The world is awash with divisive arguments,
conflict, fake news,
victimhood,
exploitation, prejudice, bigotry, blame, shouting,
and minuscule attention spans.
It can sometimes seem
that we are doomed to take sides,
be stuck in echo chambers,
and never agree again.
It can sometimes seem like a race to the bottom,
where everyone is calling out somebody else's privilege
and vying to show that they
are the most hard-done-by person in the conversation.
How can we make sense
in a world that doesn't?
I have a tool for understanding this confusing world of ours,
a tool that you might not expect:
abstract mathematics.
I am a pure mathematician.
Traditionally, pure maths is like the theory of maths,
where applied maths is applied to real problems like building bridges
and flying planes
and controlling traffic flow.
But I'm going to talk about a way that pure maths applies directly
to our a daily lives as a way of thinking.
I don't solve quadratic equations to help me with my daily life,
but I do use mathematical thinking to help me understand arguments
and to empathize with other people.
And so pure maths helps me with the entire human world.
But before I talk about the entire human world,
I need to talk about something that you might think of
as irrelevant schools maths:
factors of numbers.
We're going to start by thinking about the