{"generated_at":"2026-11-12T18:35:13.162Z","source":{"name":"Hacker News public API","url":"https://github.com/HackerNews/API","attribution":"Stories and comments are public Hacker News submissions by their respective authors. HackerHub is an independent reader, not affiliated with Y Combinator.","content_is_untrusted":true},"story_id":50445279,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50445279","total_comments":9,"returned":4,"scope":"Up to the requested number of top-level comments in Hacker News ranked order. Deleted comments are omitted. Nested replies are not fetched; this is not the complete thread.","comments":[{"id":50449368,"author":"eszed","created_at":"2026-11-11T03:14:55.000Z","text":"Setting the AI angle entirely aside, this has always been the value of the humanities: learning how to inhabit an unfamiliar point of view. That's immensely valuable, no matter what you end up doing with your life.","parent_id":50445279,"replies_count":2,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50449368"},{"id":50450603,"author":"pridy","created_at":"2026-11-11T07:21:57.000Z","text":"Isn't learning base-60 math helping to understand time calculations? I mean, didn't the author didn't get that or am I simply wrong with that assumption?","parent_id":50445279,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50450603"},{"id":50471266,"author":"webdoodle","created_at":"2026-11-12T17:50:31.000Z","text":"It reminds me of the story of Yutaka Taniyama. He was trying to solve elliptic curves, and took a very different approach, that unfortunately didn't work, but it was so unique it got people looking into it, and eventually it was solved. It may not have been solved if this one guy hadn't failed at solving it so uniquely. He committed suicide in part because of his perceived failure.\nA co-worker of his, Goro Shimura stated:\nTaniyama was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes. But he made mistakes in a good direction and so eventually he got right answers. I tried to imitate him, but I found out that it is very difficult to make good mistakes.\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutaka_Taniyama","parent_id":50445279,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50471266"},{"id":50471088,"author":"1970-01-01","created_at":"2026-11-12T17:38:53.000Z","text":"Learning base 2 arithmetic is arguably more useful today, as is hexadecimal. Base 60 is fine if you're only interested in ancient civilization.","parent_id":50445279,"replies_count":2,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50471088"}]}