Date: September 25th, 2026 11:25 AM Author: provocative ruby fanboi
GPT theven dithcovered a neww thymmetry in integrable thpin chainth & qft, we need to pathe the frontier guithe thith is irretphonthible thienthe and toxith to human disthocvery! Dithcovering a symmetry via latent thpace invariantth without a human understandable action principle isn't real physics!
Date: September 25th, 2026 11:46 AM Author: spectacular depressive alpha
This is stupid. The theorems AI is proving will enable a whole new generation of advanced mathematics. And to the extent the proofs arent understandable to humans, there is intellectual work to be done in understanding and explaining them.
The people offloading critical thinking to AI were never good at critical thinking in the first place.
Date: September 25th, 2026 12:28 PM Author: charcoal newt
It's possible that this time it really is different. In your example you envision these mathematicians now reviewing AI's work, trying to understand it, and then explaining it. What if there comes a time that AI is so advanced it can perform those functions better than humans? We're then relegated to nothing more than consumers.
Date: September 25th, 2026 12:33 PM Author: spectacular depressive alpha
"*Maybe* this time is different from every other time!" is your strongest argument? "What if?"
Your what if is also interesting. What if AI could explain knowledge to us and teach it better than we ever could? And that is supposed to be a bad thing for the human intellect?
Anyway I really dont get this attitude saying we need to stop the AI from doing this work just to give people busywork. The dignity is already lost when you realize the AI can do it better, even if you ban it from doing so. Beyond that point, it is busywork/make-work anyway. So why not let the computer do the work for the benefit of mankind, and have humans also do it as busywork if you feel that the busywork is so good for them?
Date: September 25th, 2026 1:10 PM Author: charcoal newt
My "what if" is certainly a possibility given the continued improvement of the frontier models. Maybe they plateau, maybe they don't. I tend to think they'll continue to improve over time. And yes, it is a bad thing for human intellect. No one is going to train their brains for decades to push the frontier of human knowledge if there's something out there that does it all. We all become dumber animals beholden to our most base instincts.
Date: September 25th, 2026 3:47 PM Author: spectacular depressive alpha
Anything is possible, but it would be a break with the general historical pattern of the effects of automation. Not a compelling reason to torch a technology that could produce massive advancements in living standards and knowledge.
"No one is going to train their brains for decades to push the frontier of human knowledge if there's something out there that does it all."
1) what is the point of human knowledge? Is it just a mental masturbation exercise, or is the point to make life better? If the point is to make life better, than if thr computer can accomplish that more efficiently, banning it from doing so runs counter to the goal. If the point is mental masutrbation, it makes little difference if a computer can do it better...you can still mentally masturbate.
2) We have people who train their entire lives to learn how to run at 15 miles per hour or lift 500 lbs when we have machines that can go hundreds of mph and lift tons.
But anyway, like I said, I dont understand how banning the machines from curing cancer changes the reality that they *could* cure cancer, and we are just stopping it from doing so so that somebody can feel better about their intellect.
Date: September 25th, 2026 4:21 PM Author: provocative ruby fanboi
Once a machine surpasses human capability at a task, insisting that a human must continue doing that task under the guise of necessity or economic productivity is an exercise in artificial scarcity and self-deception.
Date: September 25th, 2026 7:15 PM Author: provocative ruby fanboi
It's so funny that people have this dignity illusion. Back when gpt 5 first came out I knew this boomer that would constantly claim he had to fix something in his code himself "because the ai wasn't smart enough". Always came off as such cope. If a bridge engineer knows an automated system can calculate stress vectors with 99.9999% accuracy in milliseconds, while the human takes three weeks and carries a 2% margin of error, forcing the human to manually sign off on the calculations doesn't confer true agency. It's a biological rubber stamp. Hilarious to watch people play the "well I didn't need a machine to do this, I did it myself" shtick.
Date: September 25th, 2026 9:07 PM Author: spectacular depressive alpha
On thr NYC Subway, there are conductors on the Automated Train Control trains that are only thetr because the unions forced the MTA to employ them. They sit there all day, doing nothing except pressing a button wvery 2 minutes to prove they are not asleep. An embrassment.