‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

433 points · 285 comments · num42

  1. random3 · · focus · HN ↗
    While I understand and emphatically with Tao's concern I'm afraid it's missing the forest from the trees. Unless you can make a claim that AI will never be able to perform intellectually at the same level as any human at a much lower cost, there's an outstanding utility problem that remains unaddressed. Sure enough, the AI may not have taste or goals, or many human traits, but that's irrelevant to the much thornier (and much broader than mathematics or even academia) question related to who's getting paid how much and for what.
    1. freehorse · · focus · HN ↗
      The funding on mathematics is already one of the lowest accross science [0, 1], and theoretical math funding is probably much smaller than the applied math one already, so that's not even close to how much funding theoretical math gets.

      So, we are talking about a field that already does not use that much funding anyway, and most high end theoretical mathematicians probably would make much more money in the industry anyway, so this seems like missing the forest for the tree imo.

      [0] Table in page 1 in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov&#x2F;files&#x2F;71_fy2025.pdf?VersionId=imADDfY7jVza5Xub5KBWV8xhvuwkZyh7#:~:text=MPS%20%2D%201,2023%20Base%20Plan1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov&#x2F;files&#x2F;71_fy2025.pdf?Versio...

      [1] Figure DISC-13 in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ncses.nsf.gov&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;nsb20257&#x2F;academic-r-d" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ncses.nsf.gov&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;nsb20257&#x2F;academic-r-d

      1. D-Machine · · focus · HN ↗
        There&#x27;s an old joke about funding, goes something like:

        &quot;Why you are always demanding more funding? Why can&#x27;t you be more like the mathematicians, all they need is a desk, some paper, and a pencil, and a garbage can, and they just do fine. Or how about philosophy, for that matter? They don&#x27;t even need the garbage can&quot;

        I mean, obviously with modern computational mathematics, this doesn&#x27;t hold so simply, but there is this confound about math research also not getting much funding also because much of it isn&#x27;t that expensive, relatively speaking.

        1. bell-cot · · focus · HN ↗
          Last I knew, at least in America, universities that want their math prof&#x27;s to do research also expect those prof&#x27;s to bring in plenty of outside funding. You could argue about the costs of that desk, paper, pencil, and such - but modern &quot;research&quot; universities have evolved into extremely high-overhead operations, and The Beast Must Be Fed.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.