261–270 of 545 posts
Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.
"The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end" That's something AI companies would really want you to believe.
Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.
Ask yourself: is that really the world you want to live in? It's a world where people, all people, are sidelined.
I think the happy ending of that path is something like Idiocracy. And the more likely ending is something like "automated capitalist economy without the people, because the people couldn't compete."
I suspect that a lot about what we call being very intelligent is ultimately out-remembering people around us. I think of all the times in my software career when I did something that others considered very high performance, it either came down to either having more energy than others at tackling a problem they thought was more trouble than it was worth, or just bringing back random knowledge from previous jobs or se…
If a time traveler went back to 1600 and started spouting off about differential equations everyone would think them quite mad.
The simpler explanation is that a working memory is a requirement for intelligence, and a larger working memory will make you more intelligent. Hence the AI can in fact be more intelligent than the mathematician.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It used to be the same with assembly. Programmers complained the one generated by compilers was not pretty, but now in 99.999% of the cases, it does not matter because nobody look at it.
I beg to differ because a compiler is deterministic.
Would you personally vouch, at your job, for the importance of proper assembly coding standards?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea about the goal of mathematics being shared understanding seems to come at a convenient time. Mathematicians have never been known to communicate their ideas very clearly. Regardless, even that target llms will likely win - an llm will likely be more efficient at teaching me string theory than a professor in a room with 463 other students. The llm is the shared understanding.
I don't think "shared knowledge" means "shared knowledge between mathematicians and lay persons" (there is no much point in that, the same way a smartphone technician knows how a smartphone works deep down to the details but there is no big interest for society to have every lay persons being informed about it). I think it means "shared knowledge between mathematicians". And at this level, while there are anecdotical…
I get that there is a cultural benefit to keeping it alive. Just like we ideally want the languages represented at the universities.
But keeping humans in the loop does not appear to be necessary in order to call it science, and certainly not in order to have progress or dessiminate that progress.
I don't have a problem with people doing math. As long that we don't idiomatically hold on to that way of doing things.
I do, however, find it hard to belive that individual humans will play a big role from here and forward, in any scientific desciplines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People have told me I was smart since I was a kid, but I can't remember for shit. I had a thought when I was fairly young that the only reason I was (maybe, sometimes) outperforming others intellectually is that I was habitually compensating for my poor memory by working things out on the fly, while others could rely more on rote memorization. Anyway, takes all kinds I guess!
Same. I have bad "factual" memory, but very good "conceptual" memory. I might not remember exactly what someone told me, but I probably gathered a keyword, and a feeling and idea of what they told me. Almost like it takes what they said then compresses it into my mind in a nice little multi-key lookup table.
Someone with a better memory for ideas or concepts will be able to more quickly incorporate those into novel ideas or recall them when necessary to assist in solving a problem than someone with worse memory.
To those here challenging this with “yes but I’m smart and my memory is bad” - a) define smart and b) perhaps your memory for trivial things like life events, what you did two weeks ago on Monday or people’s names is bad, but I suspect your memory for “work” or problem solving is strong.
Another example I used to see (hear, rather) is how musicians rip off each others riffs and hooks without noticing (unintentionally - they claim), which I long suspected as simply “forgotten” riffs they heard in other songs that once they started playing themselves by chance they attributed to their own creativity. Creativity and intelligence are somewhat linked that way I suspect.
In any case, this all boils down to the same thing, you can think of yourself as a dynamic model made up of memories and biases to some degree, and your ability to store and recall useful information to solve problems increases what we call your intelligence.
I suspect that a lot about what we call being very intelligent is ultimately out-remembering people around us. I think of all the times in my software career when I did something that others considered very high performance, it either came down to either having more energy than others at tackling a problem they thought was more trouble than it was worth, or just bringing back random knowledge from previous jobs or se…
> I don't think I've had a truly original idea in my life. There’s no such thing as a truly original idea. It is all just combining A+B!
But often results are incremental and obvious.
But also if you jumped from A to A''''', nobody would understand why or what it relates to.
I suspect that a lot about what we call being very intelligent is ultimately out-remembering people around us. I think of all the times in my software career when I did something that others considered very high performance, it either came down to either having more energy than others at tackling a problem they thought was more trouble than it was worth, or just bringing back random knowledge from previous jobs or se…
People have told me I was smart since I was a kid, but I can't remember for shit. I had a thought when I was fairly young that the only reason I was (maybe, sometimes) outperforming others intellectually is that I was habitually compensating for my poor memory by working things out on the fly, while others could rely more on rote memorization. Anyway, takes all kinds I guess!