robinhouston
Joined 17 years ago
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12,369
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757
Member since
Jun 3
Recent submissions
Comment · 24 days ago
They've just excluded square numbers because (as you noted) the solution is obvious. Except 4, for some reason.
Comment · 24 days ago
This is the paper that’s being referenced: https://pingyou.com/papers/eleven-squares.pdf
It’s not obvious to me that it has any deep significance.
Comment · 25 days ago
I really liked Zen Puzzle Garden back in the day. I spent a lot of time playing it when I ought to have been working on my PhD, and I even ended up writing a paper on it. [0]
It’s interesting that Gwern explicitly mentions ZPG as an inferior predecessor, because – for reasons I cannot clearly articulate or explain – I find it much more enjoyable to play than Samon. The player experience feels a lot more polished.
For a while, you could upload your own ZPG garden designs to the Lexaloffle BBS, where they would be playable on the web. I designed a few brutally difficult gardens, which were unsolved for years. Good times.
Comment · 1 month ago
>Terence Tao is arguing
This is a guest post by Amit Sahai.
Comment · 1 month ago
The original title is ‘Why I agreed to join AGMAI’. I think this is a rare case where HN's auto-declickbaitification has changed the meaning of the headline for the worse.
Comment · 1 month ago
I’m just looking at it for the first time myself, but isn’t the compiler in https://github.com/bendlang/bend/blob/main/bend2/comp.ts ?
Comment · 1 month ago
I don't think that's actually the real problem. Along with the progress in answering mathematical questions, recent progress on AI-powered autoformalisation has been astonishing. All the recent AI discoveries have been accompanied by Lean proofs.
And, yes: that doesn't absolutely guarantee correctness. The Lean kernel has had soundness bugs, and may have some still. But it's pretty strong evidence of correctness nevertheless.
The concern among mathematicians is not mainly that they doubt the correctness of any of these discoveries, but that human understanding may be devalued.
Comment · 1 month ago
For context and balance, Bubeck has tweeted a curiously non-specific denial:
> A series of false and inflammatory allegations against me are currently circulating on social channels. To clarify, I came into the discussion following academic norms, and I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Anyone who knows me knows that academic standards are of the highest importance to me. Will have more to say tomorrow.
Cofounded https://flourish.studio; now exited & looking for the next big project