The Dark Night of Mathematics • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#31

Post by koito17 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

iahds9uasd wrote: post #25

zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

Customers? It's math. This is like a comment a golem built to raise the S&P 500 would write.

> This is like a comment a golem built to raise the S&P 500 would write.

That's neoliberalism for you.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#32

Post by turing_curious » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #16

zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

> But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers. Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they…

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Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#33

Post by Arodex » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

robotpepi wrote: post #19

zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

Exactly! I have some many colleagues who typically say that they do "math for the beauty" while holding permanent research positions funded by the state.

Progress is made by these people - including progress you rely on heavily as a programmer, such as cryptography. Not by the industry.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#34

Post by stefangordon » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

They are concerned mathematicians are obsolete and seem to be unaware that super intelligence means humans are obsolete.

You need to be thinking about an entirely different form of life for all of humanity, happening in the very near future. Focusing on one specific field that may be earlier in the obsolescence chain is a distraction.

Merit based society based on intelligence or work of nearly any kind is about to cease existence.

For some reason it feels to me that this should make mathematicians feels better. :)

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#35

Post by jckt » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#36

Post by parpfish » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

Same as programming, I feel like the underlying tension is between math lovers who want new math to be done vs those who want to be the ones to DO the new math.

Both groups love math, but the later group is in a real bind because they have confounded their career with their hobbies/passions.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#37

Post by boinkboink78912 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

iahds9uasd wrote: post #28

boinkboink78912 wrote: post #21

The idea of ordering theorems like doordash is funny, kudos to the author for that :-) Anyway, your "spiritual journey" doesn't matter. We'll automate mathematics because we can, because it's useful. Don't like it? Well, should have not chosen a capitalist economic system that rewards scientific progress so much.

I don't think the author of the article chose what world to be born into.

I meant all of humanity, not just the author. We, as humans, have collectively made our beds. It's time to sleep in them.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#38

Post by kevinalexbrown » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

It’s ok to mourn the loss of a frontier and also support the thing driving that loss. The way it looks, the generation of mathematical results will become less and less of a human endeavor. There’s a way that’s sad even if on the whole it is a huge leap for society. This was a great article, and I applaud the author for acknowledging this head on.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#39

Post by vslira » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #16

zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

> But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers. Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they…

The issue seems to be with the expectation that personal enrichment and subjective aesthetic appreciation should be socially instead privately funded

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#40

Post by turing_curious » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

boinkboink78912 wrote: post #21

The idea of ordering theorems like doordash is funny, kudos to the author for that :-) Anyway, your "spiritual journey" doesn't matter. We'll automate mathematics because we can, because it's useful. Don't like it? Well, should have not chosen a capitalist economic system that rewards scientific progress so much.

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