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The Dark Night of Mathematics

kirwinhampshire.substack.com

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Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#221

Post by deepburner »

I'm no ai maximalist, quite the opposite in fact, and I have a great deal of sympathy for the author as a person from a similar trade. However perhaps he is being overly emotional in his response. Purists have been decrying the defilement of the trade for millennia - "but this time it's different!" no. you think the purest form of math is the one you were born into because you didn't know any other way. people were doing math before the abacus and will continue to do so afterwards. here a hot take even: there's no finite amount of math, if you really cared about math you would be excited about all the math you could uncover. the computer solving the jacobian conjecture isn't fulfilling enough for you? maybe start thinking about what this discovery implies then!

Besides, doing pure math as a vocation was and still is an incredibly niche and privileged profession that 1-O(e^-n) of the population had access to anyways. If anything we will need more mathematicians, more engineers and more physicists to keep up with the increased throughput. Maybe journals will finally start EMPLOYING (gasp!) some referees instead of relying on free labor from broke graduate students even!

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#222

Post by chr15m »

> You are a helpless onlooker. Before you a channel through which humans have accessed the ineffable and sacred for thousands of years is being sealed for eternity.

Although I love these new tools this is pretty much exactly how I feel about hand written code. I miss that addiction viscerally and spirituality. I don't want to go back but I also wish I could. I wish I could go back to typing basic at a glowing orange Apple IIe CRT, but I can't.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#223

Post by dsign »

There's often an issue of perspective. Imagine you visit an 11th century monk in the occupation of copying manuscripts by candle light. This is a guy that spends long cold winters hunched over parchment, using sticks with god knows what passes for ink to copy and illuminate beautiful texts. You tell him that you will buy manuscripts from him, as long as they are typeset in Times New Roman regular, 12pt, and please use this laptop for that. Also you are setting shop with all sort of modern niceties next to the convent, including heating fans and desk electric lamps. Of course the monk will be heart-broken and incredibly grumpy at the loss of time to practice the craft he loves, which is writing and illuminating by hand. But those heating fans are something alright.

We already have desk lamps and heating fans, and many other things which make daily life convenient. But if you hand me a piece of paper (or better, a notebook), I'll fill it just enumerating the amount of diseases I want gone from the world. At least in theory, we know the laws of physics and how things are put together, and we know many of the impossibles of today are simply due to extreme scarcity and cost of qualified intellectual labor.

Maybe what we need is a shift from extreme pride on a specific set of technical skills, to priding ourselves in understanding enough of the world to solve some of its problems.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#224

Post by samrus »

dsign wrote: post #223

There's often an issue of perspective. Imagine you visit an 11th century monk in the occupation of copying manuscripts by candle light. This is a guy that spends long cold winters hunched over parchment, using sticks with god knows what passes for ink to copy and illuminate beautiful texts. You tell him that you will buy manuscripts from him, as long as they are typeset in Times New Roman regular, 12pt, and please us…

There is also an economic aspect though. Thats where the ludditism comes in

If the monk thinks that this laptop means he wont get as much income (assuming selling manuscripts was their primary income) because of a race to the bottom with other monks, then rhey will start worrying about how theyre gonna afford to keep the chapel running. Where theyll get the money to pay the electric bill for all these niceties

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#225

Post by vouaobrasil »

satvikpendem wrote: post #148
Jtarii wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creation is the actually enjoyable part. Taking a helicopter to the top of Everest is not as rewarding as climbing the mountain. You are completely discrediting the joy humans derive from actually -doing- the work, and not just, telling someone else to do the work. There is a reason artists hate AI, its because they enjoy the actual act of painting, like mathematicians enjoy the act of proving theorems and progra…

Jobs are not generally meant to be enjoyable (although that is a benefit if so), they are meant to get work done. It's funny seeing office workers here on HN have this sort of opinion and contrasting that with blue collar workers, ask a miner or house builder how fun their job is.

So does that mean we should make work even less enjoyable still?

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#226

Post by vouaobrasil »

tidojo wrote: post #108
Jtarii wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creation is the actually enjoyable part. Taking a helicopter to the top of Everest is not as rewarding as climbing the mountain. You are completely discrediting the joy humans derive from actually -doing- the work, and not just, telling someone else to do the work. There is a reason artists hate AI, its because they enjoy the actual act of painting, like mathematicians enjoy the act of proving theorems and progra…

you can’t climb to the moon, you need rockets for that. In the hands of great researchers, AI will accelerate and propel human knowledge far beyond what we could achieve with pencil and paper alone.

> In the hands of great researchers, AI will accelerate and propel human knowledge far beyond what we could achieve with pencil and paper alone.

Did you ever think that the pursuit of knowledge might be not just producing it but discovering it as a collective human effort? Putting to much mechanization in it kills the joy of it.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#227

Post by vouaobrasil »

nestorD wrote: post #200
marifjeren wrote: post #136

Grateful for this essay. Made me feel seen. Someone said: > No one is stopping you from doing what you enjoy. But that's wrong. LLMs are creating an environment in which some things are no longer enjoyable. For example there is less joy to be had in learning a programming language in 2026 than there was in 2016, because there is less utility in it now.

> For example there is less joy to be had in learning a programming language in 2026 than there was in 2016, because there is less utility in it now. I... disagree. The joy I get from learning a programming language does not come from knowing that it is useful. Rather, it comes from engaging with its abstractions and figuring out the associated mental puzzles. On a related note, I recently realized that I am barely w…

> I... disagree. The joy I get from learning a programming language does not come from knowing that it is useful. Rather, it comes from engaging with its abstractions and figuring out the associated mental puzzles.

Fact is though, a LOT of people derive joy from showing their creations to other people and others finding utility or awe in it because they created it with their hands. The fact that a few of us can sidestep that does not mean it's a general phenomenon.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#228

Post by vouaobrasil »

satvikpendem wrote: post #150
marifjeren wrote: post #136

Grateful for this essay. Made me feel seen. Someone said: > No one is stopping you from doing what you enjoy. But that's wrong. LLMs are creating an environment in which some things are no longer enjoyable. For example there is less joy to be had in learning a programming language in 2026 than there was in 2016, because there is less utility in it now.

Joy should not come from utility but its fundamentality of enjoyment. I still learn different programming languages because it's fun to do so, so sounds like it's a you problem.

> Joy should not come from utility but its fundamentality of enjoyment. I still learn different programming languages because it's fun to do so, so sounds like it's a you problem.

I learn because it's fun but PART of that learning also comes from having an environment to show off my new skills. I think a lot of people downplay this but it's inevitable and AI is ruining that environment.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#229

Post by vouaobrasil »

jostylr wrote: post #63

As a mathematics person, I find this at odds with my views. I know the current regime rewards new mathematical discoveries for professional advancement, but that is a job thing, one which can be altered by the powers that be. To me investigating mathematics is fun whether it is new to the world or not. The complaint is similar to lamenting how everywhere has already been visited and there is nothing to be done other…

> As for squeezing in the time to do mathematics if the paying jobs disappear, there is a good chance we will have a world of plenty very shortly.

That's laughable. We will NEVER have a world of plenty. If there is a lot more plenty, there will be a lot more people who will want a disproportionate share of it.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#230

Post by vouaobrasil »

Athanase000 wrote: post #81

When I was in mathematics, reading other people's work was always more rewarding to me than doing my own. I would spend years on a question to get some progress, versus spending a few days or weeks reading a paper to enjoy something new. I understand not everyone is like me but I really welcome the omniscient mathematician machine people are predicting. I can't wait to ask all the questions I care about.

> I understand not everyone is like me but I really welcome the omniscient mathematician machine people are predicting. I can't wait to ask all the questions I care about.

To be honest, if a machine could prove the Riemann hypothesis and explain it to me, I wouldn't even care. I care about math because it's more of a way to express beauty and I find math interesting because it expresses the souls of those who create it. Just knowing the answer becomes boring after a while.

Most people are like that. Maybe 1% just care about pure answers.

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