Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR benefit. Once the novelty passes, would Anthropic or OpenAI keep spending? And without mathematicians to ask the right questions and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue?
Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
51–60 of 145 posts
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. A principal player (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') in a major symphony orchestra in the United States makes $250k-400k a year. These are extremely competitive jobs and they are paid well. Certainly enough to live on if you wanted to. These people often teach, but not really because they need a "side-gig." If you as…
There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instrume…
> There are about twenty of these people, though.
In Germany every small town has a (state-funded) orchestra. I know someone who plays the violin in such an orchestra, he has a solid salary, big house etc.
He has a side gig, he has a quartet with some friends of his, but it's for fun, not for money.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern 'classical' music is a myth. In their day, classical composers were essentially pop performers. Women used to throw their undergarments at mozart... Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and ato…
> Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. As somebody with classical training and a brother in the industry, it pains me to read this misinformed opinion of yours. Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists, play pop songs, modern and experimental mus…
One thing I've observed is that a subset of that weird and interesting music is only possible due to the availability of musicians who have gone through the classical training. Having access to players who are capable of doing anything you ask, is what allows composers to be even more adventuresome, for two reasons. One is the sheer ability to play the stuff, and the other is the efficiency of doing it with a minimum of rehearsal.
The same has been true to some extent in the past for popular music. Up through maybe the 70s and even 80s, a lot of the instrumental parts for the "hits" were recorded by trained jazz musicians.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#54> Our society does not support classical musicians in the same way that we support ‘popular’ musicians. It really really does. Popular/rock/folk/classical musicians all earn much the same way now: a blend of teaching, occasional performance fees, functions performances like weddings and galas, music-related side-gigs (composition, arrangement and recording for commercial music), and non-music-related side gigs — teac…
>>> Elite soloists, maybe — but that is actually a pretty expensive life to live. I would be surprised if many of them risked a life where they had no other job.
Yes, they really did. Getting to that level requires training at an intensity that closes off the option of training for an alternative career.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#55Maybe in the future mathematicians could be the ones proposing different axiomatic foundations (e.g. ZF vs ZF + C vs ZF + C + CH vs ...) and then using computers to examine the consequences of these differing foundations?
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. A principal player (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') in a major symphony orchestra in the United States makes $250k-400k a year. These are extremely competitive jobs and they are paid well. Certainly enough to live on if you wanted to. These people often teach, but not really because they need a "side-gig." If you as…
There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instrume…
> Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living
Coming from Vienna, that can't be right. This city alone breaks that assumption with it's largest 4 orchestras combined.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instrume…
> Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living Coming from Vienna, that can't be right. This city alone breaks that assumption with it's largest 4 orchestras combined.
It is still a very small number compared to all that practice music, and which they could live of it.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#58Maybe in the future mathematicians could be the ones proposing different axiomatic foundations (e.g. ZF vs ZF + C vs ZF + C + CH vs ...) and then using computers to examine the consequences of these differing foundations?
I'm sure AI could contribute to this, but this is already a well-developed field of mathematics, and most of the consequences of additional axioms have been worked out. (The most productive hypothesis has been what's called "projective determinacy", if you're curious.)
Mathematicians have also gone in the opposite direction, and tried to work out what are the weakest foundations where different results hold. This is called "reverse mathematics".
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#59They didn't mention coders but my idea is to have Silicon habitats of programmers recreating nineties professional programming on Pentium PCs in dimly lit cubicles. Tourists shuffle by watching live coding like watching a blacksmith at a Colonial Williamsburg.
> Silicon habitats of programmers recreating nineties professional programming on Pentium PCs in dimly lit cubicles
God I miss those days.
Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
#60We are largely having a reckoning with whether a discipline is the process or the outcome. Music didn't enter the conservatory so much as the relative interest in various styles have changed over time. I get that the author was implying that by talking about pop music, but what was music doing before Mozart came around? Every field is having this existential crisis right now, from art to math. Especially in art, the…
>? Especially in art, the anti-AI hate mostly reduces to arguing that art is the process not the outcome.
That is not my objection to AI art at all. The value of art for me is that somebody has an idea to express and they're trying to communicate it to me. That's totally absent from AI-generated material. I'm not categorically opposed to AI, but my interest in automatically generated content tailored to indulge my personal taste is absolutely zero.