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Comment by romaniv | Hacker News Reader

No one here actually cares about Cycle Double Cover Conjecture. I can demonstrate this by pointing out that the only time this conjecture was ever mentioned on the website was 14 years ago in a submission[1] that linked to a (now retracted) proof paper. That story received exactly zero upvotes. No one cared enough to upvote it and no one cared enough to ever mention this conjecture again.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3556175

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I care. I was a math student in my undergrad when I try to solve a particular problem on paths, in the end it uses a path version of cycle double cover conjecture (which was solved in the 90s).

https://chaoxu.prof/posts/2013-01-30-there-exist-a-path-of-l...

I also want to get it to work on cycles, but then I hit the cycle double cover conjecture so I gave up.

It’s the second most important problem in all of graph theory on this database of open math problems:

https://www.openproblemgarden.org/category/graph_theory?sort...

Obviously not an exact measurement but to give you some sense of the importance of the problem

Don’t bother. This is the third or fourth time AI has solved an open conjecture, and once again the comment sections everywhere are full of people explaining how this doesn’t really matter at all, how it’s an irrelevant, obscure problem, how any mediocre grad student could probably have solved it if only they had bothered to try, and how of course, human mathematicians will still be vastly superior to machines 100 years from now because they have that magic spark for which nobody can say what it supposedly consists of.

These discussions have nothing to do with mathematics, and everything to do with ego and fear. I’ve never been less impressed with humans than since AI started challenging them.

I think "importance" here is just being rated as 1 to 4 stars. So it's not "second-most important" but rather "one of the top 5 most important". That doesn't change much, but FWIW.

This doesn't contradict anything he said though. People on HN care only because an LLM proved a very difficult conjecture, not because we are independently interested in this conjecture.

Only? Seems remarkable to me.

Yes, the fact that an LLM managed to prove the conjecture is remarkable, but presumably you don't find the conjecture itself interesting.

People don't talk about the cycle double cover conjecture here because this isn't a math website. Its lack of mention here is therefore poor evidence.

yeah, I think what makes this post different was that AI did it. hopefully science will advance faster in the next decades with AI researchers helping

Hopefully. So far it seems to be doing more harm than good.

What harm? I think the major part of the US economy seems to be depending on AI.. without that, the economy seems bad..

We absolutely care about the implications of AI solving hard problems. I'm sure you can find thousands of posts on HN deriding AI progress the entire time, trivializing it as nothing more than a 'stochastic parrot'

i care about the CDCC but every time i post about it dang removes it and bans me

This was one of the most famous open graph theory problems lol. I am not a mathematician and even I ran into this when doing generative map design for game dev.

The only thing you've demonstrated here is some very funny confidently incorrect coping behavior.

Thanks for the fun facts? Indeed, this is not a math forum. Good morning.

> I can demonstrate this [that literally nobody cares about the CDCC here]

No, you cannot. Mindreading the readers of this site by sifting through people's comments is a barely passable proxy for this at best, especially when that audience has changed dramatically over even just those 14 years, and continues to do so.

[flagged]

Wait, what things do we care about?

Two years from now, when a proof of the Collatz conjecture is announced and verified:

"No one cares about that! What practical applications does it have? It's pretty trivial anyways. More hype from the AI psychosis crowd."

I don’t care if AI solves the collatz conjecture either, why should I?

If, after stealing all human knowledge, spending $1T+ on compute, hiring the best in the world while also stalling progress in other fields by pulling funding from fundamental research is a bunch of lousy math proofs then thats terrible trade. There is an opportunity cost here.

I don’t have anything against AI, and I do think it will progress a lot just like all other human endeavors. But this doomer permanent underclass humans are worthless myopic view of AI is not where its at

Materialisation?

Materialization of software?

Of matter.

the real world problems we care about are straightforward, the main challenge is wealth distribution and control over the power to do something about them

I agree. We have a coordination problem, and the way our AI lords are proposing to solve this, is by cutting humans out of the equation

> If people cared they would [have mentioned it before]. What are YOU on about?

I explained why and how I think this is both wrong (especially in the ridiculously absolute form it was posted in), and a weird point of contention.

This is a tech (startup) forum, with an increasing pull towards more general audiences. Math and sciences have strong ties to tech, but you won't see people discussing specific math conjectures here much, save for the ones that make the popsci or tech mainstream. It is only chance encounters like this where a person from the relevant neck of the woods might engage, provided they happen to be readers here, e.g. because of a passing interest in technology.

Given this, being surprised that you cannot find a mention of this conjecture in the post history of the site is difficult to describe as any kinder than just plain daft.

> If it’s so good at solving hard problems

A problem being hard (in the relevant sense here) doesn't mean they're lucrative to solve, or hold direct and broad societal relevance. Kind of a theme with maths and logic problems, and not by coincidence.

Conversely, a lot of practical hard problems are, well, practical. They're not logically hard, but in some empirical way. You're conflating different avenues of difficulty, and rejecting that there's even a multitude of them.

> Why is there no real world progress on things we do care about?

We?

Well, there's been very real progress on things I - and I'd think most this community - care about. I've been shipping tickets end-to-end with minimal involvement via LLMs agentically for a while now. It's been great, and an honest game changer. I've been delivering faster, more, and better. Exactly what you'd expect from a breakthrough technology: a wholesale improvement across normally competing dimensions. In a number of cases, the difference was outright stepfunction like. That is to say, if it wasn't for these models, they would simply not have happened.

This is its latest iteration and its newest - alleged - tour de force. That's why it's posted here to extensive reception. That it is nice to hear it being a boon in other sectors too. If this somehow escaped you two, I don't know what to tell you.

Thank you for taking the time to respond thoroughly. You made me reflect upon my frustrations and anger. I take back my flagrant comment.

> What are YOU on about?

Can you please edit out swipes like this from your HN comments? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your post would be fine without that bit.

Personally I think it's a fallacy to assume that HN users mention everything they care about in HN posts, but that's not a moderation point.

What does that have to do with the feat itself?

No one here actually cares about folding laundry. I can demonstrate it by pointing out at the absence of posts on that subject.

...but when an affordable robot that folds laundry becomes available, people here pay attention.

Oh, for laundry to be solved!

Tell me about it! It is endless!

The point of this is if AI is solving things that nobody cares about, that's the utility here. It's doing something nobody else wants to bother with

Almost sounds like they pointed a prompt at every boondocks conjecture and wrote a press release for the one it plausibly solved.

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