why is it not like chess

post status: abstract thoughts next to some previous abstract thoughts.

There is something about mathematical discovery which is vital to the spiritual, experiential quality of doing mathematics.

-- kirwin

via andy. why mourn it?

i. out of sight, out of mind

prompting novel proofs will be as
auraless as ordering doordash

why auraless?

I mourn the luminous cavemen

true heroes, once bravely hunting for foods

now reduced to the proverbial joe rogan in the woods.

out of temporal sight, out of mind.

[... orienteering, once the province of voyagers, now a]
sport that’s only fun if we tie our metaphorical hands behind our backs.
[why don’t I mourn it?]

society advances by the number of ops trivially performed w/hands behind our back.

the proper nomenclature of a modern voyager is urban explorer influencer.

out of topographic sight, out of mind.

Why is it not like chess,
which the machines won long ago,
but which still has meaning?

the game of go went by with the machines as well.

is it not worth a tweet.

out of cultural sight, out of mind.

you suffer, I suffer. no comparative suffering. if you're hungry your friend says people are starving in africa, so what [*] I still want lunch.

it's comedy

out of luck , out of mind
you thought you were a clever girl
but baby you're out of time.

ii. why math why now

Why isn’t it like playing music? I’ve played piano for 30 years; for any classical piece I might play, there are a hundred recordings better than I’ll ever be; but I don’t care because it matters that I’m the one making the music.

music is not your game.

a strong amateur is a dilettante in any room of true masters.

we all played für Elise für sport.

math is hard to learn and hard to master.

math is a vocation and requires long periods of concerted effort.

math golf is what you do in highschool.

games are about winning, math is about discovery.

a computer parallelizes until compute runs out.

what for a mortal to do, only for a superintelligence to say.

Mathematics in the age of AI

iii. terry and phillip

reddit says so.

An engineer was working on a problem and observed something that he thought was true but wasn’t sure. He posted on Stack Exchange asking mathematicians about it. Tao identified that it wasn’t known to be true but saw it probably was, made the right connections and then coauthored a paper with the engineer.

The engineer had done a good bit of math to get as far as he had, Tao moved it across the line, they both got a paper out of it. Tao dint have to do all the up front work of formulating the problem and wondering if it’s true. The problem was nearly packaged for him to finish off.

That’s the power of collaboration; for both of them the other person was a force multiplier

then again, maybe it's all a practical joke.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lbaN81XUaiA?rel=0

iv. teh price tag

what for a mortal to do,

Rishikesh Gajjala on Twitter / X

only for capital to say.