jejx

math person, quant, etc

[jejx @xobnu]

@brianchau57 do you dispute this claim? https://t.co/IaLXClV4NR

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Amodei’s 2017 “Big Blob of Compute” was very much not a consensus view among VCs during the first Trump administration but he was right.

Obviously doesn’t prove he’s right about everything else. But that’s who was right ten years ago.

[jejx @xobnu]

@octonion At what odds would you bet a nominal amount? I'd be happy to take the under at 40%

[jejx @xobnu]

@insurrealist @nihilunbounded Could you rephrase? I couldn't parse that sentence

[jejx @xobnu]

@AGamburd18746 @wokecisally @nihilunbounded i can't tell from your comments if you have substantive disagreements with what i'm saying. do you?

[jejx @xobnu]

@Viirush @wokecisally @nihilunbounded "need to figure out things ourselves..." -- agree
"there's a reason students..." -- agree

but I don't think it implies the conclusion "comes at the cost...".

understanding deeply should help mathematicians point the proof-gen-machines more effectively at things they care about

[jejx @xobnu]

@AGamburd18746 @wokecisally @nihilunbounded do you disagree?

[jejx @xobnu]

@Viirush @wokecisally @nihilunbounded "Doing so comes at the cost of personal understanding" - I wouldn't be shocked if it turns out to be true, but currently this is not what I expect. I'm not sure how I'd resolve this disagreement though (short of waiting a bit and revisiting how it has broadly played out)

[jejx @xobnu]

@nihilunbounded lol some of my closest coworkers don't even drink coffee. quant is just nerds now, the coke finance people mostly work elsewhere

[jejx @xobnu]

@wokecisally @nihilunbounded i expect "reasonable" people to cluster somewhere around this stance when the dust settles https://t.co/jJmCDNcHmW

[Daniel Litt @littmath]

I think of my goal as a mathematician as something like: to better understand the fundamental concepts “shape” and “number,” and to convey that understanding to others. I think this is a valuable goal for many reasons. The primary reason discussed on social media is the (admittedly slow, but I think very real) diffusion of mathematical ideas into technologies that better our lives. There are others, though: production of human capital (which plays some role in this diffusion), and diffusion of mathematical understanding into culture, for example. It is not obvious to me that even the bare technological need for mathematics can be filled without human experts; this seems to me to be a tricky question of institutional design.

For me the most compelling reason is simply that we feel a pressing need to understand. While deep understanding is largely limited to professional mathematicians, the existence of mathematicians and of the institutions they make up is a huge part of what makes mathematical understanding available to those who want it. I believe that the capacity to understand mathematics (and the universe as a whole) is part of a good life, and we should try to provide people with a good life.

We operationalize the goal of understanding in a number of ways, problem-solving and theorem-proving among them. My own research is oriented around certain open questions that I believe measure our lack of understanding (of numbers, shapes and so on), and I think resolving those is genuinely important. I would welcome a solution with any provenance. But I think proof is only a measure of progress—what actually matters (for technology, human capital, culture, a good life) is a bit harder to get at.

Crucially it is very hard to measure progress—plausibly theorem-proving is used in large part because it is easy to measure rather than because it is a perfect proxy for what we care about. I worry a bit that we may automate many easy-to-measure things without automating the correlates we care about for which they are proxies. This presents a clear problem for the design of institutions aimed at achieving progress.

In part because I think problem-solving is a proxy for something else, I don’t feel that my goal of understanding “shape” and “number” is particularly threatened by a machine that is good at problem solving. I expect that machine to be a substantial boon, instead. Ultimately I think we will operationalize mathematical progress in better ways. But how to do this is a difficult question and I think many on here are too quick to dismiss concerns about it.

[jejx @xobnu]

@wokecisally @nihilunbounded at least me, but I'd guess:
1. right now, a small majority of the set of people with math PhDs
2. a larger majority, a year from now

I have some uncertainty about the latter because this really could blow up into a massively polarizing brainworm

[jejx @xobnu]

@nihilunbounded sure, but it's a similar claim about what being a mathematician means, and stands in contrast to other (imo more solid) stances such as Daniel Litt's.

as for the finance thing, I assume it's meant to be a tailored insult? but feels unnecessary

[Daniel Litt @littmath]

I think of my goal as a mathematician as something like: to better understand the fundamental concepts “shape” and “number,” and to convey that understanding to others. I think this is a valuable goal for many reasons. The primary reason discussed on social media is the (admittedly slow, but I think very real) diffusion of mathematical ideas into technologies that better our lives. There are others, though: production of human capital (which plays some role in this diffusion), and diffusion of mathematical understanding into culture, for example. It is not obvious to me that even the bare technological need for mathematics can be filled without human experts; this seems to me to be a tricky question of institutional design.

For me the most compelling reason is simply that we feel a pressing need to understand. While deep understanding is largely limited to professional mathematicians, the existence of mathematicians and of the institutions they make up is a huge part of what makes mathematical understanding available to those who want it. I believe that the capacity to understand mathematics (and the universe as a whole) is part of a good life, and we should try to provide people with a good life.

We operationalize the goal of understanding in a number of ways, problem-solving and theorem-proving among them. My own research is oriented around certain open questions that I believe measure our lack of understanding (of numbers, shapes and so on), and I think resolving those is genuinely important. I would welcome a solution with any provenance. But I think proof is only a measure of progress—what actually matters (for technology, human capital, culture, a good life) is a bit harder to get at.

Crucially it is very hard to measure progress—plausibly theorem-proving is used in large part because it is easy to measure rather than because it is a perfect proxy for what we care about. I worry a bit that we may automate many easy-to-measure things without automating the correlates we care about for which they are proxies. This presents a clear problem for the design of institutions aimed at achieving progress.

In part because I think problem-solving is a proxy for something else, I don’t feel that my goal of understanding “shape” and “number” is particularly threatened by a machine that is good at problem solving. I expect that machine to be a substantial boon, instead. Ultimately I think we will operationalize mathematical progress in better ways. But how to do this is a difficult question and I think many on here are too quick to dismiss concerns about it.

[jejx @xobnu]

@nihilunbounded incredible. no notes

[jejx @xobnu]

@doomslide Would you wager at even odds that over 5% of the original-non-Lean statements turn out to be "useless" by October 1 2027? My best guess isn't radically different, but I'd be interested in taking the other side for some token amount if we can hash out what useless means

[jejx @xobnu]

@basedjensen irregular is indeed unrelated to HF, could you please correct your tweet?

[Byrne Hobart @ByrneHobart]

Looking at the current debates about Anthropic makes me feel guilty for not keeping up with some academic domains. I honestly had no idea that we'd solved consciousness, and determined which substrates can and can't support it. Thought that one was more up in the air.

[jejx @xobnu]

@inerati @AndyMasley i hate that he dogmatic anti-AI consciousness people force me to become a sand apologist

[jejx @xobnu]

@ProfNoahGian @yonashav ultimately you have to say something about the object level otherwise you'll only convince people already polarized against rats/EAs