Comment by azan_
5 days ago
> They are very psychological games (at human level) and are about finding moves that are difficult to handle for the opponent. You try to understand how your opponent thinks and what is going to be unpleasant for them. This gives a lot of scope for creative and psychological warfare.
And yet even basic models which can run on my phone win this psychological warfare with best players in the world. The scope of problems on IMO is unlimited. Please note that IMO is won by literally best high-school students in the world and most of them are unable to solve all problems (even gold medal winners). Do you think that they are dumb and unable to learn "few tricks"?
>In competitive math (or programming) there is one correct solution and no opponent. It's just not possible for it to be very creative endeavor if those solutions can be found in very limited time.
That's absurd. You could say same things about math research (and "one correct solution" would be wrong as it is for IMO), do you consider it something that's not creative?
>>Do you think that they are dumb and unable to learn "few tricks"?
They are just slow because they are humans. It's like in chess: if you calculate million times faster than a human you will win even if you're pretty dumb (old school chess programs). Soon enough Chat GPT will be able to solve IMO problems at international level. It still can't play chess.
>>That's absurd. You could say same things about math research (and "one correct solution" would be wrong as it is for IMO), do you consider it something that's not creative?
Have you missed the other condition? No meaningful math research can be done in 30-60 minutes (time you have for IME problem). Nothing of value that require creativity can be done in short time. Creativity requires forming a mental model, exploration, trying various paths, making connections. This requires time.
My point about math competitions not being taken as seriously also stands. People train chess or go for 10-12 years before they start peaking and then often improve after that as well. This is a lot of hours every day. Math competitions aren't done for so many hours and years and almost no one does them anymore once in college.
This means level at those must be low in comparison to endeavours people pursue professionally.