
Topology: The Slum of Combinatorics - Foe
http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion1.html
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klyrs
As much as I love Doron's writing, his pieces are deliberate flamebait, with a
vanishingly small target audience. Does this really belong on HN?

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rsj_hn
Also, this post hasn't aged well at all. Mirror Symmetry, monstrous moonshine,
ricci flows have had huge implications in math.

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klyrs
All of that predates this post; it's a mature field of math he's swiping at.
He's a shitposter and this one isn't even informative.

He's got a few nuggets in there about finitism that are illuminatory. And on
one hand, an engineer's, a programmer's, mindset doesn't need what can't be
stored on a world-scale computer. But, such talk makes few friends in math.

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mikorym
> Myself, I don't know either languages [topology and physics]. Nevertheless,
> I am almost sure that...

So, he doesn't know topology and then proceeds to call topology (or some of
it?) "soon to be trivialised".

> The king (abstract math) is dead. Long live the King (Concrete Mathematics).

The two complement each other. I don't think there ever has been a sensible
fight other than the fight against ignorance and arrogance and the fight that
is specific in it's subject matter. Category Theory and other abstract fields
I would think get resistance at the time of introduction; concrete mathematics
get resistance much after the fact for its specificity. In both cases one
should be careful to either put on a pedestal or throw down the drain.

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danharaj
Doron Zeilberger is a distinguished mathematician and you're taking his troll
at face value. You needn't lecture him.

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mikorym
So what is the point of his post then?

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danharaj
He's a combinatorist. He's trolling mathematicians who are specialized in more
abstract fields who often hold views of contempt for computational, concrete
fields like combinatorics. One of the main themes of modern mathematics is the
use of algebraic, numerical, and combinatoric invariants to characterize
abstract mathematical objects such as spaces. Doron is dishing out their own
medicine in this post.

This is an essay that touches on similar themes with less snark and more
context for people who aren't in the know:
[https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf)

~~~
mikorym
Whereas the are such contemptuous people it is just as bad to have the
converse. In my experience the median number theorist is like today's
physicists in that they are resisting consolidation in favour of
elaborateness.

Traditionally, category theory was treated with much disdain especially by
concrete mathematicians. The fact that hipsters now think category theory is
cooler than combinatorics doesn't in my opinion warrant swaying again the
other way—any kind of evangelisation is inherently fraught with personal
agendas.

It could be that the specific examples that he gave are really justified. But
I don't really see the point of being a warrior for concrete mathematics or
being a warrior for abstract mathematics. I don't even see the two as
different fields rather different processes. And as I said earlier, I have
found combinatorialists to be more contemptuous than category theorists,
hipsters aside.

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danharaj
omg I haven't read Doron in forever. thanks :)

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bigred100
Never not trolling

