Following Terry Tao's posts he seems to be engaging in forced self-directed cognitive behaviorial therapy, he is trying to come to terms with loss while developing a new framework for himself and other as to where the value is. It is cool to see. It is better to engage than to be in denial and just fall into reactionary behavior.
I do not think I have such a well-developed concept of myself in relationship to my field as he does, I just found it hard to maintain and its value wasn't sufficient to invest that effort. I think the difference is likely that I am a "pragmatic engineering" type who "does the next right thing" and I do not need an over arching philosophy of myself in relation to my craft.
Human pursuits cannot be separated from the humans who pursuit it. In the pursuit of knowledge, what ultimately drives people is what they themselves can understand, and the meaning these understanding provides, both based on their own experience and people whose opinions they value. Humans do not pursuit Platonic knowledge for their own sake, and those who claim to do it, often are satisfying their egos in a different way.
This is one of the best posts I've seen on this topic in a while.
I finished a math PhD before I decided to get out of academia and into startups. Since then, the older I get the more of a Platonist I become, especially now that I've taught my daughters a bunch of math (I'm their homeschool math+science teacher). And the more of a Platonist I become, the less I care about who made a particular discovery. Who cares?! It seems obvious (and quite beautiful) to me now that the same discoveries must be getting repeated again and again across the universe by alien mathematicians, and eventually by their AIs.
Watching Star Trek TNG as a kid, I vividly recall hearing Geordi or Data often say things like "run a level 3 diagnostic on the Worf Barrels" or whatever to the computer and wonder what the heck that would even be. I wondered where are all ship devops and programmers were hidden. Though I recall the one accurate part was Barclay in the Holodeck spending most of the time setting up his IDE.
Now I think I kind of have an answer. Maybe the level of diagnostic refers to the LLM effort level. Great. So then what are all the people on the Enterprise actually doing? My guess is they're all just being people and doing people stuff like exploring the galaxy and smugfacing the Romulans. It would be easier to just create a race of Datas to do it safer. The Datas could probably be Bluetoothed to the Ship's Computer for even more optimization.
I think some of the struggle is that as we summit each subsequent hill of challenge, the sunset (or is it a sunrise?) is becoming inescapably bright. We're faced with that big ol' "what's the point of all this?" question. What's the point of studying math? What's the point of exploring the galaxy? What's the point of standing under a stack of blue barrels?
I'm not a math guy. I dunno if a Fields medal comes with free Taco Bell for life or something else that would truly move me. But I love that I get to read books and learn cool things and feel that spark of joy when my understanding expands, even if the ending is right there with nothing stopping me from skipping to it.
Feel like it's hard to accept egoless style, as in academia there is little but the glory to be had in the pursuits. In the publish/perish era, money is already stretched thin in the average research budget.
I want to believe, but research has been tightrope walking with no safety net for awhile.
So, either researchers get SF salaries? or? (first one is not gonna happen)
> we gratefully acknowledge the assistance of GPT Astra 6.0 and GPT 6.1 Sol in drafting this post.
Holy. This is the closest thing I've seen one of these AI guys get to accepting it as the machine god. "Dear god, we gratefully accept this divine gift of sustenance that we are about to consume."
That might be a good time to consider what the fuck is going on.
Following Terry Tao's posts he seems to be engaging in forced self-directed cognitive behaviorial therapy, he is trying to come to terms with loss while developing a new framework for himself and other as to where the value is. It is cool to see. It is better to engage than to be in denial and just fall into reactionary behavior.
I do not think I have such a well-developed concept of myself in relationship to my field as he does, I just found it hard to maintain and its value wasn't sufficient to invest that effort. I think the difference is likely that I am a "pragmatic engineering" type who "does the next right thing" and I do not need an over arching philosophy of myself in relation to my craft.
Human pursuits cannot be separated from the humans who pursuit it. In the pursuit of knowledge, what ultimately drives people is what they themselves can understand, and the meaning these understanding provides, both based on their own experience and people whose opinions they value. Humans do not pursuit Platonic knowledge for their own sake, and those who claim to do it, often are satisfying their egos in a different way.
This essay seems to say, "people don't matter; all that matters is truth." And that all the policy decisions should follow from that assumed value.
Yikes. I fear for what mathematics will become if that becomes the majority viewpoint.
The future of mathematics is outlined in this amusing quasi-satire (satire tends to become reality in Silicon Valley):
https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/31/lean-me-softly-a-sat...
That is literally what some tenured people are pushing for.
This is one of the best posts I've seen on this topic in a while.
I finished a math PhD before I decided to get out of academia and into startups. Since then, the older I get the more of a Platonist I become, especially now that I've taught my daughters a bunch of math (I'm their homeschool math+science teacher). And the more of a Platonist I become, the less I care about who made a particular discovery. Who cares?! It seems obvious (and quite beautiful) to me now that the same discoveries must be getting repeated again and again across the universe by alien mathematicians, and eventually by their AIs.
So why should your children bother to learn math? Just have them prompt their AIs.
yeah but it's fun to discover things with your own brain
Crazy to see AI slop being posted on tao's blog.
Isn't it strange how the AI disclaimer is at the end of the writing instead of the start. Almost as if they are trying to hide it.
Watching Star Trek TNG as a kid, I vividly recall hearing Geordi or Data often say things like "run a level 3 diagnostic on the Worf Barrels" or whatever to the computer and wonder what the heck that would even be. I wondered where are all ship devops and programmers were hidden. Though I recall the one accurate part was Barclay in the Holodeck spending most of the time setting up his IDE.
Now I think I kind of have an answer. Maybe the level of diagnostic refers to the LLM effort level. Great. So then what are all the people on the Enterprise actually doing? My guess is they're all just being people and doing people stuff like exploring the galaxy and smugfacing the Romulans. It would be easier to just create a race of Datas to do it safer. The Datas could probably be Bluetoothed to the Ship's Computer for even more optimization.
I think some of the struggle is that as we summit each subsequent hill of challenge, the sunset (or is it a sunrise?) is becoming inescapably bright. We're faced with that big ol' "what's the point of all this?" question. What's the point of studying math? What's the point of exploring the galaxy? What's the point of standing under a stack of blue barrels?
I'm not a math guy. I dunno if a Fields medal comes with free Taco Bell for life or something else that would truly move me. But I love that I get to read books and learn cool things and feel that spark of joy when my understanding expands, even if the ending is right there with nothing stopping me from skipping to it.
AI inflicted the 4th narcisstic wound on humanity, the other three being Copernican, Darwinian and Freudian, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_injury for the background.
Feel like it's hard to accept egoless style, as in academia there is little but the glory to be had in the pursuits. In the publish/perish era, money is already stretched thin in the average research budget.
I want to believe, but research has been tightrope walking with no safety net for awhile.
So, either researchers get SF salaries? or? (first one is not gonna happen)
> we gratefully acknowledge the assistance of GPT Astra 6.0 and GPT 6.1 Sol in drafting this post.
Holy. This is the closest thing I've seen one of these AI guys get to accepting it as the machine god. "Dear god, we gratefully accept this divine gift of sustenance that we are about to consume."
That might be a good time to consider what the fuck is going on.
> That might be a good time to consider what the fuck is going on.
Marketing for OpenAI.