HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

JPC21

13 karma · joined September 20, 2023

submissionscomments
JPC21··on On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
I think you're misunderstanding what the objective of mathematics is. It is not just about what theorems are true and false, but rather why they are true and false. A highschool sophomore could use these prompts, but I severely doubt whether they'd be able to understand the entire structure. And I think it is exactly this ability to deeply understand structures is what makes a mathematician valuable.

Solving problems is a by-product of the understanding. New techniques are a by-product of the understanding.

But I can understand you're scared that some future version of AI will undermine this as well. I personally pivoted to a field adjacent to mathematics. But that doesn't mean my mathematics education wasn't valuable. To the contrary, I find that it helps me think much more sharply about problems than most of my colleagues.

JPC21··on On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
Second this. What I also wonder about is how closely the TeX write-up and the Lean formalization line-up.
JPC21··on On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
Just don't. If you read the story here carefully, you see that AI was used to work from theory built by others which showed that the Euler equations possesed finite-time blow-ups. But to make that step, actual good understanding for mathematics was needed. My experience with software has been the exact same.
JPC21··on Multiple commencement speakers booed for AI comments during graduation speeches
I noticed something similar. Phrases I have noticed that Claude likes using are "... is doing major work ..." and "... worth pulling apart ...". Unfortunately, some of these have subconsciously become part of my own writing style as I noticed recently. English is not my mother tongue, so I'm pretty sure that I inherited these from Claude.
JPC21··on Category Theory Illustrated – Orders
I have played quite a lot of video games in the past yes. But not much anymore.
JPC21··on Category Theory Illustrated – Orders
You say pretty obvious, but it took me 2 years during my PhD to be consciously aware of this. And once I did, I immediately knew I wanted to leave my field as soon as I would finish.
JPC21··on Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
I can only commend this, but people should be aware that not every church is equally welcoming. But usually every town has at least one that is!
JPC21··on “A Course of Pure Mathematics” – G. H. Hardy (1921) [pdf]
I remember having a hard time understanding limsup/liminf and only actually understood the concept after reading this book. I am sure it is not for everyone due to its age, but I think this book is a much better introduction than baby Rudin.
JPC21··on Probability-Generating Functions
Generating functions are also a great tool in combinatorics (see for example the book Analytic Combinatorics by Flajolet and Sedgewick).
JPC21··on The new math of how large-scale order emerges
Personally I would read a book on statistical physics instead, since this is where the study of 'emergence' began. The Feynman lectures would be good for this.

I actually haven't found many good books for 'Complex systems', but if you want to take a shot anyway, I would look at https://academic.oup.com/book/25504 and https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691122045/cr...