n.b. I think math culture is probably one of the least toxic cultures that have ever existed. Its equanimity and principles are a big part of what drew me to math in the first place. But humans are human.
The person who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty. Possibly more
~Needham
Since you've imputed intentions or inclinations-- once you see that "pattern matching", which, like a bastard "pigeonhole principle", has been seeing overuse in excusing bigotry -- you cant stop me from claiming to speak for _everyone _(TT)
Elsewhere here, people are imploring us to read philosophy, as if the LLMs haven't already mastered the one weird trick of enlightened stochastic parrots..
I'd recommend self-compassion/self-kindness for mathematicians (because contempt and pity [for mathematician, eg] are too cheap for far "right" and "left", respectively)
After you've felt those pangs of self-forgiveness you might be motivated to contribute to _distributed_ _crowdfunded_ LLMs that crater the value of datacenters instead...channel that brutality at uebermenschlichkeiten please!!
I will stick to my claim that math exists in the context of the hyper-competitive overall academic culture.
I should add that extreme competition combined with math being something people love, something with beauty unto itself, produces an especially weird world compared compared to a situation in, IDK, business school, where everything is about the money.
I mean, asking "who deserves to live the dream" really twists people's heads.
If you accept that as a premise then obviously you agree with their truth.
If you don't accept toxicity as somehow intrinsic to the subject but rather the structural conditions, say, of post-neoliberalized academia at large, and certain faculties being only a bit more susceptible (if even, or just different, say compare humanities vs STEM reactions in the future), then the whole comment reads as a conflation.
Instead the simpler answer is that academia at large values freedom of inquiry and other Enlightenment notions which are privileged compared to outside of academia. But that is not toxicity, it's just intellectual integrity and the academic autonomy in pursuit of one's interests avocationally. The toxicity comes from the intellectual profession having to function as a modern clerisy for socioeconomic reasons under post-neoliberal capitalism.
People may conflate the two attributions and that is a deep mistake, in my opinion. In fact the conflation due to internalized oppression easily creates and explains this kind of resentful, dismissive tone response that is a distortion of the true situation.
> The toxicity comes from the intellectual profession having to function as a modern clerisy for socioeconomic reasons under post-neoliberal capitalism.
Sure. And I think (Western, post-neoliberalized) math has resisted that corruption possibly better than any of its sibling cultures. But what makes the toxicity "distinct" is the emphasis on enlightenment, as if being a top-class mathematician brings you closer to the Godhead than does, say, being a top-class chess player, or a top-class defense attorney. Mathematical theories are treated less like robust human creations percolating over decades and more like divine revelation channeled through chosen disciples in fits of inspiration (c.f. Cantor, Galois, Godel, Grothendieck). A lot of this is projected from the outside the culture into it, but it is not outright rejected by the culture. Instead we still openly endorse what amounts to Great Man theories of mathematical history, attributing to almost every noteworthy mathematician a moniker of "genius" and praising them as paragons of thought, not as the unhealthy subjects of cults of personality.
In other words, the move to experience and cultural relativist statements about "math culture" is exactly the cynical ideological move that an academic cleric does. It deflects from examination of where these narratives come from and attribute it to e.g. "math history" or "math culture" or just "something specific to math itself" etc, etc.
Neoliberal intellectuals love to attribute toxicity to the Enlightenment. They can't help it.
Simpler conflation: need and ability
Eg
1. "from each according to his ability (the tyranny of academy)" with "from each according to his need (the freedom afforded to clerisy)"
2. "to each according to his ability to get rich" (meritocracy) with "to each according to his need to get rich" (post-liberal capitalism)