Nowadays AI can solve problems even better than mathematicians, so is there a reason for me to still pursue a PhD? The academic skill gained from a PhD would become obsolete by the next few years.
Eventually there won’t be such job as a mathematician, as AI can effectively (i.e. not always, but usually) act as the Hilbert’s dream oracle: send a statement, and the AI decides whether it’s true or false, and gives the proof (or disproof). The only job of human is to retrieve the proof and try to understand it.
In the artistic sense, this is sad, and human endeavor in mathematics is getting to its extinction. In the scientific sense, this is hopeful, since we have better tools at finding truth!
You should probably not expect to get a job writing certain kinds of proofs, but I’d expect the bigger part of most PhDs to be training judgement and taste (what matters, what approaches make sense), which are the two things AI is worst at.
For context, none of the software engineers I work with write meaningful amounts of code anymore, but we still have tons of work: deciding what to do, high-level design, code review, coordination, and ensuring rollouts are done safely.
Who knows what AI will look like in 4-6 years though.
Of course, I agree that an unfalsifiable belief doesn’t deserve to be a belief, and yes, I can imagine a situation where I would believe that 2+2=4 is false: the collapse of Peano arithmetic.
Yes, if you ask me what kind of proposition would make me believe implies , my answer is that would be an instance.
Yes, the truth/falsehood in the formal realm has nothing to do with the physical realm, but no, believing that a true proposition is true would require interacting with the physical realm. The sentence has multiple meanings. It is true (modulo Peano axioms) in the formal realm. It is a belief in the physical realm. Some people believe it, others don’t. I can imagine a situation that I’ll be convinced to believe that this is false, but such situation would probably be strong enough to also convince me to believe that Peano arithmetic is inconsistent.
We’ve seen ask/guess/tell. I propose the yell culture: Yell whenever you dislike anything. I yell at you when I don’t like what you did. If you’re dissatisfied with that, yell back to me. It’s the same as Tell culture, but my variant tries to deliver the frustration forward. If I’m frustrated, I expect the listener to share my frustration, and bear the same happiness and unhappiness. I argue that this reinforces the team into a functional unit where one could die for one another.
Some colleagues discouraged me from doing this, and I want to examine more about it.
This is an interesting new view to me, since I‘ve never known about the insanity wolf. But then my next question is that “Why should we avoid insanity wolves?” Won’t a sufficiently morally good wolf compress sophisticated moral (normative) arguments into a simple rule of thumb so that we can follow as a compass or a heuristic?
I can’t make much sense of your comment, but here’s some background to Insanity Wolf.
Insanity Wolf is a meme of long standing. I didn’t invent it, but I created my Insanity Wolf page to highlight what seemed to me some dysfunctional thought patterns that recurred on LessWrong and the rationalsphere generally. For example, the first section of that page is about Effective Altruism and totalising Singerian ethics, but there is much, much more. Roko’s Basilisk is in there, and the idea that you do not exist, and universal arguments, and straightforward lunacy confidently screamed. I don’t make up these memes. The ideas are in the water supply, they come to me and I write them down. I have more than 1000 more that I haven’t got round to adding, but maybe nowadays I could vibe-code something. Perhaps an Insanity Wolf quote of the day for people who need to regularly wallow in shit to remind themselves why it’s a bad idea to wallow in shit.
HORROR! HORROR! HORROR!
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE HORROR!
Thanks for the background! As for me, sorry for being unclear, and I’ll look at the referenced posts. I will try to explain my view a bit more. The Insanity Wolf Test writes:
If you encounter an idea for which, however watertight the argument leading to it, you hear it in the voice of Insanity Wolf, screaming at you, a voice that absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead, then maybe you should reject that idea, even if you do not have a refutation of it.
Anyone speaking in that voice, even if outwardly quiet and reasonable, wants something that you should not give.
You also wrote that:
Perhaps an Insanity Wolf quote of the day for people who need to regularly wallow in shit to remind themselves why it’s a bad idea to wallow in shit.
Basically, my point is that I’m not convinced why it’s a bad idea to wallow in shit. For the original Insanity Wolf Test, the last two lines says wants something that you should not give. My main question before was “why should we not give?”
As for my last sentence in the above comment, I was arguing that “maybe we should wallow in shit, if such shit is a compression of ‘sane’ enough logic”. For example, an anti-advice on your Insanity Wolf page is “WHEN PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING, SLEEPING IS A SIN”. Your anti-advice tries to convince me that I should reject this idea. I’m currently not convinced, and that my current stance is that it is morally good to keep this idea at the back of my mind.
Indeed, [my] suggestion of Yell culture is an invitation for people to be Insanity Wolf, and I agree with that. That’s why I want to know more about your reasoning why this is a dysfunctional thought pattern (as stated in your comment).
The track record of such extremism is poor. I was going to say it would take too much time to search out people’s reports of mental breakdowns, suicides, and other ways of going off the deep end, but conveniently a new one has appeared today. You can also search LW for “Ziz” and “Ziz(z)ians”. These are by no means the only ones.
If you read further in my Insanity Wolf page, I hope you will find things to disagree with, such as strangling all the evil people with each others’ intestines, and maximising happiness by killing everyone. The former was inspired by a remark of Voltaire, and the latter by those utilitarians who believe, literally, that life is suffering and that it would be better for everyone never to have been born.
But if I suppose your assent limited to absolutist positive utilitarianism á la EA and Peter Singer, there is a substantial issue there that has been much discussed by philosophers without any resolution. Is there supererogation?
A supererogatory act is one that it is praiseworthy to do, but which is not required. It is action over and above the call of duty. Is there any such thing?
Peter Singer and some EAs say no. Supererogation is a contradiction in terms. The good that you can do is the good that you must do. At every moment you must be doing the best thing you possibly can. All the obvious objections are folded into the basic injunction. You don’t know the best thing? Then the best thing is to find out. You’ll burn out? Then take some R&R, but only as much as needed to carry on the Work. It’s an impossible standard? Yes, but it’s the right standard, you just don’t want to because it’s hard. But—? Denied. You must make of yourself a slave to the good. “O feet happily fettered on the road to salvation!” While you are sleeping, the world is burning! You cannot ascend the torrent of your sins! Nothing for yourself, everything for the cause! Jam tomorrow? Jam never! Your life must be a desert! You are nothing, the cause is everything! Smile! The torture will continue until you comply. You can’t reason with it, you can’t bargain with it, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
The crazy train goes straight to hell. Seeing this, I do not get on it at all. And yet it starts out so reasonably, how could anyone disagree?
Suppose, Glaucon, that you are faced with a choice between a good deed and an evil one, which should one choose?
Of course the good one, Socrates, that’s what we mean by the words “good” and “evil”!
Then, Glaucon, suppose a very good deed and a moderately good one?
The better one, of course, Socrates, that is what we mean by “better”!
And therefore, Glaucon, is it not clear that the proper choice must always be the best possible choice that you can make? Is not that what we mean by “best”?
I cannot disagree with that, Socrates.
And therefore, Glaucon, you must agree that you are obliged to follow the Gospel According To Insanity Wolf to its very end?
That is very distasteful to me, Socrates, and I fear that your broad, straight path of reason, easy to follow and difficult to step aside from, has nevertheless led us into error. I am perplexed. But Socrates, I observe that your life is not in such derangement as would result from taking this conclusion seriously. I think you have led me down a false path in order to provoke me to find a better one.
(The ancient sources break off here.)
I have never seen a philosopher make a defence of supererogation that does not come down to declaring the absurdity of the extremity. But pro tem, that absurdity is enough for me.
“If daylight itself needs proof, nothing can be proved.”
Thank you for this reply. I can see your point clearer. Your premise is the absurdity of the extremity, right? I accept this opinion and I’ll keep it in the back of my head (and update my beliefs accordingly). I think my previous heuristic is that “if something is true then it must be true even in corner cases”. For example, even number plus even number makes even. When regular situation teaches 2+4=6 and 0+2=2, my “taking to the extreme” means testing the boundary of this claim: how about 0+1000000? How about −2+2? How about −99998+46464? They are all still even numbers.
A supererogatory act is one that it is praiseworthy to do, but which is not required. It is action over and above the call of duty. Is there any such thing?
Peter Singer and some EAs say no. Supererogation is a contradiction in terms. The good that you can do is the good that you must do. At every moment you must be doing the best thing you possibly can. All the obvious objections are folded into the basic injunction. You don’t know the best thing? Then the best thing is to find out. You’ll burn out? Then take some R&R, but only as much as needed to carry on the Work. It’s an impossible standard? Yes, but it’s the right standard, you just don’t want to because it’s hard. But—? Denied. You must make of yourself a slave to the good. “O feet happily fettered on the road to salvation!” While you are sleeping, the world is burning! You cannot ascend the torrent of your sins! Nothing for yourself, everything for the cause! Jam tomorrow? Jam never! Your life must be a desert! You are nothing, the cause is everything! Smile! The torture will continue until you comply. You can’t reason with it, you can’t bargain with it, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
My opinion: I disagree with [Peter Singer and some EAs]. I think supererogation exists. The
WHEN PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING, SLEEPING IS A SIN
quote signals that my decision to sleep is a sin, and I accept that. I, however, do not accept that I’m obliged to do no sin. In this sense, almost all decisions in my life is sinful. Some are more sinful than others, and I try to go to the least sinful ones, as much as I have the capacity to think and reason about it. In this sense, I think I’m hopping on the crazy train going straight to hell, but also no, I don’t think I can’t bargain with it. The torture will not stop ever until I am dead, but I think I can refuse to let myself be controlled by such torture.
And therefore, Glaucon, is it not clear that the proper choice must always be the best possible choice that you can make? Is not that what we mean by “best”?
I cannot disagree with that, Socrates.
And therefore, Glaucon, you must agree that you are obliged to follow the Gospel According To Insanity Wolf to its very end?
No, I agree that the proper choice is always the better choice, but I disagree that the proper choice is always the best choice, and so I don’t think I’m obliged to follow the Gospel According To Insanity Wolf to its very end.
More formally, let be a bounded increasing sequence, where denotes the “goodness” of the -th action. The crazy train going to hell argues that since , it is unacceptable to stop at the -th decision! One must proceed to a better decision! In this sense, I’m not hopping into this crazy train. My conclusion would rather be that: “since , but the constraint (my cognitive resource, sleep, food, etc) requires , so I’ll only search the finite space for ”. In the end, I’m going to be more or less suboptimal. The difference is my sin, and I’m going to happily accept that. I’m not going to throw it away. In simpler words, my process is: within my resources limit , what best action would I be able to choose to maximize . The crazy train sets , and I do not. I guess this might be how I interpret the absurdity of the extremity. I, however, refuse the stronger claim, that “since the crazy train goes to hell, reject the design choice of entirely and just come up with another design choice, say, only”.
In conclusion, I accept your caution to “not follow the Insanity Wolf indefinitely”, while still retaining my decision to “hear the wolf out, and choose whatever I believe is best subject to the local constraints”.
Heinlein remarked that “the wisdom of the ages” usually sounds like just being too tired. So in case it sounds like I’m just too tired, here’s some inspiration in the opposite direction, from Ratavia Rock Project.
Nowadays AI can solve problems even better than mathematicians, so is there a reason for me to still pursue a PhD? The academic skill gained from a PhD would become obsolete by the next few years.
Eventually there won’t be such job as a mathematician, as AI can effectively (i.e. not always, but usually) act as the Hilbert’s dream oracle: send a statement, and the AI decides whether it’s true or false, and gives the proof (or disproof). The only job of human is to retrieve the proof and try to understand it.
In the artistic sense, this is sad, and human endeavor in mathematics is getting to its extinction. In the scientific sense, this is hopeful, since we have better tools at finding truth!
So, it is what it is, and that’s life, I guess...
You should probably not expect to get a job writing certain kinds of proofs, but I’d expect the bigger part of most PhDs to be training judgement and taste (what matters, what approaches make sense), which are the two things AI is worst at.
For context, none of the software engineers I work with write meaningful amounts of code anymore, but we still have tons of work: deciding what to do, high-level design, code review, coordination, and ensuring rollouts are done safely.
Who knows what AI will look like in 4-6 years though.
I believe that 2+2=4, but two earplugs with two earplugs make three will not convince me 2+2=3. It will convince me that something is wrong between my abstraction of 3 earplugs and the number 4.
Of course, I agree that an unfalsifiable belief doesn’t deserve to be a belief, and yes, I can imagine a situation where I would believe that 2+2=4 is false: the collapse of Peano arithmetic.
Yes, if you ask me what kind of proposition
Yes, the truth/falsehood in the formal realm has nothing to do with the physical realm, but no, believing that a true proposition is true would require interacting with the physical realm. The sentence
Yell culture.
We’ve seen ask/guess/tell. I propose the yell culture: Yell whenever you dislike anything. I yell at you when I don’t like what you did. If you’re dissatisfied with that, yell back to me. It’s the same as Tell culture, but my variant tries to deliver the frustration forward. If I’m frustrated, I expect the listener to share my frustration, and bear the same happiness and unhappiness. I argue that this reinforces the team into a functional unit where one could die for one another.
Some colleagues discouraged me from doing this, and I want to examine more about it.
THIS IDEA COMPLETELY SUCKS AND I HATE IT!
YEAH EXACTLY I CAN SEE WHY AND I LOVE IT!
IF THEY DON’T LISTEN
SCREAM LOUDER
This is an interesting new view to me, since I‘ve never known about the insanity wolf. But then my next question is that “Why should we avoid insanity wolves?” Won’t a sufficiently morally good wolf compress sophisticated moral (normative) arguments into a simple rule of thumb so that we can follow as a compass or a heuristic?
I can’t make much sense of your comment, but here’s some background to Insanity Wolf.
Insanity Wolf is a meme of long standing. I didn’t invent it, but I created my Insanity Wolf page to highlight what seemed to me some dysfunctional thought patterns that recurred on LessWrong and the rationalsphere generally. For example, the first section of that page is about Effective Altruism and totalising Singerian ethics, but there is much, much more. Roko’s Basilisk is in there, and the idea that you do not exist, and universal arguments, and straightforward lunacy confidently screamed. I don’t make up these memes. The ideas are in the water supply, they come to me and I write them down. I have more than 1000 more that I haven’t got round to adding, but maybe nowadays I could vibe-code something. Perhaps an Insanity Wolf quote of the day for people who need to regularly wallow in shit to remind themselves why it’s a bad idea to wallow in shit.
HORROR! HORROR! HORROR!
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE HORROR!
I don’t know what your last sentence means, but if you want a “morally good wolf”, go see Courage Wolf. Courage Wolf is wise, wise but stern, very stern. Eliezer approves! Here’s my concentrated dose of Courage Wolf.
Also related, Eliezer’s Cognitive Trope Therapy, which informed the content warning I wrote for the Insanity Wolf page.
Your suggestion of Yell culture is an invitation for people to be Insanity Wolf.
Thanks for the background! As for me, sorry for being unclear, and I’ll look at the referenced posts. I will try to explain my view a bit more. The Insanity Wolf Test writes:
You also wrote that:
Basically, my point is that I’m not convinced why it’s a bad idea to wallow in shit. For the original Insanity Wolf Test, the last two lines says wants something that you should not give. My main question before was “why should we not give?”
As for my last sentence in the above comment, I was arguing that “maybe we should wallow in shit, if such shit is a compression of ‘sane’ enough logic”. For example, an anti-advice on your Insanity Wolf page is “WHEN PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING, SLEEPING IS A SIN”. Your anti-advice tries to convince me that I should reject this idea. I’m currently not convinced, and that my current stance is that it is morally good to keep this idea at the back of my mind.
Indeed, [my] suggestion of Yell culture is an invitation for people to be Insanity Wolf, and I agree with that. That’s why I want to know more about your reasoning why this is a dysfunctional thought pattern (as stated in your comment).
The track record of such extremism is poor. I was going to say it would take too much time to search out people’s reports of mental breakdowns, suicides, and other ways of going off the deep end, but conveniently a new one has appeared today. You can also search LW for “Ziz” and “Ziz(z)ians”. These are by no means the only ones.
If you read further in my Insanity Wolf page, I hope you will find things to disagree with, such as strangling all the evil people with each others’ intestines, and maximising happiness by killing everyone. The former was inspired by a remark of Voltaire, and the latter by those utilitarians who believe, literally, that life is suffering and that it would be better for everyone never to have been born.
But if I suppose your assent limited to absolutist positive utilitarianism á la EA and Peter Singer, there is a substantial issue there that has been much discussed by philosophers without any resolution. Is there supererogation?
A supererogatory act is one that it is praiseworthy to do, but which is not required. It is action over and above the call of duty. Is there any such thing?
Peter Singer and some EAs say no. Supererogation is a contradiction in terms. The good that you can do is the good that you must do. At every moment you must be doing the best thing you possibly can. All the obvious objections are folded into the basic injunction. You don’t know the best thing? Then the best thing is to find out. You’ll burn out? Then take some R&R, but only as much as needed to carry on the Work. It’s an impossible standard? Yes, but it’s the right standard, you just don’t want to because it’s hard. But—? Denied. You must make of yourself a slave to the good. “O feet happily fettered on the road to salvation!” While you are sleeping, the world is burning! You cannot ascend the torrent of your sins! Nothing for yourself, everything for the cause! Jam tomorrow? Jam never! Your life must be a desert! You are nothing, the cause is everything! Smile! The torture will continue until you comply. You can’t reason with it, you can’t bargain with it, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
The crazy train goes straight to hell. Seeing this, I do not get on it at all. And yet it starts out so reasonably, how could anyone disagree?
Suppose, Glaucon, that you are faced with a choice between a good deed and an evil one, which should one choose?
Of course the good one, Socrates, that’s what we mean by the words “good” and “evil”!
Then, Glaucon, suppose a very good deed and a moderately good one?
The better one, of course, Socrates, that is what we mean by “better”!
And therefore, Glaucon, is it not clear that the proper choice must always be the best possible choice that you can make? Is not that what we mean by “best”?
I cannot disagree with that, Socrates.
And therefore, Glaucon, you must agree that you are obliged to follow the Gospel According To Insanity Wolf to its very end?
That is very distasteful to me, Socrates, and I fear that your broad, straight path of reason, easy to follow and difficult to step aside from, has nevertheless led us into error. I am perplexed. But Socrates, I observe that your life is not in such derangement as would result from taking this conclusion seriously. I think you have led me down a false path in order to provoke me to find a better one.
(The ancient sources break off here.)
I have never seen a philosopher make a defence of supererogation that does not come down to declaring the absurdity of the extremity. But pro tem, that absurdity is enough for me.
“If daylight itself needs proof, nothing can be proved.”
Thank you for this reply. I can see your point clearer. Your premise is the absurdity of the extremity, right? I accept this opinion and I’ll keep it in the back of my head (and update my beliefs accordingly). I think my previous heuristic is that “if something is true then it must be true even in corner cases”. For example, even number plus even number makes even. When regular situation teaches 2+4=6 and 0+2=2, my “taking to the extreme” means testing the boundary of this claim: how about 0+1000000? How about −2+2? How about −99998+46464? They are all still even numbers.
My opinion: I disagree with [Peter Singer and some EAs]. I think supererogation exists. The
quote signals that my decision to sleep is a sin, and I accept that. I, however, do not accept that I’m obliged to do no sin. In this sense, almost all decisions in my life is sinful. Some are more sinful than others, and I try to go to the least sinful ones, as much as I have the capacity to think and reason about it. In this sense, I think I’m hopping on the crazy train going straight to hell, but also no, I don’t think I can’t bargain with it. The torture will not stop ever until I am dead, but I think I can refuse to let myself be controlled by such torture.
No, I agree that the proper choice is always the better choice, but I disagree that the proper choice is always the best choice, and so I don’t think I’m obliged to follow the Gospel According To Insanity Wolf to its very end.
More formally, let
In conclusion, I accept your caution to “not follow the Insanity Wolf indefinitely”, while still retaining my decision to “hear the wolf out, and choose whatever I believe is best subject to the local constraints”.
Heinlein remarked that “the wisdom of the ages” usually sounds like just being too tired. So in case it sounds like I’m just too tired, here’s some inspiration in the opposite direction, from Ratavia Rock Project.
SCREAM UNTIL DAWN
THIS WORLD WILL HEAR ME