Ego is insulted, they're raging but it changes nothing. Math is beautiful exactly because it discerns right from wrong with 100% accuracy, while all the emotions and "flexible interpretations" are redirected to /dev/null.
From the outside it seems like these mathematicians are saying “you shouldn’t use ai to solve our most difficult problems because they have no practical value”.
Seems ok by me, let’s point all the gpu clusters at things that actually matter and let the math folks math.
Watching people who have built their entire identity around being untouchably smart suddenly be confronted with the future that children will be able to solve the equivalent of millenium prize level math in an afternoon for 5$ is enjoyable.
Quite appalling to open a "journalistic" report by ridiculising the people you report on:
> Not since Socrates complained that the written word might make people lazy about remembering things has there been such an outpouring of angst against a new technology in the world of academia.
It's also sort of a misleading gloss of what is going on in that dialogue, which, it is important to note _is in a book_ -- one of many that Plato wrote. Plato has Socrates recount a story (supposedly) from ancient Egypt in which an Egyptian god claims that books will make people forgetful. He never makes that claim himself, as a character, and certainly Plato didn't believe it, because he wrote lots of books before and after that dialogue. The general thrust of that section of the dialogue is that writing can be a useful tool for remembering, but _not_ sufficient for learning, which requires person to person interaction and dialogue.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49662371.
Ego is insulted, they're raging but it changes nothing. Math is beautiful exactly because it discerns right from wrong with 100% accuracy, while all the emotions and "flexible interpretations" are redirected to /dev/null.
The problem isn’t the proofs, it’s proper attribution.
From the outside it seems like these mathematicians are saying “you shouldn’t use ai to solve our most difficult problems because they have no practical value”.
Seems ok by me, let’s point all the gpu clusters at things that actually matter and let the math folks math.
> Despite its length, the paper contains little of the explanation that mathematicians typically provide when sharing a new discovery.
Classic
Watching people who have built their entire identity around being untouchably smart suddenly be confronted with the future that children will be able to solve the equivalent of millenium prize level math in an afternoon for 5$ is enjoyable.
Let's allow robots at the Olympics and laugh at the poor athletes losing! /s
There is nothing wrong with the desire to be smart, actually succeeding at being smart, and then expecting some recognition for that achievement.
Or another way.
I enjoy seeing the fastest human on earth run.
But I'm still getting in my car to go to the shop.
I actually love the analogy that mathematicians will be the equivalent of olympic athletes.
Nobody needs to throw a rock far, or run fast, nobody gets any value except entertainment.
I think your own analogy is actually much worse than my point.
https://archive.ph/baq6d
thought this link is better / cleaner: https://unwall.app/www.economist.com/science-and-technology/...
Quite appalling to open a "journalistic" report by ridiculising the people you report on:
> Not since Socrates complained that the written word might make people lazy about remembering things has there been such an outpouring of angst against a new technology in the world of academia.
It's also sort of a misleading gloss of what is going on in that dialogue, which, it is important to note _is in a book_ -- one of many that Plato wrote. Plato has Socrates recount a story (supposedly) from ancient Egypt in which an Egyptian god claims that books will make people forgetful. He never makes that claim himself, as a character, and certainly Plato didn't believe it, because he wrote lots of books before and after that dialogue. The general thrust of that section of the dialogue is that writing can be a useful tool for remembering, but _not_ sufficient for learning, which requires person to person interaction and dialogue.