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A comment on Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era.

Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by bhouston on Monday November 02, 2026 @02:57PM (#50342752)
Following Terry Tao's blog he seems to be engaging in forced self-directed cognitive behaviorial therapy, he is trying to come to terms with loss while developing a new framework for himself and other as to where the value is. It is cool to see. It is better to engage than to be in denial and just fall into reactionary behavior.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by layer8 on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:18PM (#50343073)
Like many other posts on Tao’s blog, this is a post by guest authors, not by Tao himself.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by paulpauper on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:32PM (#50344951)
yeah, people keep confusing his guest posts as things he said . I think he should just make a second blog only for guest posts. it would lessen the confusion.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by layer8 on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:49PM (#50345150)
He wants to give those posts exposure by posting them on his blog, so a second blog would counteract that. What he should do is put “Guest post: ” in front of each title.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by not2b on Monday November 02, 2026 @11:02PM (#50347891)
The very first line reads "This is a guest post by Karthik C. S., Amit Sahai, and Jie Xue." That seems sufficient.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by tome on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @05:40AM (#50350292)
Experience has demonstrated that it's not sufficient!
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by hiimkeks on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:45PM (#50345105)
What would also lessen the confusion would be people putting in the effort to read a little further than the headline before coming up with a hot take.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by paulpauper on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:47PM (#50345123)
People have disclaimer blindness. it's similar to sidebar or banner blindness. it is also possible it does not show up well on mobile devices. how many people read fine print or terms of service?
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by klhs on Monday November 02, 2026 @06:02PM (#50345322)
That's a charitable view point.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by HedonicEscal8r on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:18PM (#50343079)
This is a guest post. Tao has been quite consistent in his stance.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by paulpauper on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:35PM (#50344988)
People are not good at reading disclaimers. the eyes immediately go to to the title and the body of text.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by ashkankiani on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @02:26AM (#50349093)
I agree, but I would also blame the entirely atrocious web design that has made it so that people don't expect there to be useful information anywhere on the page and just jump to the body. It's very practical to start subconsciously learning to skim when you're assaulted with noise.

90% of the time I can't even find the fucking time an article was written or last updated easily on the web.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by 12212755 on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:07PM (#50342915)
This is entirely ahistorical and a typical remote psychoanalysis.

Tao has been pushing for AI and Lean for a long time and didn't like the way OpenAI handled the Oct. 6th release. He has now been pushing for AI owned by universities.

That is the public way he navigates the situation, who knows what his real game is.

He is one of the people that brought about this situation.

In any case: "reactionary"? Are we using Soviet language to single out perceived dissidents?

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by bhouston on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:21PM (#50343119)
> This is entirely ahistorical and a typical remote psychoanalysis.

I've been reading the posts on his blog (and I should be clear, many posts are guest posts, so it is a collective cognitive behavior therapy session):

Also did you notice he never posted more than 10 posts per month until September? These are definitely posts trying to come to terms with the new reality and searching for value in a field where humans are not pre-eminent:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/a-value-based-appr...

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/why-do-we-need-hum...

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/12/after-math/

I also see this post that that mathematics will be needed as interpreters of complex AI generated proofs as a form of denial in that this is just a current limitation of AI, and will likely be fixed soon:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/if-math-is-more-th...

> In any case: "reactionary"? Are we using Soviet language to single out perceived dissidents?

When new technology is introduced that is disruptive a lot of people fall into "reactionary" stances.

The first definition of reactionary that I found was this:

"A reactionary is a person or policy that opposes political, social, or economic change and seeks to reverse progress to restore an earlier, idealized state of society."

I think that fits with my usage.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by ComplexSystems on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:14PM (#50343019)
What situation? The development of an algorithm that can prove mathematical theorems?
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by qw123a on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:20PM (#50343097)
The systems need Lean, training material, benchmarks, data labeling, experts, publicity and more. OpenAI gave out free researcher accounts to collect more training material.

All of which was provided and encouraged by a small group like Tao, Gowers, Tsimerman, Avigad, Schmitt etc. It isn't just "an algorithm".

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by azan_ on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:00PM (#50344471)
> He is one of the people that brought about this situation.

Yeah, sure... What the hell are you talking about? Do you think that if not Tao we would not have the Oct. 6th release? That's totally insane.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by jonahx on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:57PM (#50346561)
> That is the public way he navigates the situation, who knows what his real game is.

What his "game" is? I've been following Tao for years... I can't think of someone I'd be less likely to accuse of having some nefarious "game".

> He is one of the people that brought about this situation.

A baseless accusation. Tao has no power over the progress happening at the frontier labs.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by breezybottom on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:01AM (#50351492)
Reactionary is an english word.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by ActionHank on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:16PM (#50343874)
Did you even read it? Wild the fanboyism for AI has rotted out the brains of so many people. It's a tool, it's useful, people will adapt.

The reaction was from the strip mining of pending human discovery, mathematicians were already using LLMs from frontier labs who then published suspiciously similar solutions or found connections that were just waiting to be discovered.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by greyw on Monday November 02, 2026 @09:51PM (#50347414)
If you read the whole post you would see the disclaimer that it was written with the help of AI.

So folks are using AI to help them cope about AI. LLMs "stole" pending results is just another cope. Im sure quasi riemann was about to be proved if it wasnt for those pesky AI models. Jeez.

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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by robotpepi on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:45PM (#50344277)
it's a bit funny: all that psychological jargon and shaky speculation about his mental state, but you missed that Tao didn't write the post.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by paulpauper on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:34PM (#50344972)
similar to banner blindness or sidebar blindness, people have disclaimer blindness.
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by JacobAsmuth on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:31PM (#50346342)
Do you think Tao wrote this blog post?
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Re:Egoless Mathematics in the AI Era by mi_lk on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:34AM (#50351796)
Interesting you wrote all these observations without reading the first sentence of the post. Or you would notice it’s a guest post
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