Re:Mathematics has changed. Let's act like it
by Verdex on Monday November 02, 2026 @10:19AM
(#50337991)
My perception of mathematics when I was young was that it is a field of the absolute. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks, it matters what's true.
To be fair math does have a great deal of truth, but it also has, surprising to me, a great deal of social cohesion. Some things are sufficiently true because the important people are pretty sure it's fine.
If you have to tell people to get with the program ... Like if this is an important message that will have a meaningful side effect, then I'm not really interested in the field as a whole.
Meanwhile, if LLMs prove n = np, but nobody understands the proof, who cares. You don't have to tell people to get with the program because they'll just dump their algorithms into the transform because then cpu goes faster. You don't have to tell people to get with the program. They'll either do it and get more stuff done or won't, but that's just life. Sometimes people make a series of obvious mistakes that you would not have made. On to the next thing.
To be fair math does have a great deal of truth, but it also has, surprising to me, a great deal of social cohesion. Some things are sufficiently true because the important people are pretty sure it's fine.
If you have to tell people to get with the program ... Like if this is an important message that will have a meaningful side effect, then I'm not really interested in the field as a whole.
Meanwhile, if LLMs prove n = np, but nobody understands the proof, who cares. You don't have to tell people to get with the program because they'll just dump their algorithms into the transform because then cpu goes faster. You don't have to tell people to get with the program. They'll either do it and get more stuff done or won't, but that's just life. Sometimes people make a series of obvious mistakes that you would not have made. On to the next thing.