alt Hacker News"If you just waited a year, would some other AI produce that same proof independently?"
I had a conversation about this very problem last November, with a visiting mathematician. It's essentially signaling a deflationary spiral in intellectual work: why bother doing the work now, when it will take half as much effort a year from now?
This is perhaps always a possible stance, but it's exacerbated when some proportion of your own agency is handed over to, well, agents.
Replies
RealityVoid • yesterday at 10:08 PM
I like this observation very much. Intellectual deflationary spiral is exactly how it feels at the moment and we might end up in a worse place because of it.
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stabbles • yesterday at 10:20 PM
That's the theme of this reflection: https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/08/why-i-chose-to-do-ma...
This might hold up for theoretical intellectual work without any economical value, but if you are researching anything that can be applied to the industry, you will instead have 1 year of market ownership and first-mover advantage.
I think it says more about what the value of math as intellectual work is, than about intellectual work in general.
Like if an Egyptian historian would come and say "let's wait one year until the methods are good enough to decrypt this language", no one would be bothered or surprised.