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You’re acting like people are being grammar nazis when Claude and the ilk are actively making a mockery of language.

What? How am I doing that. Claude writing style and the discussion at hand are two entirely separate issues that I haven't conflated at all. How am I "acting like people are being grammar nazis"?

Please. Have you been doing mathematics ? Yes, some big open problems are solved. I have not seen the ideas therein used to solve related or other problems. That is the point of most mathematics: to develop frameworks and general techniques for understanding and solving problems, not solving one-off problems.

For example, group theory lead to a useful way of thinking about how to solve a wide array of problems. That is what mathematicians are seeking.


Mozilla had 400 Firefox CVEs found by Mythos; if those were so easy to find, why didn’t humans do it before?

Humans did do it before.

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It's also worth pointing out that the developers at Mozilla literally decided to make a brand new programming language (Rust) that eliminated an entire categories of bugs and started working on a new browser (Servo) where its components could be switched into firefox.

Then Mozilla fired the team working on it.

Lesson 1: Better tools and processes eliminate bugs.

Lesson 2: If you don't have the tools, make them.

Lesson 3: Mismanagement leads to security vulnerabilities.


> It's also worth pointing out that the developers at Mozilla literally decided to make a brand new programming language (Rust)

In my memory, that does not seem 100% right. And indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#20... says a single developer who happened to work at Mozilla started it as a personal project.

After a few years Mozilla became interested in it and then sponsored its development, transforming it into the language it is today.


Good point about the whole new language as a tool for eliminating many thousands(?) as a whole category

Yes, and even after introducing and using Rust, there were still vulns in the remaining code.

FWIW, Rust is my main language, so I am grateful to the humans that created it, and it is indeed a monumental effort. But vuln finding is a different kind of creative endeavour, and one that is heavily weighted against defenders.


Yes, which is why you don't stop at rust.

You would choose rust (from a security standpoint) because it massively reduces memory safety issues (which from a Microsoft study was responsible for around 70% of bugs).

Then you look at things like linting, fuzzing, design by contract, proofing, deterministic test runs, etc...

As I said above: use better tools and processes.

LLMs don't fit that criteria.


The only population growth the US gets is from immigration. Cutting out skilled population growth is not a good idea!!

Skilled is a subset of what the US gets, and that at the detriment to local workers (and to the countries the skilled immigrants originate from). Though to the local business owner's they're great - much cheaper.

I regret my accidental apostrophe there, and now it's there forever.

Oh yeah, the real world has subtitles, right?

What? Plenty of people can use the smaller iPhones with just one hand.

You can indeed generate many nonsensical problems. Generating ones which require interesting and non-trivial mathematics is much more difficult.

Current career structure of mathematicians works partially by looking at whether they have solved novel and interesting problems, or at least done theory-building that can help solve such problems. Many mathematicians are also motivated by being the world's first to solve such problems

Removing this measure suddenly means that academic mathematic norms need to adapt rapidly, and, even more importantly, intrinsic motivation for many mathematicians needs to change rapidly. That is understandably a sea change for the current mathematics community.


"Capitalist central planning is actually communism".

If you're going to use wrong words, then be prepared for people to be pissed off at your wrong usage.


What is capitalist central planning? That seems like an oxymoron to me.


Have you heard of, e.g., Walmart? How do you think their logistics works? Or, similarly, any modern capitalist economy? Do you think it's entirely decentralized planning with independent actors?


No, never heard of Wal-Mart. What's that?

Anyway...

Can you explain what capitalist central planning is?


Just taking the argument to extremes, what really is the material difference between "centrally planned communist economy decrees that X shall be produced for consumers" and "capitalist Walmart who has stranglehold on <market> decrees to suppliers X shall be produced for consumers". At the end of the day, you the consumer has been given the choice of X or nothing.

They offered to collaborate by asking to drop a coauthor.

That is not collaboration, and is not an academic norm.


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