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Catching Crumbs from the Table (2000)
https://web.archive.org/web/20150719010624/http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6786/full/405517a0.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150719010624/http://www.nature...
https://www.scribd.com/document/893921964/CHIANG-Catching-Crumbs-From-the-Table https://www.scribd.com/document/893921964/CHIANG-Catching-Cr...
- chrisjj 25d agoFree of charge here https://www.scribd.com/document/893921964/CHIANG-Catching-Crumbs-From-the-Table https://www.scribd.com/document/893921964/CHIANG-Catching-Cr...
- dang 24d agoThanks! we'll add that to the toptext as well.
- dang 24d agoRelated. Others? Catching crumbs from the table by Ted Chiang (2000) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559422 - March 2026 (1 comment) Catching crumbs from the table (2000) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13257199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13257199 - Dec 2016 (5 comments)
- chr15m 24d ago> Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry. Whatever the non-fiction equivalent of this is, maybe that's what smart, curious humans will do in the future. Human mathematicians will explore the findings of AI research to try to understand and explain it to other human mathematicians, in the same way biologists today try to explore and understand living organisms to explain them to other human biologists.
- reasonableklout 24d agoTimothy Gowers wrote some thoughts about how in order to do this effectively, we will need to preserve mathematical culture, which means changing some values of current academic mathematics: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/thoughts-about-the-leiden-declaration/#:~:text=Now%20imagine%20a%20slight%20variant%20of%20that%2C%20where%20AI%20does%20exist%20and%20because%20of%20it%20people%20are%20no%20longer%20motivated%20to%20put%20in%20the%20years%20of%20effort%20it%20takes%20to%20reach%20the%20level%20of%20expertise%20that%20a%20typical%20research%20mathematician%20has%20now https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/thoughts-about-the-l...