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Reading the descriptions of their work makes me think of magic. It's an understanding of the principles of math and physics at a level above almost everyone on
by unethical_ban 3mo ago
Reading the descriptions of their work makes me think of magic. It's an understanding of the principles of math and physics at a level above almost everyone on the planet - these are modern wizards.
- vonneumannstan 3mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway_7274 3mo agoThis Fox has a longing for grapes: He jumps, but the bunch still escapes. So he goes away sour; And, 'tis said, to this hour Declares that he's no taste for grapes.
- lioeters 3mo agoThe fox who longed for grapes, beholds with pain The tempting clusters were too high to gain; Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile, And cried, 'They’re sharp and hardly worth my while.'
- leonvoss 3mo agoSo now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones. "But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child. "Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another. "But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.
- nl 3mo agoTsimerman's work is directly applicable in two fields of computer science: O-minimality can be used to simplify formal verification.
- CamperBob2 3mo agoUsername sure as hell does not check out
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo agoAre you trying to tell me von Neumann's work has had no impact on the world?
- CamperBob2 3mo agoNo, I'm saying that JvN would have recoiled hard from that sentiment.
- vonneumannstan 3mo agoHis work was incredibly APPLIED. Which is precisely why he is remembered and lauded. Can anyone here not involved in theoretical math name 5 Fields Medalists? Take out Terry Tao or Andrew Wiles or Gigori Perelman and can you name any Pure Mathematicians from the last century at all?
- CamperBob2 3mo agoYou see that https:// part of the URL in your browser? The 's' started out as pure mathematical research into elliptic curve cryptography based on algebraic geometry and number theory, a solution looking for a problem if there ever was one. When the problem eventually came along, the solution was obvious thanks to pure math. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if work done on the behavior of vectors in high-dimensional space by Hong and her colleagues someday becomes relevant to practical neural-net R&D. You never know what you might need in the future, but it will suck if engineers have to stop and figure this stuff out from first principles when they do need it. von Neumann did a lot of theoretical work, e.g. https://www.academia.edu/download/38046446/Ohta_15_von_Neumanns_clock.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/38046446/Ohta_15_von_Neuma... where he was hanging out intellectually with McCullough and Pitts. He not only wouldn't be surprised at the ANN renaissance under way now, he'd ask us what took so long. He even cited M&P in his EDVAC report. Way ahead of his time, envisioning how hardware that wouldn't be practical for another 80 years might work.
- layer8 3mo agoClarke’s third law.
- BeetleB 3mo agoThe description of Yu Deng's work should be accessible to someone who's taken condensed matter physics in grad school.
- blovescoffee 3mo agoIs this supposed to imply that it's accessible?
- leonvoss 3mo agoSo overhyped. Yet they have no power but some prestige among nerds. The reason why it is bad is that the money/status is very limited relative to the amount of smart people. I would rather praise developments in quantitative sciences.
- orochimaaru 3mo agoNot true. Novel mathematical methods precede their application by at least a decade and widespread use by about a century. Calculus was invented in 1670, it was about 1680-1700 till it started actually being used in astronomy. The uptake was probably faster because at that time a lot of mathematicians were Astronomers as well. There is a lot of mathematics created but we don’t yet know how to use it. My hope is that AI can bridge the search gap to accelerate this.
- leonvoss 3mo agoQuantitative scientists are also mathematicians. I'm not attacking mathematics, just probably-useless subfields. Is there any good quantitative evidence that actually estimates what percent of math work today will be useful? Because to me it seems like <1% and I feel like we could easily make that number a lot higher. Particularly I want to see massive improvements in quantitative social science; physics already gets a lot of attention so it wouldn't be able to see as much improvement to getting more resources but it could probably still get more.
- yorwba 3mo agoWhat open problems in quantitative social science do you have in mind where better math could achieve massive improvements? I'd expect the bottleneck to be data availability nearly always.
- orochimaaru 3mo agoI think in social sciences it maybe more of an inability/reluctance of the domain group to use the mathematics as opposed to the mathematics being absent. Take category theory for example. The initial mathematics appeared in 1942. The application to social sciences started in about 1970 and I’m not sure of the level of uptake at the current time but a quick AI search says applications have accelerated in the past decade (needs verification).