Math is Overpowered When Combined with Other Expertise but Underpowered Alone

When you're knowledgeable/skilled enough to grapple with problems in a more directly applicable field, math gives you the superpower of being able to compress those problem representations into an abstract space where they're easier to solve.

Math expertise is kind of weird in that it’s overpowered when combined with other areas of expertise, but underpowered alone.

Generally speaking, most of the world does not care about math directly and is not going to care how good you are beyond some baseline level of competence – but if you also build baseline competence in another field that more people do care about, then math can be a gigantic power-up for you.

Just to name an example: there are lots of areas in CS where you don’t need to know a whole lot of math to be successful. BUT… all this surreal AI/ML stuff that’s happening nowadays? That’s all coming from a group of serious math nerds within CS.

Basically, when you’re knowledgeable/skilled enough to grapple with problems in a more directly applicable field, math gives you the superpower of being able to compress those problem representations into an abstract space where they’re easier to solve.

But if you don’t have that baseline knowledge in a more directly applicable field, then you’re going to have a tough time knowing what problems are worth solving and what details are important/unimportant to those problems.

That stereotype of the math whiz who’s unable to function in the world because they have no idea how the world works outside of math – the issue is mainly just that they’re unable to load the right external information into their head.