6 ms·

One way to differentiate between an art or a craft and a science is that if a genie appeared and offered to trivialize all the discovery work of your career and

by tptacek 3mo ago

One way to differentiate between an art or a craft and a science is that if a genie appeared and offered to trivialize all the discovery work of your career and simply give you the answers today, and you'd say "no", you're probably not doing science.

jckt 3mo ago
Disregarding the competing definitions of “science”, a significant value in mathematical work is “the journey”. The truth or falsehood of individual results are rarely as important as the machinery developed to deliver it. If all the genie did was tell you something was true or false, the only learning you gain is to backtrack and develop the machinery yourself. To a certain extent this is true of the other sciences too.
- boinkboink78912 3mo ago
  This is a genie that does far more than tell you whether something is true or false though.
- breezybottom 3mo ago
  Not from a logical positivist perspective, which is why you conveniently disregarded "competing views".
- satvikpendem 3mo ago
  Maybe the genie provides full proofs of each result. So will the journey still matter? For a true mathematician it should not.
  - vouaobrasil 3mo ago
    Of course it does because the joy of math is discovering something yourself. At some point you just want to stare at a blank sheet of paper, start with a premise and go on a journey. Are you a mathematician or scientist? I am and just typing "tell me the proof of this result" sounds immensely boring to me. Have you ever played a video game with an "invincibility cheat"? Boring. But you do get to the end and "solve the game".
    - satvikpendem 3mo ago
      Don't conflate the joy of doing math with the benefits of knowing new mathematics.
      - vouaobrasil 3mo ago
        The two cannot be separated.
        satvikpendem 3mo ago
        Sure they can, as with each successive generation one learns the past works and then works to build on them. This genie just makes the past works be instantly created. In other words, I'm sure some mathematicians like to derive everything entirely from scratch but that's not most of them.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
srcreigh 3mo ago
An impressive number of things don’t make sense about this thought experiment. Whatever the genie says wouldn’t have much to do with the life you live afterwards, since your life changes after hearing the info. One persons careers worth of discovery work is not that much. A lot of work is dependent on the state of the world and can’t be moved into the past, even language changes. Someone could still do a craft or science or whatever afterwards— assuming life continues to have surprising complexity, the genie could only ever just scratch the surface.
coffepot77 3mo ago
Persian Curse seems to apply here “May your every desire be immediately fulfilled.”
joe_the_user 3mo ago
The only "fields" where a genie appearing and doing all your work for you are fields (jobs) where you only about the money at the end. There are some fields where a serious practitioner might be happy to have a genie do all the "grunt work" (though what people that is varies - I'm not sure what "discovery work" means here but it doesn't matter since present AI promises to do everything in the future if not now). And this analogy breaks down further given that both the real now genie and the hypothetically more powerful genie of the future would each work for your (ex) employer.
- oytis 3mo ago
  Wouldn't it be great if we had a cure for cancer, working fusion energy or at least a proof for P vs NP even if no human had a joy of discovering it?
  - joe_the_user 3mo ago
    OK, I should have put have put things as "when you are primarily interested in some benefit outside of the task at hand". Some of those benefits might be great, sure. But it's still not necessarily going to improve the enjoyment of the professional. Edit: Also, not all of the things on your list are the same. I would note that P!=NP would be a theorem whose proof would offer no practical benefits except for the potential mathematical machinery created to achieve the proof rather than what it tells us about practical algorithm time (the theory is about worst case, not average case, an algorithm that's O(n^100) is as effectively intractable as an algorithm that's O(2^n), etc).
  - jlev1 3mo ago
    Yes, yes, maybe (see OP’s blog post). To my knowledge, none of the negative sentiment regarding AI has ever been directed at its medical applications. Maybe the AI companies should instead focus on those things.
    - oytis 3mo ago
      Are we not expecting any practical benefits from mathematical discoveries any more? Not even as a means to help other sciences?
blueflow 3mo ago
math never was a science to begin with.
loose-cannon 3mo ago
there's a human element in discovery and in problem solving. Whether or not somebody chooses to sidestep work isn't necessarily an indication that the work isn't science. It's just an indication that some people are passionate and invested in performing the work.
lioeters 3mo ago
Not even wrong. Real scientists say "yes" to the genie with all the answers? And artists and crafts people don't? The entire statement is nonsense, and offers no insight into art or science. It's almost like a language model generated a plausible sentence that is grammatically correct but has no relation to the real world. Perhaps if the analogy was between science and engineering.. A plumber would say "yes" to the genie that solves the problem immediately, if he/she got paid for the work instead of the genie (or the corporation providing the genie service). In that case the plumber is redundant and unnecessary, the customer can just ask the genie directly. A scientist would say "no" because the whole point of science is the knowledge and understanding, which is gained by the process of discovery and not given on a silver platter.
- oytis 3mo ago
  One should differentiate between "working in academia" and "doing science" here. Science is fundamentally about the curiosity, the desire to know, not the process of getting there. If we can now know anything we want, we have an age of unimaginable abundance before us. I think it's more likely though that we will just be able to know more things than before and/or maybe learning new things faster - which is a good thing too, but there is still work for human scientists to do
  - vouaobrasil 3mo ago
    No way. Science is not just about the desire to know. Almost all scientists I know (and I've met hundreds) care deeply about the joy of working out the problems themselves rather than just knowing the answers. The joy of finding that mental spark on your own to solve a problem - that's what makes it worthwhile. Just knowing everything right away is boring. If it were not, I'd just spend all the time in a library reading the work of others.
- tptacek 3mo ago
  No, I think you're pretty overconfident here. A plumber is not in fact thrilled by the genie who permanently resolves all the world's plumbing problems. I also kind of love the subtext in these responses that there is something suspect about crafts.
Fraterkes 3mo ago
Sort of a callous thing to say about a person having a crisis of faith so bad they're talking about killing themselves.
skippyfish 3mo ago
If you say "yes," you're also not doing science (anymore). Therein lies the problem with this take: most of science isn't done with the objective of getting to any specific finish line, and this is particularly true for math. As the old saying goes, the purpose of a system is what it does, so there might be some Platonic ideal of science we can appeal to, but the practice of science by humans is about the craft as much as it is about the truth.
bgoated01 3mo ago
But what if the genie instead offered (or threatened) to give _everyone_ the answers to everything you'll ever discover in your career, including your boss, your competitors, etc?
mekael 3mo ago
Tell me you’ve never experienced the joy of solving a math problem without telling me you’ve never experienced the joy of solving a math problem. Also, in your scenario, the genie is used undermine all of human thought, destroy the ability for people to support themselves in the current economic system (which is in and of itself horrific already) , and is making people consider / commit suicide. Thats not a genie, thats a demon.
- tptacek 3mo ago
  You're describing craftsmanship. What's wild about this thread is the comfort with which people who disagree with me dismiss entirely the value of craft. It's as if I said "on one hand, there's science; on the other hand there's pointlessly wasting your time".

by tptacek 3mo ago

jckt 3mo ago

Disregarding the competing definitions of “science”, a significant value in mathematical work is “the journey”. The truth or falsehood of individual results are rarely as important as the machinery developed to deliver it. If all the genie did was tell you something was true or false, the only learning you gain is to backtrack and develop the machinery yourself. To a certain extent this is true of the other sciences too.

boinkboink78912 3mo ago
This is a genie that does far more than tell you whether something is true or false though.
breezybottom 3mo ago
Not from a logical positivist perspective, which is why you conveniently disregarded "competing views".
satvikpendem 3mo ago
Maybe the genie provides full proofs of each result. So will the journey still matter? For a true mathematician it should not.
- vouaobrasil 3mo ago
  Of course it does because the joy of math is discovering something yourself. At some point you just want to stare at a blank sheet of paper, start with a premise and go on a journey. Are you a mathematician or scientist? I am and just typing "tell me the proof of this result" sounds immensely boring to me. Have you ever played a video game with an "invincibility cheat"? Boring. But you do get to the end and "solve the game".
  - satvikpendem 3mo ago
    Don't conflate the joy of doing math with the benefits of knowing new mathematics.
    - vouaobrasil 3mo ago
      The two cannot be separated.
      - satvikpendem 3mo ago
        Sure they can, as with each successive generation one learns the past works and then works to build on them. This genie just makes the past works be instantly created. In other words, I'm sure some mathematicians like to derive everything entirely from scratch but that's not most of them.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

srcreigh 3mo ago

An impressive number of things don’t make sense about this thought experiment. Whatever the genie says wouldn’t have much to do with the life you live afterwards, since your life changes after hearing the info. One persons careers worth of discovery work is not that much. A lot of work is dependent on the state of the world and can’t be moved into the past, even language changes. Someone could still do a craft or science or whatever afterwards— assuming life continues to have surprising complexity, the genie could only ever just scratch the surface.

coffepot77 3mo ago

Persian Curse seems to apply here “May your every desire be immediately fulfilled.”

joe_the_user 3mo ago

The only "fields" where a genie appearing and doing all your work for you are fields (jobs) where you only about the money at the end. There are some fields where a serious practitioner might be happy to have a genie do all the "grunt work" (though what people that is varies - I'm not sure what "discovery work" means here but it doesn't matter since present AI promises to do everything in the future if not now). And this analogy breaks down further given that both the real now genie and the hypothetically more powerful genie of the future would each work for your (ex) employer.

oytis 3mo ago
Wouldn't it be great if we had a cure for cancer, working fusion energy or at least a proof for P vs NP even if no human had a joy of discovering it?
- joe_the_user 3mo ago
  OK, I should have put have put things as "when you are primarily interested in some benefit outside of the task at hand". Some of those benefits might be great, sure. But it's still not necessarily going to improve the enjoyment of the professional. Edit: Also, not all of the things on your list are the same. I would note that P!=NP would be a theorem whose proof would offer no practical benefits except for the potential mathematical machinery created to achieve the proof rather than what it tells us about practical algorithm time (the theory is about worst case, not average case, an algorithm that's O(n^100) is as effectively intractable as an algorithm that's O(2^n), etc).
- jlev1 3mo ago
  Yes, yes, maybe (see OP’s blog post). To my knowledge, none of the negative sentiment regarding AI has ever been directed at its medical applications. Maybe the AI companies should instead focus on those things.
  - oytis 3mo ago
    Are we not expecting any practical benefits from mathematical discoveries any more? Not even as a means to help other sciences?

blueflow 3mo ago

math never was a science to begin with.

loose-cannon 3mo ago

there's a human element in discovery and in problem solving. Whether or not somebody chooses to sidestep work isn't necessarily an indication that the work isn't science. It's just an indication that some people are passionate and invested in performing the work.

lioeters 3mo ago

Not even wrong. Real scientists say "yes" to the genie with all the answers? And artists and crafts people don't? The entire statement is nonsense, and offers no insight into art or science. It's almost like a language model generated a plausible sentence that is grammatically correct but has no relation to the real world. Perhaps if the analogy was between science and engineering.. A plumber would say "yes" to the genie that solves the problem immediately, if he/she got paid for the work instead of the genie (or the corporation providing the genie service). In that case the plumber is redundant and unnecessary, the customer can just ask the genie directly. A scientist would say "no" because the whole point of science is the knowledge and understanding, which is gained by the process of discovery and not given on a silver platter.

oytis 3mo ago
One should differentiate between "working in academia" and "doing science" here. Science is fundamentally about the curiosity, the desire to know, not the process of getting there. If we can now know anything we want, we have an age of unimaginable abundance before us. I think it's more likely though that we will just be able to know more things than before and/or maybe learning new things faster - which is a good thing too, but there is still work for human scientists to do
- vouaobrasil 3mo ago
  No way. Science is not just about the desire to know. Almost all scientists I know (and I've met hundreds) care deeply about the joy of working out the problems themselves rather than just knowing the answers. The joy of finding that mental spark on your own to solve a problem - that's what makes it worthwhile. Just knowing everything right away is boring. If it were not, I'd just spend all the time in a library reading the work of others.
tptacek 3mo ago
No, I think you're pretty overconfident here. A plumber is not in fact thrilled by the genie who permanently resolves all the world's plumbing problems. I also kind of love the subtext in these responses that there is something suspect about crafts.

Fraterkes 3mo ago

Sort of a callous thing to say about a person having a crisis of faith so bad they're talking about killing themselves.

skippyfish 3mo ago

If you say "yes," you're also not doing science (anymore). Therein lies the problem with this take: most of science isn't done with the objective of getting to any specific finish line, and this is particularly true for math. As the old saying goes, the purpose of a system is what it does, so there might be some Platonic ideal of science we can appeal to, but the practice of science by humans is about the craft as much as it is about the truth.

bgoated01 3mo ago

But what if the genie instead offered (or threatened) to give _everyone_ the answers to everything you'll ever discover in your career, including your boss, your competitors, etc?

mekael 3mo ago

Tell me you’ve never experienced the joy of solving a math problem without telling me you’ve never experienced the joy of solving a math problem. Also, in your scenario, the genie is used undermine all of human thought, destroy the ability for people to support themselves in the current economic system (which is in and of itself horrific already) , and is making people consider / commit suicide. Thats not a genie, thats a demon.

tptacek 3mo ago
You're describing craftsmanship. What's wild about this thread is the comfort with which people who disagree with me dismiss entirely the value of craft. It's as if I said "on one hand, there's science; on the other hand there's pointlessly wasting your time".