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Comment by Evbn | Hacker News Reader

You might be interested in the up and coming fields of 3D video games, flight simulators, CG movies, machine learning, supply logistics, autonomous navivations, colonization of Mars, and your personal favorite algorithmic trading, all brought to you by "theorems" of linear algebra.

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None of those require theorems, they require computers.

Great news, I finally wrote a sorting algorithm that worked for 10/10 of my test cases. Now, I can just plug that number into my unproven statisticle test, and found out how likely it is that my algorithm will work for all inputs.

It does not seem to run extra slow for any input, so it probably won't run slowly on any input in actual use. Besides, even if it did I would have no way of proving what types of inputs it failed on, or if another algorithm would do better.

http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/proof.pml

Keeping the above in mind, does it actually justify the billions of man hours spent on mathematics.

The notion of a computer was a theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

The computer industry wasn't built on Turing completeness. It's an evolution of practical technology starting with the invention of textile machinery (but you can also kind of argue it started with abacuses or even lines drawn in sand).

You are right. Evolution has its mysterious ways. But maybe it's only mysterious to us because our math has not evolved yet to a point where complex systems can also be properly described by theorems.

But then what is the use of the maths. We already have the wealth the comes from the technology. The maths doesn't add much (instead siphons off resources).

You're arguing for eating our seed corn. Yesterday's maths drove today's technology. Today's maths will drive tomorrow's technology, unless you have your way.

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