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Comment by grandpajoey | Hacker News Reader

Authorship and credit seem like anti-patterns in math. One of the least accessible parts of math to me is that literally everything is named after people. Navier-Stokes? Who? I don't really want to know to be honest, I'd rather the ideas and information be framed with a prioritization towards understanding, not author's reputation. I feel the same way about all of the Greek notation, it's 2026, can we not use something in regular circulation to broaden the audience?

Maybe AI can actually drastically improve this situation by bridging the gap between those "in the club" and those who want to do something useful with mathematical ideas.

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To be honest if Greek letters and things being named after the people that discovered them are that big of a hurdle to you the chances of you actually being able to do something useful with these mathematical ideas are probably close to 0 since those are by far the easiest parts of dealing with advanced mathematics.

Reputation and desire for recognition are an incentive system that have gotten us a long way. They are a way of celebrating and honoring the human reach for excellence. If you like humans, that's a good thing.

I like the UK's archaic system of measures for the similar reasons. It has the stamp of humanity. For those who think about such things it reminds of who we were. Without historical context we think less of ourselves.

If you're not from the culture in question, then these are just additional barriers to entry because you have a lot of extra stuff to learn, completely unrelated to your task at hand. It also puts you at a disadvantage to native members of the culture.

> They are a way of celebrating and honoring the human reach for excellence. If you like humans, that's a good thing.

I think progress is inevitable, ideas build on each other, and those with access to capital get to slap their name on their moment in time (yes, even if they did the hard work of converting that capital to progress). If AI takes over math, I really don't think we'll see a slow down in technological progress. Quite likely the opposite.

I don't think you can lay naming at the feet of capital. Euclid, Ramanujan, Galois, Poncelet.. The list goes on. The Marxist lens is feeble.

If you’re not hunting to survive (and even then), you have access to capital. The time to study math is, and always has been, paid for by someone, some way.

We shouldn't forget the sun either. Without the sun none of us would be here.

Why wouldn't you honor the people that came up with a particular proof or approach? Do you also not care about who created a given artwork?

Math is an extremely useful tool. My interface with it should be 100% prioritized toward effectively using that tool. I'm glad we don't call them Turning machines for instance.

You talk like it fell out of the sky. Every result you've ever used was proposed by a mathematician.

> I'm glad we don't call them Turning machines for instance.

Are you referring to a Turing machine; the abstract model of a computer, actually named after someone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine

Your bizarre position seems to be that not knowing history somehow makes you more effective? This is honestly the dumbest take I have read all week.

I think all of the insults I'm receiving in this thread are helping to make my point.

I'm furiously shaking my fist at the air and cursing the fate that we didn't follow some vague "better" naming convention, as learning a handful of Greek symbols robbed us of the next Riemann. The injustice!

I think mathematicians are the profession people will care the least that AI takes over tbh.

TIL Greek is no longer "in circulation." I guess you would also be opposed to people doing math in Russian or Japanese?

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