With respect to aesthetics, to each their own. I do find some mathematics beautiful. In fact, "I am bored" is a real problem and mathematics can be used to solve that problem by being a tool that tickles our brains in pleasant ways.
The "tool" and "problem" here are meant as comments on the metaphysical content of mathematics, not some sort of statement that mathematics is for engineering and that's all.
In particular: I'm commenting on the imbued/latent metaphysics of Wolfram's post, which goes beyond mere artistic appreciation. If his framing were "and look how pretty cellular automata are!" then I guess my reaction would be "yeah they are quite cool aren't they?"
I find Church-Rosser quite beautiful and also think Wolfram puts way too much metaphysical weight into the behavior of confluent rewrite systems. Similarly, some Psalms are beautiful and the story of Jesus is very nice but god does not actually exist. There's no contradiction there -- you can take the beauty and spit out the metaphysics.
The "tool" and "problem" here are meant as comments on the metaphysical content of mathematics, not some sort of statement that mathematics is for engineering and that's all.
In particular: I'm commenting on the imbued/latent metaphysics of Wolfram's post, which goes beyond mere artistic appreciation. If his framing were "and look how pretty cellular automata are!" then I guess my reaction would be "yeah they are quite cool aren't they?"
I find Church-Rosser quite beautiful and also think Wolfram puts way too much metaphysical weight into the behavior of confluent rewrite systems. Similarly, some Psalms are beautiful and the story of Jesus is very nice but god does not actually exist. There's no contradiction there -- you can take the beauty and spit out the metaphysics.