3 ms·

to be honest it is difficult to discuss with someone who doesn't even try to understand the basics of basic science (and how it compares with _applied_ sicence)

to be honest it is difficult to discuss with someone who doesn't even try to understand the basics of basic science (and how it compares with _applied_ sicence), yet talks with so much confidence. even the solution to navier stokes won't have an immediate practical effect...

eru 16d ago
Huh? The resolution of Navier Stokes won't have much of an effect, yes. There's lots of problems like that. Eg if we prove P != NP, that won't have much of an immediate effect either. However, there's also plenty of problems whose solutions will have practical effects, some even immediate.
- fn-mote 16d ago
  > there's also plenty of problems whose solutions will have practical effects, some even immediate. Sure. But do you know which ones they are? Or do we discover later that they were valuable? Your argument would be 100x more convincing if you gave an example. I will try: a super-compressor that made my 100Mb web app into a 5 kb binary bundle would immediately speed up my work. Can/will AI move human understanding or machine capabilities on this front? A browser without security vulnerabilities would be wonderful. I think LLMs are already helping with this a lot, but a lot of complexity remains. A right to privacy in society would be amazing (see the UN Declararion of Human Rights). AI is eroding this. So I tried but I’m not very impressed with my list. Do you have one?
  - eru 16d ago
    > A right to privacy in society would be amazing (see the UN Declararion of Human Rights). AI is eroding this. This has nothing to do with mathematics. > So I tried but I’m not very impressed with my list. Do you have one? Look into operations research. Or narrower, you can look at improvements in linear programming solvers and mixed integer linear programming. (These are examples of areas that have seen mathematical improvements in applications recently. I don't think good AI has been around for long enough to contribute much to progress there, yet.)

eru 16d ago

Huh? The resolution of Navier Stokes won't have much of an effect, yes. There's lots of problems like that. Eg if we prove P != NP, that won't have much of an immediate effect either. However, there's also plenty of problems whose solutions will have practical effects, some even immediate.

fn-mote 16d ago
> there's also plenty of problems whose solutions will have practical effects, some even immediate. Sure. But do you know which ones they are? Or do we discover later that they were valuable? Your argument would be 100x more convincing if you gave an example. I will try: a super-compressor that made my 100Mb web app into a 5 kb binary bundle would immediately speed up my work. Can/will AI move human understanding or machine capabilities on this front? A browser without security vulnerabilities would be wonderful. I think LLMs are already helping with this a lot, but a lot of complexity remains. A right to privacy in society would be amazing (see the UN Declararion of Human Rights). AI is eroding this. So I tried but I’m not very impressed with my list. Do you have one?
- eru 16d ago
  > A right to privacy in society would be amazing (see the UN Declararion of Human Rights). AI is eroding this. This has nothing to do with mathematics. > So I tried but I’m not very impressed with my list. Do you have one? Look into operations research. Or narrower, you can look at improvements in linear programming solvers and mixed integer linear programming. (These are examples of areas that have seen mathematical improvements in applications recently. I don't think good AI has been around for long enough to contribute much to progress there, yet.)