I just don’t get why comments like this are downvoted. But I do suspect this makes Hacker News what it is. Good at surfacing a certain x to y percentile of a certain way of looking at things.

It’s not a place to brainstorm or be open minded about new ways of thinking successfully - not very very often. More a place to surface small useful bits of information that people find (a) useful and (b) that people are passionate about already. And there’s a lot of value in that as a reader. And some value as writer in practicing articulation of very clearly thought-out ideas.

But yeah - today I realized HN and ‘I wonder if...’ comments don’t really jive together.

This particular comment was probably downvoted because he basically just took the hottest buzzword of the last decade and inserted it with a very weak link to the topic at hand. You could copy and paste this comment to any article about any achievement and it would have the same relevance.

It is certainly not a “new way of thinking”. First of all, there is hardly any thought here. Secondly, “understanding deep learning mathematically” is a well known problem to mathematicians.

It is a comment that could have been generated by an (old, 2000s era) AI.

You know, some of us work in the field that you call "hottest buzzword of the last decade", we constantly see problems that could have benefited enormously from geniuses like above.

So for people like me at least, it's not a "very weak link to the topic at hand".

I already agreed that the op was hinting at an important problem. The link is weak because the op put hardly any effort into explaining the (possible) connection to these two particular undergraduates and their work. I am not claiming that math and deep learning are unrelated. Please read the rest of my response for context.

BTW, I am not using 'hottest buzzword of the decade' to denigrate the field of deep learning. I am using it to emphasize the op's shallow reference to the field.

To create a bit more serieus response.

'I wonder if' is not the problem here, it is that it isn't even wrong on so many levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

Given that particular link at the end of the comment with no additional commentary on why that particular link, the comment feels like thinly disguised spam to me. I'm glad it got downvoted.

I'm honestly having a hard time picturing what kind of discussion or brainstorming could be had around the statement in said comment. "It might be useful to have more smart people working in [popular field]" in the context of "look at this smart person" is just... unactionable?

Further, it is unclear what the link to a conference is supposed to add - is this actually an attempt to get said mathematician to completely switch fields on a whim? Based on a HN comment? That's just uncalled for... Or is it trying to recruit random HN readers? In that case, how is this at all related to the topic?

Like in any group of humans, it takes a certain perspective and tone to communicate your ideas effectively - doubly so if you want to engage in "new ways of thinking" with others. The comment in question is lacking that (in my - subjective - eyes). I don't think "I wonder if" is misplaced on HN, but I would concur that (as you hinted at) a certain way of articulation is rewarded.

Think about it. If you use quantum mechanics then maybe the answer will come to you.