And how can you pick the correct toll, if you don't know the arithmetical and algebraic procedures themselves? By at least learning to do them yourself, you understand them. — ssu

That would be the same question as how do you choose an encryption algorithm if you can't encrypt/decrypt manually?

I don't know anybody who actually can.

I can pretty much guarantee that almost nobody who uses libsodium can manually carry out any operation in xchacha20:

https://doc.libsodium.org/secret-key_cryptography/encrypted-messages

In fact, it is never seen as a requirement.

There are, of course, people like Daniel Bernstein who specialize in the knowledge of the level below libsodium but they are outnumbered 1 to 10000 by the people who just use libsodium.

The problem is that there's simply too much math to study at a slow pace. — ssu

You have to make choices.

But then again, you can only make those choices when faced with real-life problems to solve. Hence, it is the problem at hand that chooses what you should learn.

All other math is irrelevant in your particular context. It's too much anyway. Seriously, why even waste your time on that? In order to achieve what exactly?

No school on earth teaches you how to use libsodium. No university teaches you how xchacha20 works. They would not even be able to. Universities don't even teach you anything that is even remotely relevant in that respect. In fact, I spent most of my career -- I am semi-retired now -- picking up knowledge and using it, that no school or university ever even remotely mentions.

So yes, I used a lot of underlying math, hidden in programs and software libraries, some of which I somewhat investigated under the hood. It is totally unrelated to what universities teach. Universities are clearly not even aware of the existence of this kind of math.

Hence, if you are interested in relevant mathematics, you are wasting your time studying it at university, because in my decades-long experience, pretty much everything they do at university, is irrelevant to modern technology. These people cannot choose what to study and what not, simply because they don't use it themselves. They somehow believe that what they do, is meaningful, but it simply isn't.

Sounds as if you are arguing for an intellectually impoverished populace, and I wonder why? — wonderer1

They already are intellectually impoverished. They just don't know it.

In fact, university graduates are being placed in the worst situation possible. The university makes them believe that they know, but in fact, they know absolutely nothing of value.

Why would you even learn if you think that you know it all already? You can even prove that you know it all. Isn't that what your academic credential is for?

So, now you need to face potential employers. They perfectly well know that you don't know. They also know that you are convinced that you know, even though you don't. So, you still feel entitled. You think that you deserve the world, essentially for being useless and ignorant.

Instead of spending years regurgitating irrelevant trivia, do a 3-month boot camp. Employers will be more interested in hiring you.

Oh, goodie! The six people who still understand some aspect of 'manual' programming can teach it to their children, set up dynasties and rule the world — Vera Mont

Again wrong!

All the relevant software is free and open source. There is nothing hidden. It's all there for everyone to look at.

The question is rather: Why would you even look at it?

Well, you would need a problem to solve. That is the only legitimate reason to pick up any knowledge. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.

So, how do you find a problem to solve?

Simple. Find someone who is even willing to pay you real money for solving the problem. That problem must be somehow real. Why else are they even willing to part with real dollars?

You will quickly discover that other people have similar problems and that they are also willing to pay real money for you to do that. It is always an entire market.

So, instead of looking at the curriculum of a university degree, instead look at what problems are mentioned in job adverts. Pick one. Figure out how much time it would take to give a meaningful response to the job adverts. It rarely takes more than a few months.

If they require credentials that take years to acquire, skip that job. They are clearly full of bullshit, and their scammy job advert is just the tip of the iceberg. You would be entering an overregulated market in which ability to solve problems takes a back seat on regulatory credentials and other nonsense. It is not a real job. Instead, you will be spending your days filling out meaningless paperwork.

You see, you don't need nine years to learn how to be a family doctor and hand out medical prescriptions to elderly patients. You'll just become a pawn in the hands of the government-orchestrated pharmaceutical mafia. If it takes years to merely join at the lowest level, it is always a scam. Don't spend your life ripping off other people and getting ripped off yourself.

Neither activity is meaningful in any shape or fashion. That is, however, what mathematics education is all about. — Tarskian

Ask any world-class concert pianist if students should do their scales.

Ask a pro athlete if they do wind sprints and hit the weight room.

As one proceeds in their mathematical education, they do proofs. As they progress they learn to tackle harder problems, until they get to the point where they can prove things and discover things nobody's ever known before.

There's nothing unusual about this. Your complaints are vague and general, and little of what you say bears on actual math education.

You actually haven't studied much pure math, according to the background you described on the other forum where you posted this.

The concert pianist actually intends to solve a problem. So does the athlete.

What problem does the math graduate intend to solve except for teaching math?

Concerning my academic background in a branch of applied math, if it were still relevant after decades, it would mean that I wouldn't have done anything meaningful in the meanwhile.

If a degree matters after your first job, it simply means that your first job did not matter.

My stints in pure math came much later. Sometimes because I was looking under the hood of the software I was using. Sometimes just out of interest.

For example, I did my first foray in abstract algebra by looking under the hood of elliptic-curve cryptography. In fact, you understand abstract algebra much better if you have first been exposed to subjects like ECDSA and Shnorr signatures. The other way around is not true.

You have a credentialist view on knowledge. That is typical for teaching associates at university. They think that credentialism matters. Well, they have to, because their hourly rate clearly does not matter. The academia are full of postdocs and other idiots who think they know but who in reality have nothing to show for. Furthermore, the relevant math is elsewhere. They really do not understand, not even to save themselves from drowning, which areas in pure math power technology. That is why they are stuck in areas that are irrelevant.

Well, this is a philosophy site, so people here do understand why in the university math is studied, even if the applications to engineering etc. are different.

Universities that focus on technology and engineering would then be the places you would refer?

What problem does the math graduate intend to solve except for teaching math? — Tarskian

You could generalize to a lot of what is taught and studied in universities here. Not only math.

Perhaps the real problem is that vocational education is so deprecated and doesn't drawn in the kind of people it should and doesn't go to the level it should.

Well, this is a philosophy site, so people here do understand why in the university math is studied, even if the applications to engineering etc. are different. — ssu

My own personal interest is also pure math rather than applied math. However, it has to be somehow relevant. The subjects I end up investigating are ultimately still inspired by practical use. For example, zero-knowledge arguments. If you dig under the hood, you end up investigating the properties of Weil and Tate pairings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weil_pairing

In mathematics, the Weil pairing is a pairing (bilinear form, though with multiplicative notation) on the points of order dividing n of an elliptic curve E, taking values in nth roots of unity. More generally there is a similar Weil pairing between points of order n of an abelian variety and its dual. It was introduced by André Weil (1940) for Jacobians of curves, who gave an abstract algebraic definition; the corresponding results for elliptic functions were known, and can be expressed simply by use of the Weierstrass sigma function.

The most interesting materials in the field are actually written by people like Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. In order to implement zero-knowledge proofs in the Ethereum blockchain, he also ended up figuring out pairings:

https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/exploring-elliptic-curve-pairings-c73c1864e627

Exploring Elliptic Curve Pairings

Trigger warning: math.

One of the key cryptographic primitives behind various constructions, including deterministic threshold signatures, zk-SNARKs and other simpler forms of zero-knowledge proofs is the elliptic curve pairing.

Vitalik's articles on the subject are much better than what you could ever find at any university.

A bit like Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Steve Jobs (Apple), Vitalik had to stop wasting his time and drop out of his university undergraduate in order to do something more important:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin

He dropped out of university in 2014 when he was awarded with a grant of US$100,000 (equivalent to $128,704 in 2023)[19] from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and went to work on Ethereum full-time.

Hence, Vitalik is not just some credentialist postdoc idiot. The Ethereum market cap is now well over $400 billion. It is exactly because he really uses elliptic curve pairings, which is pure math, that he is much better at explaining the subject than anybody in the academia.

Vitalik has absolutely no university degree whatsoever but he wipes the floor in terms of knowledge with anybody who does. Credentialists are simply born idiots. Have always been. Will always be.

The worst thing you can do for the personality and mentality of any individual, is to give him a piece of paper that says that he now knows everything better than everybody else. I spit, pee, and shit on these people.

The academia claim that they lack practical experience but that they would somehow still be good at teaching theoretical subjects such as pure math. In reality, they aren't good at that either. The truth is that they are actually good for nothing.

In my view the university/academia is a steamroller that if it doesn't crush your innovation and ability to ask naive questions, you are made of steel and can face the world. Coming out of system is good. You should be proud if if the system doesn't crush you. I got a Master's thesis in economic history, but saw the writing on the wall when attempting a doctorate. Never did it. Writing in this forum work far better: the anonymity here makes us equal, and people aren't doing this for work or competing for positions. There aren't too many people here.

By enlarging the academia you simply make all the negative aspects of people working in huge groups more apparent. Fist and foremost, you cannot have a constructive interaction with thousands or tens of thousands of people. Herding, negative affects of group think, bureaucracy, everything that happens with large groups makes it's far less productive. However innovative and exciting Universities try to be, just because of the sheer numbers people they are falling down into something that they were in the Middle Ages. Perhaps it's not so bad, but anyway. Haven't been there for decades now.

The concert pianist actually intends to solve a problem. So does the athlete. — Tarskian

Mathematicians solve problems. They solve problems in math. Like Wiles solving Fermat's last theorem, a problem pure mathematicians had been struggling to solve for 357 years.

For some reason your posts seem to dismiss or denigrate this type of work. I am perhaps not understanding your thesis, but I do feel that some of the things you say about math aren't actually true.

What problem does the math graduate intend to solve except for teaching math? — Tarskian

Wiles had to slog through all the proofs before him. He was already an established professional mathematician when he started his seven year quest to solve FLT. Imagine how many boring and tedious proofs he's gone through in his life.

This statement, that math grad students are there to become math teachers, is so wrong that it's the reason I say you haven't much understanding of math. That is not credentialism. That's just reading your posts, here and on the other forum. You have an ax to grind with math, and you are not articulating it very well, particularly as many of your premises are false.

Concerning my academic background in a branch of applied math, if it were still relevant after decades, it would mean that I wouldn't have done anything meaningful in the meanwhile. — Tarskian

I have no doubt that you have many meaningful accomplishments. I can only go by what you write. So far you seem to be unhappy about something, but the things you're unhappy about are strawmen. You say grad students are training to be teachers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Grad students are training to do research math.

The math department needs to teach calculus as a service course for the engineers and physicists and economists and the like. They teach the undergrad math major curriculum as the introduction to pure math, as professional mathematicians see it. It's the start of training to do research in higher math, and grad school is that on steroids.

The math teaching curriculum is actually separate. The Ph.D. track is about research. If you're a good teacher and a lousy researcher, you're out. If you're a terrible teacher and a good researcher, you have a job for life.

Surely you must have a sense of this.

If a degree matters after your first job, it simply means that your first job did not matter. — Tarskian

Not relevant to my point. I'm judging your thesis by your posts. I don't care about your resume. How could I? On the Interned we only have our words and our ideas, not our credentials.

My stints in pure math came much later. Sometimes because I was looking under the hood of the software I was using. Sometimes just out of interest. — Tarskian

Perhaps you have learned a lot but still don't know everything there is to know, and perhaps you have made some wrong assumptions.

I don't understand the level of your annoyance or pique or whatever with math. Of course I agree with you that the grade school, middle school, and high school math curriculum has been an unmitigated disaster for decades. But you seem unhappy with grad-level professional training in math research. That part I don't understand.

For example, I did my first foray in abstract algebra by looking under the hood of elliptic-curve cryptography. In fact, you understand abstract algebra much better if you have first been exposed to subjects like ECDSA and Shnorr signatures. The other way around is not true. — Tarskian

That's a very interesting background. Reminds me of how functional programmers are into category theory. There are many paths to abstract math.

I will certainly agree with you that when an earnest undergrad first takes groups, rings, and fields, it's like being thrown into the deep end of the pool. It takes a while to understand why they're doing all that. I agree that perhaps they should motivate it better.

You have a credentialist view on knowledge. — Tarskian

No not at all. I am judging the posts you've written on this forum and the other one. I don't understand your antipathy to the math establishment, or the purpose of graduate school, or whatever.

That is typical for teaching associates at university. — Tarskian

I don't know if that is or isn't. What does it have to do with me?

They think that credentialism matters. — Tarskian

They're just trying to survive, like grad students everywhere.

Well, they have to, because their hourly rate clearly does not matter. — Tarskian

Yes, grad students are cheap labor.

The academia are full of postdocs and other idiots who think they know but who in reality have nothing to show for. — Tarskian

This is certainly the case. But better a lame math postdoc than a plagiarizing dean. I mean, if we are talking rot in the academy, surely the math postdocs are among the least affected. You have to get a Ph.D. in math by doing a piece of original research. Then you have to find a job in a very overcrowded and competitive job market, and now you have to start your career on the publish or perish treadmill.

These are not soft sociology degrees in grievance studies, not to get political. These are early career researchers in pure math. Why do they upset you?

I will concede that, just like ninety-nine percent of every profession, most of them in the end are mediocre. Still, they do their research, they write books, they go to faculty tea.

Why are you angry at these low-paid hard working young research mathematicians?

Furthermore, the relevant math is elsewhere. — Tarskian

Interesting point of view. The academic mathematicians are putzes and the real work's being done in AI and quantum cryptography at Google.

Well maybe. The tech companies certainly employ mathematicians, as do the insurance companies. But for pure math, the academy is the only place they're going to pay you actual money to do the kind of work most pure math researchers do.

They really do not understand, not even to save themselves from drowning, which areas in pure math power technology. — Tarskian

So what? They're not doing applications. If they are they are, and if they aren't, they aren't. A lot of pure math doesn't find application for decades or even centuries. Number theory was supremely useless for two thousand years till public key cryptography came about in the 1980s.

Why does this bother you?

That is why they are stuck in areas that are irrelevant. — Tarskian

Irrelevant to you, you mean. Clearly not irrelevant to their university math departments.

So what's your beef? Why is this a particular concern of yours? Is this an objection to pure math, or universities, or grad school, or what exactly?

Vitalik Buterin — Tarskian

Oh he's a brilliant guy, no question. But we can't all be Vitalik. Why does it bother you that some mathematician is sitting in a cramped office working on his research into pure math?

A bit like Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Steve Jobs (Apple), Vitalik had to stop wasting his time and drop out of his university undergraduate in order to do something more important: — Tarskian

Yes that's true. Newton had his miracle year when the plague shut down Cambridge university in London, and he spent a year and a half on his family farm. Einstein's miracle year was when he was working as a patent clerk after being unable to get an academic position. Perelman was only able to resolve the Poincaré conjecture by refusing tenure-track appointments so he could focus on his work and not be bothered having to publish anything till he was ready.

And of course Wiles himself had a full time day job as a tenured math professor at Princeton, while he worked secretly in his attic to solve FLT.

So yes, for some people. dropping out is the better path, or just not being at the university. For most of the rest of us who aren't geniuses, there's always grad school.

I take your point. But so what? What is the nub of your irritation about this?

What is the nub of your irritation about this? — fishfry

Sour Grapes.

Perhaps you have learned a lot but still don't know everything there is to know, and perhaps you have made some wrong assumptions. — fishfry

Stephen Wolfram writes on this subject:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2014/08/computational-knowledge-and-the-future-of-pure-mathematics

Curating the math corpus. So how big is the historical corpus of mathematics? There’ve probably been about 3 million mathematical papers published altogether—or about 100 million pages, growing at a rate of about 2 million pages per year. And in all of these papers, perhaps 5 million distinct theorems have been formally stated.

So, in order to know everything there is to know about mathematics, you need to read 3 million papers. Did I read them? Did I ever said that I read them? Did I even read 0.1% of them?

Knowledge is a gigantic database of (claim,justification) two-tuples that is for 99.999% stale and irrelevant. The only meaningful way of finding out what is relevant, is to work your way back from solutions that solve problems all the way into the math that directly or indirectly facilitates the solution.

So, is knowledge a good thing? Possibly, but it is first and foremost, utterly useless.

The idea of feeding students with some arbitrary excerpt from such knowledge database, assuming that it will ever be useful to them, is misguided and nonsensical.

That is the reason why the education system fails. Its knowledge-acquisition strategy simply does not make sense.

The only way to pick the right things to learn, is by going in exactly the opposite direction. You start by trying to solve a practical problem, for which there exists someone willing to pay for the solution, and only then you learn knowledge as required for producing the solution.

Sour Grapes — Vera Mont

What exactly would I envy? Dealings with the HR department of a university? I have never had to go through any HR department. I find the practice insulting. It says everything about your station in life. I am semi-retired now. If I was ever going to work again, I'd rather swear fealty as a serf to the lord of the manor than to deal with an HR department.

Okay then, maybe just a very dull axe.

Sour Grapes. — Vera Mont

I think so. What's funny is that I'm the one who should have sour grapes. I'm a math grad school dropout. The fault was not in my stars, but in myself.

What exactly would I envy? Dealings with the HR department of a university? I have never had to go through any HR department. I find the practice insulting. — Tarskian

Can you separate out your thoughtful critique of how post-secondary education should be done (and I agree that the current system often fails the creative and the gifted) on the one hand, with your emotional resentment of ... HR departments? Having spent my life working for corporations, I share your detestation of HR. But you seem to take it personally. You hardly ever interact with them, you fill out some forms when you get hired and then have an exit interview when you leave. Hopefully you stay out of their clutches the rest of the time. Maybe you just find administration insulting. Bureaucracy, regimentation, rules and regulations, the trappings of organizational order.

Or the very trappings of modern life. Is that you're main driver?

You are unhappy with students being taught the state of the art in their field. AND you are unhappy, viscerally so, with the administrative structure that supports organizations. Both for the same reason? You have a lot of feelings invested in all this.

Can you see that resentment of grad school pedagogy and resentment of HR department are two entirely different resentments? Frankly you come across as resentful.

It says everything about your station in life. — Tarskian

Not really. The president of the United States draws a paycheck. He has taxes taken out, someone cuts him a check or does a direct deposit. Maybe it's the payroll department, maybe it's HR. How does the president have a low station in life because he works in an organization that follows the law with regard to employment and taxes and compensation?

I bet when the new president takes over he has to fill out a ton of mindless HR forms. Of course he has people to do it fo him. But you can't run an organization without an HR function.

According to Google, "... the HR (Human Resources) department is a group who is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (i.e., recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees) and administering employee benefits." In every organization someone's got to keep track of the legal employment paperwork, payroll, benefits administration.

Why on earth this upsetting to you?

Stephen Wolfram writes on this subject:
... (Wolfram quote omitted)

So, in order to know everything there is to know about mathematics, you need to read 3 million papers. Did I read them? Did I ever said that I read them? Did I even read 0.1% of them? — Tarskian

I don't think I see the relevance of any of this. There's plenty to learn, more than anyone could master in a lifetime. Much of it is obsolete, but that's why you go to school. To have experts guide you along a productive path.

Knowledge is a gigantic database of (claim,justification) two-tuples that is for 99.999% stale and irrelevant. The only meaningful way of finding out what is relevant, is to work your way back from solutions that solve problems all the way into the math that directly or indirectly facilitates the solution. — Tarskian

You need to acquire the basic skills first. That generally takes a lot of schooling. You seem to think we should educate everyone as if they were geniuses. But that wouldn't work very well, you'd leave almost everyone behind. You get a class of eight year olds. "Ok see if you can all develop quantum physics." Or even 18 year olds, if you only want to apply your "sink or swim" approach in college.

Is that what you're saying?

So, is knowledge a good thing? Possibly, but it is first and foremost, utterly useless. — Tarskian

Newton mastered the work of the ancients. And people tell myths that Einstein failed math and whatnot, but he was excellent at math in school and was thoroughly steeped in the physics of Newton and Maxwell.

The idea of feeding students with some arbitrary excerpt from such knowledge database, assuming that it will ever be useful to them, is misguided and nonsensical. — Tarskian

If it's arbitrary, yes. But if the knowledge is curated by leading-edge practitioners of the craft, that's exactly how you come to understand the modern state of science. That's what universities are for.

I hardly think you'd take a math undergrad and toss them a copy of Grothendieck's Éléments de géométrie algébrique, in the original French of course, and tell them to figure it all out or go screw themselves. I don't think you are making a rational proposal.

Grothendieck himself was one of your savants. From Wiki, quoting someone else talking about him: He was so completely unknown to this group and to their professors, came from such a deprived and chaotic background, and was, compared to them, so ignorant at the start of his research career, that his fulgurating ascent to sudden stardom is all the more incredible; quite unique in the history of mathematics.

But we can not all be Grothendieck. He was the greatest mathematician of the second half of the twentieth century.

That is the reason why the education system fails. Its knowledge-acquisition strategy simply does not make sense. — Tarskian

I certainly agree that the system fails geniuses. But 99.999% of people are not geniuses. The system of training scientists and mathematicians is flawed, so you should work out your own theory and publish it. But you seem like you are not coming from, "How can I improve the system," so much as, "I have some kind of irrational and substantially unfounded resentment of the system," and that just leaps out of your own words. You don't like the professors, and you don't like the HR department. What about the cafeteria workers, are you ok with them?

The only way to pick the right things to learn, is by going in exactly the opposite direction. You start by trying to solve a practical problem, for which there exists someone willing to pay for the solution, and only then you learn knowledge as required for producing the solution. — Tarskian

All the 18 year olds are apprenticed out to people who will pay them even though they're completely ignorant? You can't be serious. What are you talking about?

Maybe you think all the geniuses should be issued family farms, like Newton; or be given jobs as patent clerks, like Einstein. Or live with their mother in Russia, like Perelman. But these are the one percent of the one percent of the one percent. Literally one in a million. What about everyone else?

I am semi-retired now. If I was ever going to work again, I'd rather swear fealty as a serf to the lord of the manor than to deal with an HR department. — Tarskian

So maybe you're against large organizations.

You're like Marlon Brando in the 1953 film, The Wild One. Girl asks Brando, "What are you rebelling against?" And he answers: "What have you got?"

Okay then, maybe just a very dull axe. — Vera Mont

LOL.

You are unhappy with students being taught the state of the art in their field. — fishfry

It is not the state of the art in their field.

The president of the United States draws a paycheck. — fishfry

Not because he wants to. There are so many people willing to pay a million dollars just for an 15-minute appointment with him, but he is not allowed to accept the money. He could easily put it up for auction. So, the paycheck is just part of a dog-and-pony show. Money does not matter to the people who print the money.

All the 18 year olds are apprenticed out to people who will pay them even though they're completely ignorant? You can't be serious. What are you talking about? — fishfry

That is how it used to work. They would become apprentices at the age of 14 and learn a job. This makes much more sense than keeping them in holding pens like cattle. There was no youth unemployment in past times.

So maybe you're against large organizations. — fishfry

Not necessarily.

I have worked as a contractor and done lots of consulting work at large organizations.

I would never have wanted to be staff, though. When we talk about "bottom line", the only one that mattered to me was my own "bottom line". I was not interested in selflessly "sacrifice" myself for someone else's bottom line. I cannot identify with the profit of the company. I can only identify with my own profit. I understand that C-level execs somewhat care, since they receive payments for when the stock goes up, but the other salaried office drones? Seriously, why would anybody else care?

No grand vistas of mindscape there....

I would never have wanted to be staff, though. When we talk about "bottom line", the only one that mattered to me was my own "bottom line". I was not interested in selflessly "sacrifice" myself for someone else's bottom line. I cannot identify with the profit of the company. I can only identify with my own profit. I understand that C-level execs somewhat care, since they receive payments for when the stock goes up, but the other salaried office drones? Seriously, why would anybody else care? — Tarskian

Come the revolution it will all be made right.

I worked in corporations and share some of your opinions about them. But why hate on the math professors? Math is so cool, why can't you let them do their thing?

But why hate on the math professors? — fishfry

I don't hate on individual math professors. They are just pawns in the game.

One (or rather two) of the things I don't like, is the combo of academic credentialism combined with the student debt scam. Like all usury, it is a tool to enslave people. The banks conjure fiat money out of thin air and them want it back along with interest from teenagers who were lied to and most of whom will never have the ability to pay back. The ruling mafia even guarantees to the bankstering mafia that they will pay in lieu of the student, if he ultimately doesn't. First of all, though, they will exhaust all options afforded by the use of violent threats of lawfare.

I don't hate on individual math professors. They are just pawns in the game.

This is the part I don't get. The administrators and bean counters and HR reps of the world, I can understand your frustration with institutional stupidity on such a grand scale.

But math professors aren't any of that. They're dreamers who sit in their office and push around symbols to prove theorems about things that nobody but other mathematicians understand.

They are totally harmless.

They serve the other academic departments by teaching calculus classes to the engineers and such. Everything else, the math major undergrad and math grad school, is all about training professional mathematicians. All of this has got nothing at all to do with the administrative stupidity you decry.

Why have you got it in for the math professors?
— Tarskian

One (or rather two) of the things I don't like, is the combo of academic credentialism combined with the student debt scam. Like all usury, it is a tool to enslave people. The banks conjure fiat money out of thin air and them want it back along with interest from teenagers who were lied to and most of whom will never have the ability to pay back. The ruling mafia even guarantees to the bankstering mafia that they will pay if the student does not. First of all, though, they will exhaust all options afforded by the use of violent threats of lawfare. — Tarskian

I bet you're not a fan of fractional reserve banking either.

Why have you got it in for the math professors? — Tarskian

I don't. I also have no problems with bank staff. They are just pawns. They are just trying to make a living.