reese

featherless doer of math

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@DmitryRybin1 I think it will certainly be an amazing time for *math itself*, as we are already seeing. I am still uncertain of what kind of time it will be for *mathematicians*

[reese @Right_Inverse]

it is difficult to not be disheartened by the recent progress of AI in math. I am starting a 4-year postdoc in the fall. it is not difficult to imagine that I won't be able to recognize the profession of "mathematics" by the end of it.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@HumanClanker definitely the attention (and maybe funding) will come. I'm worried more about the day-to-day life of a mathematician working within this system. and thank you for the well wishes!

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@tejassaboo i think that's fine, it's not like doing a PhD locks you in to pursue a life of academia. a postdoc on the other hand....

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@guojing0 maybe, but I don't think that can be relied upon to continue on the scale of, say, decades

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@tamanokal i don't know about "easy", but definitely my field hasn't seen as much progress as others. I don't know of a reason to expect this status to last for the rest of my career, though, which is the timeline i am thinking on

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@chrisinthebooks @RdlrtM86333 it's not a "who's who" to cite someone whose work you are using. it seems like you believe people just put in citations for fun, with no purpose. maybe it is that way in your field (what is it, by the way?) If so, I am sorry. In math we have different standards.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@chrisinthebooks @RdlrtM86333 imagine the opposite; you prove a theorem. suppose 1 person uses that theorem and cites you. then 100 more people use your theorem, but they all *read* the theorem statement from the first person. under your system, 101 people used your theorem, but you received 1 cite. fair?

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@chrisinthebooks @RdlrtM86333 "Do you really believe that anyone is consistently following this rule?" Um yes. I do. Maybe this is field dependent, but that is the standard in math. You cite the original author of the proof to give them credit. It would make no sense to cite anyone else.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@chrisinthebooks @RdlrtM86333 If person X proves a theorem, and I read about their theorem from person Y's paper, then use that theorem in my own work, why should person X not receive credit for that? It's still their theorem.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@chrisinthebooks @RdlrtM86333 in this case, the purpose of the citation is to give credit to the original author who proved the theorem being used. that seems fairly obvious; we want to credit people for their work when we use them.

[Thomas Bloom @thomasfbloom]

@AcerFur What I'm learning from all this is that pure maths has, by comparison, vastly better paper writing practices than other sciences!

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@s_scardapane @nlpandstuff case 1 can be lumped in under "typos", case 2 is more akin to data fabrication and scientific fraud

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@s_scardapane @nlpandstuff i think representing the case 2 as "using AI for editing" is a big rewrite. Case 2 is indicative not that AI was used to "edit", but was used to produce parts of the document wholesale, and *with no oversight*. how can that possibly be treated the same as case 1?

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@DJCrabhat @TedPavlic @WKCosmo @arxiv being an academic is a privilege, and comes with responsibility. if you aren't careful/detail-oriented enough to ensure you don't hallucinate a citation, maybe you should find another profession.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@DJCrabhat @TedPavlic @WKCosmo @arxiv the person you're replying to seems hell-bent on dragging down the standards of academia until we can expect nothing of anyone. it reminds me a lot of how admins talk about students as if they have no agency/ability. it is quite disgusting.

[Steve McCormick @Quasilocal]

Hot take: If you don't even want to read the paper once, maybe don't put your name on it.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@s_scardapane @nlpandstuff in case 2, we now must question every scientific claim; was it actually verified by the author, or was it simply copy-pasted from an LLM and not even read? Perhaps the entire paper is directly LLM-produced, and everything is in question. that is the scientific difference.

[reese @Right_Inverse]

@s_scardapane @nlpandstuff imagine the two cases were not isolated, but were actually rampant throughout the paper. in case 1, you can just ignore all the extra comments; the paper still functions as a scientific paper, and is just a little bit annoying to read. (it should still be avoided obviously)