I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Skill without asking the right questions

This sounds like pure snark from an ancient philosopher, but there's something unsettling worth sitting with. Plato isn't saying mathematicians can't do math—he's pointing at a gap between technical skill and actual wisdom. Someone can be brilliant at manipulating symbols and solving equations yet somehow miss what those solutions actually mean in the world, or fail to question whether they're solving the right problem in the first place.

We see this tension everywhere now. A financial analyst can model markets perfectly but lack the judgment to see an obvious bubble. A programmer can architect elegant systems without thinking through the human consequences. The tools are so precise, so satisfying to master, that they can become an end in themselves—a way to feel competent without grappling with messier, harder questions about purpose and value.

The real sting of Plato's comment isn't that math is useless. It's that expertise in any narrow domain can actually atrophy your ability to reason about life. You get so good at one kind of thinking that you stop asking whether you're thinking about the right things at all. That gap between technical brilliance and genuine wisdom? It's still very much our problem.