> In the past, the path to a math Ph.D. cultivated resilience, resourcefulness, critical thinking, and a healthy skepticism (…) but suddenly you can produce a passable Ph.D. thesis with the push of a button

But actually nothing changed. Or maybe a path to "resilience, resourcefulness and critical thinking". Because human brains still needs to be shaped by years of training on some quality "literature", of some form.

We still must/want to human-[re]check important results, right ? And that require years of students time dedicated to memoizing facts and doing exercises in discovering already discovered results - learning and weights tuning, in the brains.

Yes, demotivator factor is very high or maybe just more visible then usual. Especially for brain paths forming - an that process is not quite stated in university and other education...

I think that when LLMs finish words and sentences shuffling and finds most of low hanging fruits in cutting edge of research ;) then only humans can move things forward, via abstractions, syntesis or old good paradigm abandoning. Hard to imagine LLM on their own "discover" something and then drops all that "literature" it was trained on as obsolote :) In next prompt it will happily return you old texts without any influence of just discovered paradigm shift.

In XIX century we got quite stagnation in science - it was belived that everything was already discovered, explained, just some few experiments are needed because some numbers do not adds up... And that proliferated to philophy and culture via some "proofs" for atheists. But in 1905 a paper was published... Too bad politicans do not get implications of that and still was pushing communism decades later...

So we realy want humans with brain pathways shaped mostly "old way" - the only one way available for human beings - by that training called "education". As always there is resistance and pain and attempts to find a shortcuts by cheating. Maybe this is time to clearly state that brain workings training is big part of education ? Just like in gym you are repeating to trying to lift weights up to your limit and even little above, with supervisor oversight.

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Ukv 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But in 1905 a paper was published... Too bad politicans do not get implications of that and still was pushing communism decades later...

The photoelectric effect/quanta? I'm not sure I understand the supposed connection to communism.

	▲	Woodi 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Einstein - definitive end of XIX ilusion and way of thinking that "We know everything. We are the lords of things, we own all of it! And other peoples too! We can engineer societes as we like it!". With strict oposition to old and humbler "God" or natural ways. With aggresive "we" that do not pay attention to rights of other we's. And, IMO, Einstein, Godel and more discoveries should be reason to not continue communism stupidity. Especially to not continue - after year 1905 - social engineering plans of "world-wide GENOCIDE until everybody is good citizen". Of course I'm talking about best-wanting-for-humans but still naive communism and not about a way to destabilize other countries by any means necessary. Such move did almost insta-karma effect on Germany: sponsoring commies in Russia resulted in nazi being sponsored in Germany... Don't think someone want to deny societes, philosophers and politicians are drived by overall science view on reality. And what else could drive atheistic minds ? Not judging here, logic is everyones duty. Also my "too bad politicians..." was obviously expression of a wish. Not only science influents politicians. But discovered facts (counterarguments in this case) about reality could be taken for consideration, right ?

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jonathanstrange 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> some quality "literature", of some form

In my opinion, we will continue to need fully educated people who read books and peer-reviewed articles. We need literature, not "'literature', of some form."

	▲	Woodi 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Still, AI is a new form of a library. Or knowledge presentation. With a lot of usefulness for learning. Sure, who know things do not need to consult talky chatbots. But totaly dismising '"literature", of some form' is not an opion. It already works like simple "consulting manual". Of course as long as texts used for LLMs training start to be outdated and noone will bother to update models. And we always want as much as possible educated peoples but not always can afford everyone higher material expe^W^W^W^Wdemands.