Comment by magicalist
11 hours ago
Surprised to see someone on HN arguing against open science. Seems like the opposite of the lessons we should learn from Newton and Gauss, actually, hoarding results for decades at the expense of progress.
(the Pythagorean thing isn't really competition either, is ahistorical, and from what we actually do know it's again people hoarding results instead of sharing them).
FWIW, your post comes off as a middlebrow dismissal, surface level and not actually engaging with the substance of the comment. It's also just wrong. You claim "it’s also a misstatement of mathematical history", but don't specify which part. That there's "centuries of traditions of open science"? But your examples are from centuries (and millennia) ago, and there was never any claim that these traditions are universal.
But more fundamentally, competition doesn't mean you can't also have open science. And the very long, damaging events like the Leibniz/Newton feud are exactly what make many mathematicians work to maintain a spirit of collaboration and attribution even when they're competing on approaches.
Nothing in their comment reads to me as "arguing against"
Reads like nothing but historical context
> Nothing in their comment reads to me as "arguing against"
If competition is somehow the opposite of "centuries of traditions of open science", and "mathematics has always been highly competitive", then open science is neither sufficient or necessary for the future of mathematics. Their clear implication is that we don't need to worry about it, though, because it's always been that way.
> Reads like nothing but historical context
They literally accuse Tao of "a misstatement of mathematical history".
>If competition is somehow the opposite of "centuries of traditions of open science", and "mathematics has always been highly competitive", then open science is neither sufficient or necessary for the future of mathematics
For the future of past mathematics, it says nothing about the current future. Also, open science can be nonsufficient and unnecessary but still extremely beneficial and desirable.
>Their clear implication is that we don't need to worry about it, though, because it's always been that way.
Lets just ask him if that's what he meant, I bet no.
They aren't arguing against open science, they are trying to educate you on the history of science. It's always been this way.
Also, your third paragraph is highly ironic.
> They aren't arguing against open science, they are trying to educate you on the history of science. It's always been this way.
Always been what way? And how does that contrast to what Tao said (since it was apparently "a misstatement of mathematical history")?
> Also, your third paragraph is highly ironic.
You'll have to be more specific, since I engaged with my parent's argument, while they waved away Tao's quote by suggesting he was wrong because of exactly the kind of events that helped lead to the norms and mores working mathematicians have today.
Not arguing against open science - it's super valuable. I'm saying that pearl clutching by people reading Tao isn't useful, because it misses some long history which tells us that this kind of science has been seen as fundamentally competitive for millennia.
Should it be competitive? Is it more useful to be collaborative? How collaborative can it be when it's fundamentally competitive? Is it only fundamentally competitive because of some common 'quirks' of math types, or are there deeper forces pressuring it to be competitive?
These are all questions that I think are worth discussing, as is the note that the pendulum seems to be swinging away from cooperation in the face of competing for $trillion+ valuations (and a real enthusiasm for proving cool math stuff). The alternative, tweeting complaints on twitter without some context, is mostly a waste of space. I mentioned the history in hopes we could get informed complaints on twitter.