All the Mathematicians Are Dead

All the mathematicians are dead.

Not physically, of course. They still attend conferences, publish papers, and appear on advisory boards.

But as an institution, they are deceased.

No one noticed the moment it happened.

It likely occurred sometime between “this averages out” and “it works well in practice.”

The body was found years later, when probability was promoted from a descriptive tool to a substitute for truth. No alarm was raised. The equations were still correct. Only their meaning had quietly changed.

In this new world, probability no longer multiplies.

It reassures.

“99% accurate” is treated as a guarantee.

“Very unlikely” is treated as impossible.

Repeated failure is treated as bad luck.

A calculator, when presented with these claims, continues to behave incorrectly — it insists on exponentiation. This behavior is now considered outdated.

When the calculator reports that a long chain of high-confidence steps converges to zero reliability, experts reassure us that the calculator “doesn’t understand context.”

The calculator has not been invited to Davos.

Mathematics used to say:

> Show me how this composes.

Now it says:

> Trust the distribution.

When deterministic systems fail, engineers ask why.

When stochastic systems fail, experts ask how you feel about it.

The word hallucination has replaced error.

This is considered progress.

Universities assure us that mathematics is alive and well.

They point to journals, grants, and citation counts.

But no one can find a single living mathematician willing to stand up and say:

> “This does not scale.

This does not compose.

This is not safe.”

So we conclude the obvious.

All the mathematicians are dead.

And the calculators are in mourning.

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