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Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

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Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#201
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cases where it's possible to prove that counterexamples must exist, without identifying a specific example. This kind of proof provides more insight into the problem than simply finding a counterexample.

Constructivists would surely disagree!

As a constructivist: we don't disagree :) We just distinguish between "don't disagree" and "agree." Constructive mathematics says it's fine if you want to claim that there's not no counterexample -- you just can't use that in a situation that demands an actual counterexample (like an algorithm that produces a result). This tends to guide people towards looking for results that don't require this kind of indirection, since they apply more broadly and in more kinds of logics -- orthodox constructive results are kind of a lowest common denominator of consistent truth and remain broadly compatible with most axioms, while nonconstructive results often fail in particular models. Which seems like a pretty sane stance to me, but maybe I'm too thoroughly indoctrinated to see how unreasonable it is :P

(Note that this is about excluded middle. There ARE constructive logics with interpretations of excluded middle, e.g. some forms of classical linear logic, but they do not play as nicely with other logics. Constructivists often reject even weak forms of choice for largely the same reasons--there are some forms of choice that are constructively valid in some logics, but these results often fail to hold true in more conventional logics. And the same is true for a whole host of related notions that proof assistants like Rocq reject by default, propositional extensionality (which says that two proofs of the same proposition are equal) and function extensionality (which says functions are equal whenever their results are equal on all the arguments in their domain -- which might seem obviously acceptable until you realize that it's false in most programming languages!) being prominent but much less discussed examples. It's all about remaining broadly compatible with lots of different types of reasoning, not because people think the reasoning is invalid per se).

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#202
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cases where it's possible to prove that counterexamples must exist, without identifying a specific example. This kind of proof provides more insight into the problem than simply finding a counterexample.

Constructivists would surely disagree!

In a constructive system, it’s often possible to refute a universal proposition without exhibiting a counterexample, by proving that the proposition implies falsehood.

The constructivist will still object that you can’t, from that, conclude that “…therefore a counterexample must exist,” without actually providing a counterexample. But the general principle I was describing still applies - a proof often gives you insight that an example by itself doesn’t.

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many graduate students view themselves as ethical beings, not machines that "produce meaningful output," and everybody here knows (useful) LLMs are indefensibly evil because of stolen training data and enormous environmental impact.

This is a very close minded definition of evil. What is the threshold of environmental impact before something is evil and its use indefensible? What level of copyright violation will send us to hell?

I didn't give a definition of evil, so "close-minded definition" is just a dishonest way of expressing that you subjectively disagree with me.

Likewise with trying to make me judge an objective threshold for pollution. It really should be that any polluter needs to morally justify their actions. I find "mostly illusory productivity improvements in white-collar employment" to be an especially indefensible reason for firing up new natural gas generators. Let alone the real motivation being "billionaires want more money." The level of pollution from training and deploying generative AI is simply evil.

And your last question is just pure cynicism. The real sin you're committing here is contemptuously dismissing ethical concerns out of hand.

I assume you use LLMs. I don't. It truly seems like using LLMs makes people stupider and more unethical. Some cognitive work should not be outsourced, especially not to a mindless stochastic parrot.

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#204
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably part of why machines are doing so well at counterexamples. They have no aesthetic commitment to the conjecture and no embarrassment about producing something ugly

They're trained on human data. I would expect them to emulate human biases as closely as possible.

No, they are not. Specifically, this was a method based specifically on learning from scratch, like most modern AI models.

Why do you think it's called Alpha ZERO?

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#205
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably part of why machines are doing so well at counterexamples. They have no aesthetic commitment to the conjecture and no embarrassment about producing something ugly

That's not why. It's because counterexamples are easy compared to proofs which require new mathematics. GenAI is great at combining existing things in new ways (interpolation). It's terrible at creating new things from scratch (extrapolation).

This is the wrong way to think about mathematical (or any other kind of) creativity in my opinion. In the extremely high-dimensional space of "ideas" (whatever that means) there are almost certainly profound ideas that are the interpolation of existing knowledge, i.e. the curse of dimensionality. It's not at all clear that you need to extrapolate from existing knowledge to be creative.

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trained on human data. I would expect them to emulate human biases as closely as possible.

No, they are not. Specifically, this was a method based specifically on learning from scratch, like most modern AI models. Why do you think it's called Alpha ZERO?

Programmers love to give things names that they think sound cool

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#207
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably part of why machines are doing so well at counterexamples. They have no aesthetic commitment to the conjecture and no embarrassment about producing something ugly

That's not why. It's because counterexamples are easy compared to proofs which require new mathematics. GenAI is great at combining existing things in new ways (interpolation). It's terrible at creating new things from scratch (extrapolation).

>GenAI is great at combining existing things in new ways (interpolation). It's terrible at creating new things from scratch (extrapolation).

I think you believe a fallacy about how human cognition works if you think we actually do something different than interpolation

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#208
Isn't this exactly what we should expect/hope for?

At least initially, chess computers were better than humans not because they were more creative or inspired, but because they thought harder/deeper. That's exactly the sort of "find counterexamples to this if they exist" work that we're seeing here.

Eventually computer chess got to the point where humans look at some moves and say, "That's an amazing, inspired move. That's not a 'bot' move at all, I can learn from this." We're just not there yet with AI/math in general.

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#209
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constructivists would surely disagree!

In a constructive system, it’s often possible to refute a universal proposition without exhibiting a counterexample, by proving that the proposition implies falsehood. The constructivist will still object that you can’t, from that, conclude that “…therefore a counterexample must exist,” without actually providing a counterexample. But the general principle I was describing still applies - a proof often gives you insi…

I think the constructive position is basically that people's entire issue with lack of excluded middle being absent is just that people like being able to say "P" instead of "~~P" because it sounds better, considering you can prove ~~P for all the classical propositions that use excluded middle.

Re: Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not. Specifically, this was a method based specifically on learning from scratch, like most modern AI models. Why do you think it's called Alpha ZERO?

Programmers love to give things names that they think sound cool

That's nice.

It's called Alpha Zero specifically because it was trained from scratch - zero, not on human data.

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