dyslexic reading proofs and formulas—algorithms feel natural, I have to translate everything into those to make any sense of it and that’s painfully tedious.
The jobs I’ve had have never really needed it. I’ve seen people who go casting about for reasons to MATH mostly be frustrated and make things worse. Maybe like once every five years I’ve seen something come along that benefits from some not very advanced college level math and everyone in the team gets a little thrill that we have an excuse to use any of that even a very little bit for a day or two, and that’s that.
I’ve been measured in the top 1% of spatial reasoning ability which you’d think would make me suited to math, but I kinda hate it and don’t actually seem to have a knack for it, so instead I use that ability to skate by doing pretty damn OK for myself but without seeking out reasons to use math more—and, for something allegedly so ultra-useful, such reasons rarely manifest on their own. I dunno, show me the job and a big raise first and I might brush back up, but I’m not gonna do something I find about as fun as pulling floor staples simply out of some sense of duty (duty to… do what? Do more math? Why? I want the motivation first, I’m not interested in forcing it)