For example: I don’t believe in the axiom of choice nor in the continuum hypothesis.
Not stuff like “math is useless” or “people hate math because it’s not well taught”, those are opinions about math.
I’ll start: exponentiation should be left-associative, which means a^b should mean b×b×…×b } a times.
The numbers shouldn’t change to make nice patterns, though, rather the patterns that don’t fit the numbers don’t fit them. Sure, the pattern with division of powers wouldn’t be nice, but also 1 multiplied by itself 0 times is not 1, or at least, not only 1.
Sure it is. 1 is the multiplicative identity, the number you start at when you multiply anything. 2^2 is really 1x2x2. 2^1 is 1x2. So 2^0 is… just 1.
We make mathematical definitions to do math. We can define 0! any way we want but we defined it to be equal to 1 because it fits in nicely with the way the factorial function works on other numbers.
Literally the only reason why mathematicians define stuff is because it’s easier to work with definitions than to do everything from elementary tools. What the elementary tools are is also subjective. Mathematics isn’t some objective truth, it’s just human made structures that we can expand and better understand through applying logic in the form of proofs. Sometimes we can even apply them to real world situations!
Honestly I think it’s misleading to describe it as being “defined” as 1, precisely because it makes it sounds like someone was trying to squeeze the definition into a convenient shape.
I say, rather, that it naturally turns out to be that way because of the nature of the sequence. You can’t really choose anything else