NHacker Next
  • new
  • past
  • show
  • ask
  • show
  • jobs
  • submit
The Dark Night of Mathematics (kirwinhampshire.substack.com)
geophile 9 minutes ago [-]
> "They are forbidden from creating original works to express themselves. However, they are still permitted to comment on writing, interpret it, share their taste. They are still valued for their appraisal, presentation, understanding and appreciation of creative writing. They just can’t write creatively anymore. They can go on as an enthusiastic spectator.

> ... It revealed that the process of prompting novel proofs will be as auraless as ordering doordash. Watch as magic and mystery evaporate. Watch as the sun sets on our heroic age. Is there not something evil in the act of blocking all future generations of mathematicians from the experience of discovery? Forget about accuracy or even attribution. Something fundamental to the experience of mathematics is being taken."

These passages resonated with me, as someone who has been enchanted by writing software for almost 60 years. It crystalizes something that has been nagging at me for many years: I like writing software. Reviewing, testing, spec-ing, designing, etc. are all important, but they are all incidental to the actual creation of software. They are all necessary for me to do if I'm going to write software, but they are peripheral. I didn't latch on to computer programming because I got into flow state reviewing code, or spec-ing it.

And this is happening in one profession after another. For example, fighter pilots. I suspect that a fighter pilot feels about flying jet fighters the same way that I feel about programming. And he or she will soon be exactly as useless: Doing things related to flying, from the sidelines, but not doing the thing him or herself.

AI is stealing all the fun parts.

robotpepi 5 minutes ago [-]
He sounds as someone really pedantic who never understood what math is about or why it is important.
sureglymop 31 minutes ago [-]
Pretty sure software developers already had that moment with coding agents. They can't really admit it like this, as it affects their employability now.
turtleyacht 37 minutes ago [-]
Math is having its DevOps moment. And yet, people who really understand networks are beyond valuable.
haickernews 7 minutes ago [-]
So true. Add me on LinkedIn?
Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact
Rendered at 16:43:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.