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Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter

286 points · 412 comments · simianwords

  1. layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
    > we urgently need to come up with good ways of explaining the value of having a large pool of human mathematical experts, even if it is no longer part of their role to find new proofs of theorems.

    This is the main issue, and while I fully agree with that value sentiment, the referenced letter failed to provide convincing arguments for why mathematicians should widely receive funding for merely understanding things, and how competition for postdoc and tenure positions would work.

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