alt Hacker NewsAgreed, though for the hn audience I want to advocate a bit for the utility of mathematics. The development of applicable mathematics has often not been through the direct means of solving an open problem. It has however often depended on theory which was developed for the purpose of human understanding. It is difficult to pull concepts out of the aether on demand, but when there is a general milieu of human understanding economic applications can be developed in post.
I have in mind GPS, cryptography, numerical fluid simulation, lasers, etc…
Question:
Did the theoretical math lead to the invention of GPS, cryptography, lasers, etc? Or did we encounter a real physical problem, then we found that someone had done some theoretical math before that would be useful for this application? If we run into a real physical problem today, can we just have AI invent the math on the spot to solve the problem without a human having done the theoretical math in the past?