I would argue that Math does have side effects: it runs on mathmaticians brains. After all math is a chain of logical equivalencies based on a set of axioms (I'm not a mathmatician so that is most probably not a very complete definition). Every computer can trivially spit out many, many such logical equivalencies - what makes math interesting is the human factor: www.xamuel.com/mathematics-objective-or-subjective/ Mathmaticians are doing this incredibly well, when you think of the fact that a lot of math was discovered decades before its applications. The idea that maths is somehow completely decoupled from the guys 'running it' seems slightly false to me. You could obviously argue that brains are not computers, but then you'll find yourself in an argument with a lot of angry singularists. Please don't downvote me if I'm completely wrong, this is partially fishing for an interesting argument.