It's also a way to model the world and produce new useful abstractions. It's not just about solving problems.

nphardon 10 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yea, math is a crazy thing. just "a tool to solve problems" is a wild take. On one extreme, there's an edgy but logical / plausible hypothesis that we live in a universe of mathematical objects, and at the other, math also discovers a lot of questions, the exact opposite of solving problems.

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modriano 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Is there a useful abstraction that doesn't help solve a problem someone has?

	▲	joelthelion 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		You're right, but what I'm saying is that solving the problem isn't necessarily the primary goal and these new abstractions can be valuable in their own right.