Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I think you're conflating the ground truth (if one exists?) of our physical universe with mathematics?

The two are linked via e.g. physics. The universe behaves according to certain rules, and math can both describe and predict features of those rules. Which we can then use to do interesting things with engineering. At no point here does consensus among experts change the rules.

And that's just, probably, maybe converging on a ground truth of physics. Nothing whatsoever to do with mathematics. I'm really very confused on why what engineers or rocket scientists think about the real world has a bearing on "ground truth of mathematics".

And physics has so little to do with modern mathematics that I don't know why it's relevant at all. I don't see engineers beating down the doors of algebraic geometers and model theorists and point set topologists to get closer to ground truth. I am asking you: what ground truth?

What on earth are you talking about? I don't see engineers beating down anyone's doors; I see them using established maths to predict real-world outcomes *all of the time.* Seriously, Aaron, do you actually think the features of the universe are decided in committee?

If you believe that physics has nothing to do with maths, we're done. That's just patently absurd. Listing a bunch of topics/subfields in math that don't have any known applications in physics is the kind of red herring that makes me wonder just how stupid you must think I am.

I don't think it's a red herring, though? I think that's precisely my point, physics doesn't inform mathematics, though sometimes physicists/engineers/etc discover some math is useful, it's a vanishingly small portion of the output of mathematics.