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whattheheckheck • yesterday at 11:19 PM • 6 replies • view on HN

Is this really as interpetable math is fundamentally. Like wtf is this accessibility? who is this for? Do top mathematicians read this like a chapter book? Absolutely ridiculous they have all this compute and creative resources and cant make something more intuitive to help people understand it more natively


Replies

vecter • yesterday at 11:50 PM

It's a math paper written for mathematicians.

It's not possible for someone who's not a specialist in the field to understand it (unless there are more elementary proofs, of which likely none exist).

paxy • today at 1:46 AM

It's sometimes okay to look at something, go "this isn't for me", and move on. You don't need to have an opinion on everything.

eru • today at 12:06 AM

Even mathematicians take a long time to read math books and articles, especially if they go into the details. They don't read math like you would read a novel.

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NetMageSCW • yesterday at 11:47 PM

Sometimes hard things are hard.

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ks2048 • today at 2:55 AM

> Absolutely ridiculous they have all this compute and creative resources and cant make something more intuitive to help people understand it more natively

OpenAI has that too - open their website and ask.

serf • today at 1:58 AM

I agree with you insofar that the primary motivator for these press releases is public relations and investor confidence, so it should be made as minimally hard to understand as possible just by sheer virtue that it exposes oAI to more cash thrown at them.

I totally disagree with you on the precept that all difficult to understand things need be needlessly dumbed-down/watered-down until palatable for a mass (average) audience. Requiring 'math50' before 'trig101' isn't gate-keeping in any moral sense, it's an effort to save everyones' time involved when the effort is futile.

Similarly I don't demand that haute couture fashion companies explain the style to me until 'I get it' ; I just take it for granted that i'm not going to be able to understand the entirety of the world in one lifetime.