what's wrong with artists having jobs via a program? whats wrong with struggling alcoholics having jobs via a program? athletes? politicians? there is no inherent virtue in the struggle and effort associated with great mathematical achievement. It may be satisfying and worthwhile for the solver, but not for society at large, any more than any other pleasurable activity. No, as it is, the sole reason for it is in the result itself. In increased understanding, as it flows down into the sciences, and engineering. There are other benefits, recreation and joy as experienced by others, from access to beautiful proofs, though these are never explicit goals of such programs because they are both impossible to quantify and rarely ever remotely relevant compared to the value brought by the practical value brought by maths.

Of course, there may be some valid arguments that everyone should have a jobs program in the form of ubi or something similar. But I feel thats very different to arguing for mathematicians specifically

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rspeele 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

> whats wrong with struggling alcoholics having jobs via a program?

Finally, a job AI will never beat me at.

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mswphd 10 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

for mathematicians, they do a form of fundamental research that is

1. (generally) incredibly cheap to fund, and

2. (occasionally) has extremely out-sized commercial impacts.

This is to say that jobs programs for math (and more generally fundamental research) have lead to extremely positive ROI for society, which is the typical justification given for funding them.

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orangecat 9 days ago | parent [-]

This is to say that jobs programs for math (and more generally fundamental research) have lead to extremely positive ROI for society

Which makes it not a "jobs program" as the term is generally used.

	▲	mswphd 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		it arguably still is. The primary unit of production of the jobs of mathematicians is itself not particularly useful for society. In this sense funding them is a jobs program. It is also true that they occasionally produce things of great value, and more frequently the things they produce can be leveraged by other researchers to directly produce things of value. But neither of these are what the job of a mathematician is (either in a day-to-day sense, or even for many mathematician's careers). To go back to the analogy of jobs programs for alcoholics, it is somewhat similar if there was a small chance every time an alcoholic defecated in public gold came out. This fact might be used to support a jobs program for alcoholics, on the basis of it being positive ROI to society. At the same time, the "job" any individual alcoholic is doing in this setup is not particularly useful to society, so one might still call it a jobs program.

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fragmede 10 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The struggle itself is virtuous.