6 ms·
There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post. It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidde
by tombert 2y ago
There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post.
It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...
- bloomingkales 2y agoIf you were to ask an LLM trained on just scientific data to solve this problem, it would either solve it really quickly because it has seemingly irrelevant 4chan data or it would not solve it at all. It's a argument against non-general LLMs, and very low-key shout out to liberal arts degrees.
- throw9348491 2y ago[flagged]
- tombert 2y ago> Why it would be something extra ordinary? You give screenshot, date... Journalists do it all the time: "evil X are attacking Y while doing Z". It's just funny. I usually associate 4chan as primarily shitposting. Memes and offensive-stuff-for-the-sake-of-being-offensive and porn. You don't generally see mathematical work being done on there.
- throw9348491 2y agoI used 4chan for cooking and dietary stuff. It was a huge site, something like reddit. Math stuff was very strong there, I think you just never visited this site!
- tombert 2y agoI have visited the site, but mostly just hung around in /b/. I didn't really check out any of the other forums on there. I could be wrong, but I think that the average non-active-4chan-user associates 4chan primarily with /b/.
- throw949494jfj 2y ago[flagged]
- tombert 2y agoCNN might have some shitposting, but I don't think it's "known" for shitposting. I think most people consider it a "news" organization, though I'm sure how "good" of a news organization it is depends largely on your politics.
- bee_rider 2y agoI remember when Reddit had a reputation as a pretty gross site. It is kinda funny how their trajectories have differed.
- ozmodiar 2y agoVisited 4chan twice about 5 years apart, saw CSAM both times. I have an absolute hatred of the place rightly or wrongly.
- tombert 2y agoI saw CSAM on their once like seventeen years ago, reported it, and it was removed pretty quickly. I've been fortunate enough to not see it again.
- gosub100 2y agoapparently only /b /pol and maybe 1 or 2 others are bananas. the rest is well moderated and civil.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Frotag 2y ago/b/ is short for random so kind of seems like it's meant to siphon off / contain shitposts that would be distracting on other boards.
- genewitch 2y agoIts even in the rules for the other boards. Inflammatory nonsense goes in one of two or three boards, everything else has to be legal, nicer, you pick a word. B has a tenuous grasp on reality as a whole, but individual comments and posts can be charming, informative, whatever. I used to read the nightly AI threads where people would ask "how did you..." And sometimes receive answers. I even asked a question about some new model I had not looking right and someone said "VAE" and I fixed the problem. I don't recommend any chan unless you're the sort of person that doesn't flinch at cop videos, gore, extreme impurity, and potentially illegal topics. There is gold there, but you really gotta dig in the excrement to find it. For most, that's probably not worth it.
- Izkata 2y agoCitations are supposed to be able to be looked up, and 4chan threads are designed to disappear. This only still exists because someone realized it was important (or, more likely, amusing that someone succeeded) and saved it elsewhere.
- Arnavion 2y agoLots of boards, including /sci/ (the board in question) have automatic permanent archives. The archive of this thread is linked in the mathsci.wikia.com page ( https://warosu.org/sci/thread/S3751105#p3751197 https://warosu.org/sci/thread/S3751105#p3751197 )
- earthdeity 2y agoThat's true, but over a relatively short timeframe, those archives have proven to be extremely ephemeral. I can recall multiple instances of feature rich, good quality searchable archive sites existing, improving, then one day vanishing with a huge amount of data, sometimes permanently. There's usually low redundancy and a reliance on an individual or two, who can cease keeping the data at a whim. Such archives don't monetise well, if at all. So it's a hobby project for someone. Over the last fifteen years a screenshot has proven incredibly more reliable than an archive link.
- dylan604 2y ago> It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet That was the shining hope of the internet. "Information wants to be free" and now it could be available to anyone with a modem vs just in university or municipal libraries. Now, we have megasites that dominate the web's attention with very trivial and banal content that makes looking for that information nearly impossible.
- acureau 2y agoWell, it's not as if that promise didn't come true. We do have the world's knowledge at our fingertips. It's more of a curation problem, and a natural result of a decentralized web. Wikipedia could be considered a "megasite", but I'd argue it's more valuable than a million independent sites.
- tombert 2y agoYeah that's kind of what I was getting at. Who knows what kind of weird mathematical or scientific things have been discovered by hobbyists and posted on some obscure forum thread or abandoned blog that wasn't appreciated by anyone? Like, if someone had a proof for the Goldbach Conjecture, and for whatever reason posted about it on the WatchUSeek forums (just as a throwaway example), it could just lay dormant for who knows how long? The audience on WatchUSeek might not realize the significance of a such a discovery, and maybe not even the poster, so it doesn't get any recognition and just never gets picked up. I mean, going with the example in the original post, I don't know much about Superpermutations (only a little after this post went viral), so if I had seen this 4chan post in the wild, I would just assume it's some guy doing a bit of math that I wasn't familiar with. I wouldn't be able to spot that this was actually a contribution to anything.
- bee_rider 2y agoIs it better if there are lots of hidden gems tucked away on obscure websites? Actually I think that is a sort of interesting question. The world is a more interesting place if there are hidden bits I guess. And there will be some hidden pieces of info, so maybe it is good if there’s enough out there to incentivize exploration. On the other hand, it is nice and convenient if everything is indexed. I dunno. Conflicted.
- ziddoap 2y agoNot only cite, but listed as the first author! https://oeis.org/A180632/a180632.pdf https://oeis.org/A180632/a180632.pdf
- thomassmith65 2y agoＴＯ ＢＥ ＯＲ ＮＯＴ ＴＯ ＢＥ ＴＨＡＴ ＩＳ ＴＨＥ ＧＧＧＺＯＲＮＯＮＰＬＡＴＴ
- selimthegrim 2y agoZalgo, your parole is still in effect.
- ydnaclementine 2y agoyou mean unbelievably based
- bawolff 2y agoI always found it interesting how serious computer security papers commonly cite random stuff on the internet. Phrack probably has hundreds or maybe thousands of citations to it at this point.
- Oarch 2y agoI recommend watching the Internet Historian's video series on He Will Not Divide Us for similarly ingenious buffoonery.
- kikokikokiko 2y agoThe He Will Not Divide Us saga teached me, really early, to never leave any personal information on the web, and above all, to never piss off groups of male teenagers/early adults with a lot of free time on their hands and a penchant for doing anything for the lolz.
- pelagicAustral 2y ago"male teenagers/early adults", pretty big assumption there.
- kikokikokiko 2y agoPlease tell me, have you found the mythical 4Chan lady?
- Oarch 2y agoYes her name is Taylor Swift /s (It's a fun bit of lore that she was once on /b)
- anal_reactor 2y agoNot many, probably. As in, why would this happen.
- iforgotpassword 2y agoBecause why would you think this is of any relevance? You're making some estimate and go like "welp I guess that's good enough" and assume that there must be a proper mathematical approach to this.
- anal_reactor 2y agoYes but if you have the skills to do something like that, then you're probably aware that this is a new solution to a problem.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoWhat other accidental discoveries are buried in meme threads and forgotten forums?
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoWhat comes to mind is TempleOS, I'm confident there's a lot of really interesting code decisions and algorithms in there. Of course the other factor is your own comprehension powers; I can't comprehend math or complex algorithms, so I don't actually know if there are any that I could apply to my usual software development problems. (I doubt it, it's high level front end stuff, all the complex bits are lower down)
- tombert 2y agoI asked a question years ago about trying to make a “real” operating system out of TempleOS [1], because I agree there’s probably some more to it than just a meme. I don’t know enough about operating systems to really know if there’s anything clever in there, but that gets to your point; part of the issue comes down to the ability to understand what you’re reading, as you pointed out. If I had seen the original 4chan post back when it was new, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, because I don’t know anything about superpermutations or combinatorics. If I had seen the post, I would have thought “oh there’s some math I never learned, cool” and moved on, not realizing its significance. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14075795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14075795