שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם
ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ
Peace be upon you
One of the many poignant scenes in the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game occurs just after the famous mathematician and computer scientist cracks the Enigma Code. Another member on the Bletchley Park team has decoded a message ordering German U-Boats to attack a British warship, whose crew includes one of the member’s relatives.
Turing explains, rather emphatically, that the ship cannot be saved, or else the Nazis may suspect their code has been broken. As a result, the rest of World War II involved strategic, statistics-based choices on whether to use knowledge from intercepted enemy messages to save the lives of soldiers and civilians.
In light of the atrocities committed by Hamas a few weekends ago, the consequent war of Israel in Gaza, and the ongoing flaring of tensions globally—including just across the Hudson—this movie scene, and its implications, are more salient, more harrowing than ever. Some of my recent columns have discussed a tendency to think of human beings in terms of statistics, to “stat-ify” them, if you will. The extreme of this instinct comes out in violence and war, where people are literally reduced to stats, namely death counts.
This calls for some serious reflection. Is this really the core of what mathematics has to offer to the world? While mathematics has saved many lives over the years (it’s not like Turing said no one can be saved, after all), the field still falls into this strategy-heavy, humanist-bankrupt pattern in dangerous times.
However, when all seems lost, as happens a lot in solving mathematical problems, a common approach is to return to the fundamentals. The axioms or assumptions we make about a problem can strongly influence how we think about solving it. So let’s try to do that here.
For one, we have prayers — a set of beliefs laid down centuries ago from which we can find consistency, solace, and hope. Jews, Muslims, and people of all other faiths, pray at specific times of the day, every day; while these prayers alone will not end the violence or bring back lives lost, they provide a foundation of empowerment, love, and compassion around which to structure the day.
Also, math applied to the real world, and I would argue even the “purer” forms of math, are both an intricate balancing act between idealism and pragmatism. Mathematical models always have some error; elegant proof ideas may not hold in every case; axioms can be relaxed to allow a less rigid structure. This balance breeds an acceptance of failure among mathematicians — we may not always do the right thing, but we’re gonna keep trying if we’re wrong.
There have been massive failures to humanity recently, and as long as the violence continues, the failures will too. But we must keep trying — to speak out against violence and oppression, to comfort our friends and fellow community members for whom the effects of the Israel-Hamas war are closer to home, to realize how mathematics in a dangerous time may have a more harmful impact than is comfortable. All these efforts are the generators of positive, life-saving change.
اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّ النَّاسِ أَذْهِبِ الْبَاسَ، اشْفِهِ وَأَنْتَ الشَّافِي، لاَ شِفَاءَ إِلاَّ شِفَاؤُكَ، شِفَاءً لاَ يُغَادِرُ سَقَمًا
Get rid of the hardship and heal, O Lord of the People, you are the Healer, and there is no healing of disease like Yours. Let it be healing that is not betrayed by sickness. – Prophet Muhammad
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם, דָיַן הַאֱמֶת׃
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, the just judge. – Jewish blessing of mourning
