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The Dark Night of Mathematics

kirwinhampshire.substack.com

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Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#311

Post by KirinDave »

Jtarii wrote: post #99
d_burfoot wrote: post #92

Every single knowledge worker is going to face this kind of crisis. It will be worse for people who cared deeply about their craft, but the crisis will have the same shape. The way through is to change the way you relate to your work, and to appreciate the fact that you can now produce far more output. Mathematicians should realize: instead of spending decades on individual theorems, you can now create whole new subf…

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…

Funny thing about diffusion systems: they can't paint.

You're not talking about the joy of painting, because no machine is here to take that away. That still exists, it is still joyful. Likewise, exploring mathematics for oneself will still exist. It will still be joyful and surprising.

What you are discounting is what the article actually admitted with all the job talk. What you're saying here as well: "if we structure society around compensated labor and machines are better at the labor than my high status job is about to be farmed out to a machine."

Firstly, yes. Welcome to the proletariat? Secondly, maybe this isn't a reasonable principle to organize society around. Maybe if the only jobs left are "one of the 95 ultra wealthy tastemakeres" or "spiritually destitute model babysitter" then we should consider an alternative organizational strategy.

This is not to say I'm yearning for neo-Stalin to unmake the data center. I'm yearning for a world closer to one where labor for survival is a historical lesson.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#312

Post by KirinDave »

majormajor wrote: post #194
satvikpendem wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ask a miner or house builder how fun their job is The average person on a residential job site I've talked to has looked and sounded like they're having as much fun as the average software dev. And none of them have said stuff like "people on my team have confided that they cry every night because the higher-level management keeps screaming about the project not being done" like I've heard at from folks, say, certa…

That's because Software as a job has become a joyless death march to poop out casino flavored adware for 99% of the industry? Go launch the Temu app and imagine being on the team that builds it.

I could imagine a desperate person with a family writing that app. I can't imagine anyone else with light behind their eyes doing it.

This has even been the startup world (even downstream of LLMs!) for some time.

The people in deep morning tend to be the people who have managed to avoid this outcome, or deceive themselves about its inevitability.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#313

Post by hollerith »

compiler-devel wrote: post #90

I can’t help but confess some sense of satisfaction with the upheaval described in the post. Many proofs and textbooks laden with statements like “without loss of generality”, “immediately”, or “obviously” are followed by anything but. AI now counters that streak of smug by toppling some long held theorems and it’s fun to watch.

AI hasn't "toppled" (or found any mistakes in) any theorems, at least not any enjoying any consensus among mathematicians.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#314

Post by Arun2009 »

I can't speak for those who want to discover new mathematics, but for people like me who want to merely study existing areas of mathematics that are of interest to us, LLMs are a godsend. I can engage ChatGPT or Grok in a conversation about topics that I am trying to learn. I can ask them questions, clarify what to read next, and get overviews of topics. I know that they are not infallible, but more often than not, they considerably illuminate a topic far more than just textbooks. It's like having a highly educated personal tutor for next to no cost at all - an invaluable resource!

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#315

Post by MetroWind »

I don't know... I read it as another mathematician thinking they are so mighty and different from any other workers out there whose job was slightly touched (not even begin to be "replaced") by automation.

Maybe he should just touch grass.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#316

Post by jibal »

nine_k wrote: post #217
echoangle wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Food is not meant to be enjoyable, it's meant to nourish. But by a fortunate coincidence it may also be tasty. Im pretty sure the taste is an evolutionary indicator of nutritional value (we now know how to cheat to make food that tastes really good but isn’t really healthy). But it’s not really an accident that some food tastes good.

The fact that certain aspects of work feel enjoyable is also not random. It usually indicates an elevated level of fitness for the job, a higher chance of success for a given phenotype / genotype. I can imagine that Mr Ludd had been enjoying the process of forming a complex pattern on fabric before Mr Jacquard's automatic loom made his skill irrelevant.

You said that food is not meant to be enjoyable and that it's coincidental that it's tasty -- this is flat out wrong, so your attempt to argue by analogy (always a suspect process) was bogus. And your "something would be lost" is a strawman from left field that actually undermines your argument. (BTW, I enjoy Huel and they make an effort to make the taste and texture pleasurable. And people often combine kale with fruit to make tasty shakes.)

Work, unlike food, is a social construct, and while it's no doubt a bit more complex, the statement that "Jobs are not generally meant to be enjoyable (although that is a benefit if so), they are meant to get work done" is factually correct. Because work generally is "work, not fun", people get paid to do it, with competitive salaries and perks.

I won't respond further to your very bad arguments (or the absurdly out of touch elitist arguments from others here that miners enjoy their work as much as software developers do ... I'm retired and still do software development for fun; no miner does the same).

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#317

Post by Nevermark »

2snakes wrote: post #291
Nevermark wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Biological computationalism disagrees with substrate independence. Don't leave me hanging, post citations! I welcome fringe theories when confident statements are followed by the conclusive evidence they imply. If that isn't possible, send chocolate. But, yes, I can count. And I am comfortable with natural forms, all the way to asymptotic limits. However, I don't put up with uncomputable/undefinable reals. Are you…

Um, functional computationalism is scifi, not physics in re consciousness. It assigns the same level of reality to written numeric patterns of a dog as to a real dog. And your self for that matter. How can you prove numbers exist physically? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342... “Fringe theory” is just a knee jerk authoritarianism for method in re knowledge claims. Classical functionalism is…

None of which addresses what happen when self-engineered cognitive forms adapt millions of times faster, than biologically evolving cognition.

I would be happy if you tried again and did have a point that was relevant to the practical impact.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#318

Post by 2snakes »

Nevermark wrote: post #317
2snakes wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, functional computationalism is scifi, not physics in re consciousness. It assigns the same level of reality to written numeric patterns of a dog as to a real dog. And your self for that matter. How can you prove numbers exist physically? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342... “Fringe theory” is just a knee jerk authoritarianism for method in re knowledge claims. Classical functionalism is…

None of which addresses what happen when self-engineered cognitive forms adapt millions of times faster, than biologically evolving cognition. I would be happy if you tried again and did have a point that was relevant to the practical impact.

it is just your imagination that has been captured in scifi extrapolations. Humans are the ones that learn millions of times faster lol, based on how little information they need. computational bandwidth for statistical word patterns versus sample efficiency.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#319

Post by budsniffer952 »

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…

Oh, now I get it: you were one of those meme IT guys that everyone hated working with but had to tolerate. You made sure to hold your skills and ability over your coworker's heads.

And now fewer people have to tolerate your attitude, and they are taking full advantage of it. That sucks, should have figured it out earlier I guess!

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#320

Post by budsniffer952 »

pillefitz wrote: post #94
bonoboTP wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The "only value" is the one that people decide to give you, based on their choice. This can be coordinated via taxation and redistribution, but it's still paid from someone to you. Someone has to decide that you doing this thing is something that they like so much that they pay you a token, which you can use to redeem useful work from other citizens, such as repairing you car, or remodeling your bathroom. Many ma…

Not everything in life is a transactional zero-sum game. We as society can afford people to work on beauty, without anything else in return. I'd even argue that this should be one of mankind's ultimate goals.

No one is stopping you from writing every single line of code manually.
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