Startup hackers should know more game theory. You can explain a lot of human behavior as evolutionary adaptations to compete in partially-cooperative sex-selected games of incomplete information in groups of around 100 players.
For example, why we care about karma on social networking sites, why some employers require you to wear a suit even though everyone concerned thinks suits are stupid, why religions are tenacious, why nobody trusts atheists, why virtually every mid-sized American city has at least one completely uneconomical skyscraper in what passes for "downtown" and why it's always owned by a bank or insurance company... the list goes on and on.
I checked another project of that guy mentioned in the interview: http://www.superstructgame.org/ and I noticed that one of the movies he uses ("Outlaw Planet") has been pulled down by youtube due to copyright complaint from Stanford University. I didn't know universities are so evil that they sabotage projects of their graduates on basis of copyright.
1) People use the average Joe’s poor mathematics as a way to control, exploit, and numerically fuck him over.
2) Mathematics is the subject in which, regardless of what the authorities tell you is true, you can verify every last iota of truth, with a minimum of equipment.
Although seldom noticed, mathematics is one of the few, maybe the only, subject not open to interpretation.
Definitions have nothing to do with truth, they serve only to clarify communication by establishing a common language; and mathematics as a whole makes no claim regarding the truth of axioms, only what a set of axioms do and do not entail.
There may be disagreements in matters of taste as to what Choice of axioms (har har, little joke there) one makes, but given a basis of axioms to work from--rarely more than a handful--the rest is, for most purposes, not at all open to interpretation.
You'd be surprised. The first thing that comes to mind is modern macro-economic forecasting, which is built on a host of controversial axioms. These forecasts are little better than Roman augury, and one could argue they are actually a net negative because they give us the false pretense of knowledge.
Using game theory to make predictions, expected utility theory, etc the list goes on and on (sorry to pick on economics, I'm sure there are plenty of other fields that suffer the same problems).
In fact, the problem with the axioms your talking about isn't that the math is wrong, its that the axioms aren't "true" of the real world.
Not that what you are saying isn't important, but you are talking about two completely different things. I mean, compare the axiom of choice to "people maximize expected utility." One of them is about the pillars of mathematics/logic, one is about how people act.
For example, why we care about karma on social networking sites, why some employers require you to wear a suit even though everyone concerned thinks suits are stupid, why religions are tenacious, why nobody trusts atheists, why virtually every mid-sized American city has at least one completely uneconomical skyscraper in what passes for "downtown" and why it's always owned by a bank or insurance company... the list goes on and on.