"Might this goodness be due to the resonance that math reveals between mind and cosmos? In Greek, cosmos means “order,” and suggests also “beauty,” as in our word “cosmetic.” Doing math leads one to entertain the idea that the cosmos is itself good and beautiful. Our will to truth seems to derive from a deep attraction to this goodness and beauty. Math is erotic, in other words"

nice essay, I particularly enjoyed the concluding para quoted above. The resonance between the cosmos (or chaos) and the agent's intellect - wherein, the agent's intellect symbolizes from that chaos to create and communicate meaning. Applies to creativity in general - in disparate fields of art, music etc not limited to math. Few of us aspire to "feeling" that resonance.

more interesting was the link [1] in the essay which points to the "pervasive half-arsedness" compounded by ai.

[1] https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/death-by-a-thousand-c...

This reminds me of countless conversations with peers, where we were exploring our experiences. Does anyone know an equivalent or even better essay ?

I have concluded that math is something downright eldritch. It not only can describe the universe, but entire endless sets of possible universes that obey internal consistency and all of its hypothetical states, no matter how implausible it would be to exist (ice cubes inside the sun, briefly).

Better than that, math can exist entirely independently of the universe and can describe that which cannot exist. The universe may go to one stable end state or another eventually, one which renders time meaningless but math will still exist, even without anything able to embody it, much less conceive of it. Math is thus arguably more real than reality despite containing vast amounts of fiction.

I can't find a source for this, but I remember something about Pascal giving up math because he thought it was a sexual sin.