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You should give it a try. Tao is a wonderful person and is trying to help humanity.
by GPerson 2mo ago
You should give it a try. Tao is a wonderful person and is trying to help humanity.
- qsera 2mo ago> is trying to help humanity. That is what all marketing wants you to think...
- GPerson 2mo agoIt’s not marketing. This guy could have signed up for one of those hundred million dollar salaries with a phone call and did not. I know several people who have met him and everyone says he’s the genuine article. He’s actually just devoted to human mathematics. One tragic thing about all of this is that unlike almost every profession, mathematics actually has a kind of honesty. You honestly solve the problem or you don’t. The pecking order in mathematics at least used to have a grounding in actual abilities. People respect this guy because he’s actually legit.
- qsera 2mo agoLegit people are used by marketing all the time.
- GPerson 2mo agoI think the villains who run these companies benefit from Tao’s actions because he’s a de facto thought leader of mathematics not taking a very hard anti-AI stance. However, I don’t think a very hard anti-AI stance is correct for someone in his position. Honestly, do you want a bunch of AI labs to 100% dictate the future of whatever your field is or do you want the best leaders of your field to at least try to shape how AI will change it? And if all of the legitimate people in math ignore AI entirely, then historically important parts of the field will get entirely taken over by dilettantes and AI labs. I’m all for math institutions being a safe haven for AI free math work. But I don’t want to see some space X intern solve all the most important problems on a whim and no leaders in math be aware of it. (I’m not sure the extent to which you think this is marketing. I’m operating under the assumption that you agree with his Hypothesis 4.1. If you don’t, then I’d assume you haven’t seen the long list of prominent open math problems that these systems are providing answers to. And if this doesn’t sway you about Hypothesis 4.1 I’d just halt and ask why.)
- qsera 2mo ago> Hypothesis 4.1.. What does it say?
- cubefox 2mo agoIf he was, he wouldn't be doing useless pure math research. He is doing his hobby (pure math) while getting paid for it. That's not what helping humanity looks like. (Yes, pure math research is useless. Applied math is very useful, but he is doing pure math, which is very useless.)
- GPerson 2mo agoIt’s almost stunning how ignorant you are about everything you’re talking about. Tao publishes work that would fit in applied math research programs. There’s no meaningful distinction between pure and applied math and I doubt you know any based on your comment. There’s at least 3 additional corrections I’d like to make to your ignorant thinking but I’ll leave it at that.
- cubefox 2mo agoEven Tao says that proofs are worthless if humans don't understand them. If they had any independent utility, human understanding would not be necessary.