Every culture develops 'marketplace' intuitive mathematics; everyone has to make change or figure out how to divide a dozen apples 4 ways.
Only a few cultures develop abstract mathematics. How many have? It's even possible, like the alphabet, that only one culture invented it and others copied that one culture.
HN members may be in a bubble here. In my experience, most people, even those with college degrees (and therefore some exposure to it) have a hard time grasping abstract theory of anything, especially its usefulness, and a harder time applying it. If I say, 'There is no perfect security; we need to make the attack more expensive for the attacker than it's worth to them. The existing system A is wasting resources because it is not protecting something valuable ...'; they ignore everything and might even say 'why are you telling me that?', and then 'will system B perfectly secure this asset?'
It's always alarming for me. How can our world funtion well if all the value of abstract theory is discarded?
Only a few cultures develop abstract mathematics. How many have? It's even possible, like the alphabet, that only one culture invented it and others copied that one culture.
HN members may be in a bubble here. In my experience, most people, even those with college degrees (and therefore some exposure to it) have a hard time grasping abstract theory of anything, especially its usefulness, and a harder time applying it. If I say, 'There is no perfect security; we need to make the attack more expensive for the attacker than it's worth to them. The existing system A is wasting resources because it is not protecting something valuable ...'; they ignore everything and might even say 'why are you telling me that?', and then 'will system B perfectly secure this asset?'
It's always alarming for me. How can our world funtion well if all the value of abstract theory is discarded?