Comment by vishnugupta
9 hours ago
Mathematicians inhibit and explore a world that is completely made up and exists only in abstract.
I wonder if this makes them slowly get disconnected from the lived realities of billions of ordinary people.
9 hours ago
Mathematicians inhibit and explore a world that is completely made up and exists only in abstract.
I wonder if this makes them slowly get disconnected from the lived realities of billions of ordinary people.
How could a theoretical mathematician not be massively disconnected from the reality of life for the ordinary person? We usually celebrate their quirks until they come into conflict like this.
I agree, how could he --also being so smart.
It's a good reason not to take his advice about the real world--like how to manage AI's trajectory.
The cancer example illustrates this gap perfectly. He thoughtfully crafted the point, and defeated himself in argument.
Unless it was a move?
When thinking about math, Tao is in another world unfamiliar to us. But, he grew up in our world and is a professor in our world and if you listen to him, seems like a pretty normal guy. I think he just made a bad analogy here.
If true, this would be observed at least partially in software engineers as well, since what we deal with is kind of made up as well, but I don't see it.