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The answer is you put the top mathematician in the world to do it, easy peasy.

“The argument used some p-adic algebraic number theory which was overkill for this problem. I then spent about half an hour converting the proof by hand into a more elementary proof, which I presented on the site.”

What’s the exchange rate for 30 minutes of Tao’s brain time in regular researcher’s time? 90 days? A year?

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For that sort of task: no, Tao isn't all that much better than a "regular researcher" at relatively easy work. But the tougher the problems you set them at, the more advantage Tao will have.

... But mathematics gets very specialized, and if it's a problem in a field the other guy is familiar with and Tao isn't, they'll outperform Tao unless it's a tough enough problem that Tao takes the time to learn a new field for it, in which case maybe he'll win after all through sheer brainpower.

Yes, Tao is very very smart, but it's not like he's 100x better at everything than every other mathematician.

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