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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> There seems to be this distinctly toxic trait common among math and CS folks where you don't see work as work, like the median worker, but as intrinsically linked to your self-worth and reason for existence.

I don't see this as a toxic trait at all. Some people have the fortune and luxury to do what they love - I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think this quote from Gauss puts it very well: "It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession, but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment." So tons of mathematicians feel like AI is stealing this "act of learning which grants the greatest enjoyment", and I think it's fine that they are lamenting this.

This is inherently my whole problem with the "AI utopianists", who somehow think we'll all be happy once we're sitting around with no disease just eating bonbons all day or something.

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This is inherently my whole problem with the "AI utopianists", who somehow think we'll all be happy once we're sitting around with no disease just eating bonbons all day or something.

I don't know about Gauss, but when I am given a more powerful tool, I use it to tackle harder problems, the kind that were out of reach before.

Call me when you run out of those sorts of problems. I'll propose some more.

Why would he call you? AI will propose those new problems instead, and tackle them without any need for your (or any human’s) intervention

Awesome. Next stop Kardashev Type III, I guess!

Happiness is a pointless goal anyway. It's not a metric that can be used to measure the success or failure of any particular policy.

> Happiness is a pointless goal anyway.

Spoken like a true robot. For most of us, happiness (and I mean that broadly defined, e.g. "life satisfaction") is the only goal. I certainly thing happiness is a much more critical goal than "increasing shareholder value".

I know some real assholes who seem quite satisfied with their lives. A shot of heroin will make you happy … for a while. It's a meaningless goal. Regardless of your snarky comment about "shareholder value", we should all aim to make a positive contribution to society and achieve something of lasting value (not necessarily monetary). Happiness might come with that as a side effect but only a fool treats happiness as a goal.

I hope that works well for you. For me a sort of selfless pursuit of delight, for me and for others waiting on my work, has been more than sufficient. As CS Lewis (and Kim Stanley Robinson) described, a sort of accelerando of delight and mutual fulfillment.

I do agree that this satisfaction doesn’t work as a static goal - it works as a method of gradient descent, a process, a way to distinguish possible paths to take thru the moment.

Did Gauss say that learning was only the greatest enjoyment when no one else was known to already know the thing you are learning?

It is super common during a course of study of maths to experience great enjoyment on encountering certain proofs or ideas.

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