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This hurts my engineer-brain. Just a reminder than the gap between us and mathematicians is about the same as the gap between us and everybody else (edit: in te

This hurts my engineer-brain. Just a reminder than the gap between us and mathematicians is about the same as the gap between us and everybody else (edit: in terms of math skills), just in the other direction, haha. Oh well, hopefully when they get the machines to solve math, they’ll still want them to run a couple percents faster every year.

Etheryte 2y ago
[flagged]
- analog31 2y ago
  While true, there are some clues such as the correlation between someone's occupation and their IQ.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I just meant in the context of math skills, but I definitely acknowledge that it was poor phrasing on my part.
  - dogboat 2y ago
    On the other hand get them to try and debug code. And then you might realize the redicilous amount of unwritten lore that software engineering has. OTOH software engineering has courses but you need to work with people to get good not just read books. Like math.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  I don't even understand how you interpreted that to have anything to do with being "smarter or making more money". Get some more coffee dude.
  - dogboat 2y ago
    Maybe less coffee :)
    - hughesjj 2y ago
      But how else would I power this machine that outputs theorems?
      - dogboat 2y ago
        Erdős found stronger drugs
      - NooneAtAll3 2y ago
        become comathematician and turn cotheorems into ffee
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 2y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ur-whale 2y ago
> about the same as the gap between us and everybody else My bet: there is a very long list of skills for which the gap between you and a person randomly picked out the whole population is very large, and not in the direction you seem to think.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  That’s true. It was poor phrasing on my part. But I do realize I’m really bad at a ton of things. I just meant in the math context.
boothby 2y ago
Just a gentle reminder from somebody with a foot in each camp: computers were invented by mathematicians to accelerate computation. The field of Computer Science is a child of the field of Mathematics. Computer Engineering is its grandchild. And yes, the desire for formalism has been stronger in the descendants than the ancestors for some time, but we're seeing that gap close in real time and it's truly exciting. And, lets keep pushing the frontier of computation! We aren't just making better ad-delivery devices.
enugu 2y ago
Don't think you should be intimidated just by reading the article itself. It is using several domain specific terms. But you would encounter that in many other contexts - for instance a group discussing an intricate board game you are seeing for the first time. However, unlike board games where the concepts can be explained to you in a few minutes (usually it becomes clear only when you play), a lot mathematics especially algebraic geometry/number-theory can have many layers of dependencies which takes years to absorb. It would be interesting to compare it to understanding a large open source project like the Linux kernel, well enough to contribute. I would say it is not so conceptually deep as mathematics of the article (while still having a few great ideas). But understanding the source would require familiarization with 'tedious details' which incidentally, what this article is also about. So the issue, stated this way, is not so much raw talent as time and effort. This leads to the topic of motivation - finding something great in an idea can lead to investment in the subject. For those more talented, the journey might be easier. Alan Kay's maxim is crucial - a change of perspective can simplify things relative to 80 extra IQ points. A long sequence of technical steps can be compressed into a single good intuitive definition/idea like the complexity of navigating a path becomes clear from a higher viewpoint. Grothendieck, considered by many to be the best mathematician of the past century, made the point that there were several colleagues who were more proficient at symbolic manipulation. But, he was able to look at things with a more foundational perspective and could make great contributions. Here's a good essay by Thurston "Proof and Progress in mathematics". https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236 https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236 He discusses this problem of being intimidated by jargon.

Etheryte 2y ago

[flagged]

analog31 2y ago
While true, there are some clues such as the correlation between someone's occupation and their IQ.
bee_rider 2y ago
I just meant in the context of math skills, but I definitely acknowledge that it was poor phrasing on my part.
- dogboat 2y ago
  On the other hand get them to try and debug code. And then you might realize the redicilous amount of unwritten lore that software engineering has. OTOH software engineering has courses but you need to work with people to get good not just read books. Like math.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
I don't even understand how you interpreted that to have anything to do with being "smarter or making more money". Get some more coffee dude.
- dogboat 2y ago
  Maybe less coffee :)
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    But how else would I power this machine that outputs theorems?
    - dogboat 2y ago
      Erdős found stronger drugs
    - NooneAtAll3 2y ago
      become comathematician and turn cotheorems into ffee
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 2y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ur-whale 2y ago

> about the same as the gap between us and everybody else My bet: there is a very long list of skills for which the gap between you and a person randomly picked out the whole population is very large, and not in the direction you seem to think.

bee_rider 2y ago
That’s true. It was poor phrasing on my part. But I do realize I’m really bad at a ton of things. I just meant in the math context.

boothby 2y ago

Just a gentle reminder from somebody with a foot in each camp: computers were invented by mathematicians to accelerate computation. The field of Computer Science is a child of the field of Mathematics. Computer Engineering is its grandchild. And yes, the desire for formalism has been stronger in the descendants than the ancestors for some time, but we're seeing that gap close in real time and it's truly exciting. And, lets keep pushing the frontier of computation! We aren't just making better ad-delivery devices.

enugu 2y ago

Don't think you should be intimidated just by reading the article itself. It is using several domain specific terms. But you would encounter that in many other contexts - for instance a group discussing an intricate board game you are seeing for the first time. However, unlike board games where the concepts can be explained to you in a few minutes (usually it becomes clear only when you play), a lot mathematics especially algebraic geometry/number-theory can have many layers of dependencies which takes years to absorb. It would be interesting to compare it to understanding a large open source project like the Linux kernel, well enough to contribute. I would say it is not so conceptually deep as mathematics of the article (while still having a few great ideas). But understanding the source would require familiarization with 'tedious details' which incidentally, what this article is also about. So the issue, stated this way, is not so much raw talent as time and effort. This leads to the topic of motivation - finding something great in an idea can lead to investment in the subject. For those more talented, the journey might be easier. Alan Kay's maxim is crucial - a change of perspective can simplify things relative to 80 extra IQ points. A long sequence of technical steps can be compressed into a single good intuitive definition/idea like the complexity of navigating a path becomes clear from a higher viewpoint. Grothendieck, considered by many to be the best mathematician of the past century, made the point that there were several colleagues who were more proficient at symbolic manipulation. But, he was able to look at things with a more foundational perspective and could make great contributions. Here's a good essay by Thurston "Proof and Progress in mathematics". https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236 https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236 He discusses this problem of being intimidated by jargon.