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Comment by lf88 | Hacker News Reader

Chess and StarCraft are games. For many other intellectual activities, part of the satisfaction comes from contributing something meaningful to a collective effort. If a machine can do that orders of magnitude faster, for many people these activities become effectively pointless.

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The funny thing about people comparing mathematical research in the days of LLMs to playing chess in the days of Stockfish is that it identifies the competitive nature, and hence status seeking attitude, of the mathematical research community. Chess is, of course, a competitive game with a winner and a loser. You "win" mathematical research by solving a longstanding unsolved problem.

There is this idea of advancing human knowledge and adding to the record of what people know in mathematical research that breaks the analogy down, somewhat. But most people aren't Perelman. They would happily take the million dollar prize. And it is out of the question to do anything other than put your name on the published paper.

That is what I am gathering, too. I've been watching this from the sidelines, really confused by all the people moaning endlessly about how this revolution is somehow damaging to the community of mathematicians, which makes no sense to me no matter how many times I read their arguments.

But realizing that the primary driver was never actually proving the conjectures, nor understanding the proofs, sheds light into the issue. Many are not satisfied with the prospect of curating and preserving an ever growing collection of discoveries; what they wanted is being the discoverers themselves.

Which to me is mind boggling, because that is not what they have been saying aloud all along. Maybe it's my autism speaking, but I really thought they cared about the resulting knowledge rather than being recognized by their peers. How naïve of me to think that they were above that.

Meanwhile, people who simply enjoy having a tool that facilitates solving problems, because having a solution is their true goal rather than an excuse to obtain recognition or validation, are excited to use this new wonder.

Please don't pretend that you've somehow been deceived. Hasn't everyone heard quips like "theoretical physics is like sex: it has some useful results, but that's not why we do it"? How hard is it to understand that doing something is what gives pleasure, rather than the outcome?

Having AI tools does not remove the ability to do anything, other than being the first. I genuinely don't get that viewpoint, it is alien to me. It is equivalent to saying that the existence of bicycles removes the pleasure of running.

As for the personal swipe: please do better.

This comment reminds me of the "run for fun" guy in Back to the Future Part III.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCVJIpSmEE

(This isn't to say I disagree with you.)

Pro tip: life is pointless. So the machines are better at thinking about certain classes of things. So what? Either you enjoy thinking or you don't. Deciding whether you enjoy it or not based on a global scorecard is silly. Surely there are aliens out there somewhere that already figured out any given problem. Does that make finding the solution yourself any less satisfying?

I think what people actually want when they say this is to be the hero. They want the admiration. Which is fine, but at least he honest.

Yes! If their true goal was expanding the field, they would be excited. But if, instead, they saw this as some sort of a race to be the first to prove a conjecture, then their frustration is understandable. But it would be good if they had been honest about it from the get go; possibly they did not even realize it themselves.

I bet lots of them, who are in it for the love of the game, are truly excited by what is going on.

> I bet lots of them, who are in it for the love of the game, are truly excited by what is going on.

The noise from AHM and the like can be seen as a drive to intimidate these people into silence.

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