Following Terry Tao's blog he seems to be engaging in forced self-directed cognitive behaviorial therapy, he is trying to come to terms with loss while developing a new framework for himself and other as to where the value is. It is cool to see. It is better to engage than to be in denial and just fall into reactionary behavior.

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layer8 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Like many other posts on Tao’s blog, this is a post by guest authors, not by Tao himself.

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paulpauper an hour ago | parent [-]

yeah, people keep confusing his guest posts as things he said . I think he should just make a second blog only for guest posts. it would lessen the confusion.

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layer8 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

He wants to give those posts exposure by posting them on his blog, so a second blog would counteract that. What he should do is simply put “Guest post: ” in front of each title.

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hiimkeks 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What would also lessen the confusion would be people putting in the effort to read a little further than the headline before coming up with a hot take.

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paulpauper 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

People have disclaimer blindness. it's similar to sidebar or banner blindness. it is also possible it does not show up well on mobile devices. how many people read fine print or terms of service?

	▲	klhs 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's a charitable view point.

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HedonicEscal8r 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a guest post. Tao has been quite consistent in his stance.

	▲	paulpauper an hour ago \| parent [-]
		People are not good at reading disclaimers. the eyes immediately go to to the title and the body of text.

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12212755 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is entirely ahistorical and a typical remote psychoanalysis.

Tao has been pushing for AI and Lean for a long time and didn't like the way OpenAI handled the Oct. 6th release. He has now been pushing for AI owned by universities.

That is the public way he navigates the situation, who knows what his real game is.

He is one of the people that brought about this situation.

In any case: "reactionary"? Are we using Soviet language to single out perceived dissidents?

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bhouston 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> This is entirely ahistorical and a typical remote psychoanalysis.

I've been reading the posts on his blog (and I should be clear, many posts are guest posts, so it is a collective cognitive behavior therapy session):

Also did you notice he never posted more than 10 posts per month until September? These are definitely posts trying to come to terms with the new reality and searching for value in a field where humans are not pre-eminent:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/a-value-based-appr...

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/why-do-we-need-hum...

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/12/after-math/

I also see this post like this one that claims that mathematics will be needed as interpreters of complex AI generated proofs - I see this post as a form of denial in that this is just a current limitation of AI, and will likely be fixed soon:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/if-math-is-more-th...

> In any case: "reactionary"? Are we using Soviet language to single out perceived dissidents?

When new technology is introduced that is disruptive a lot of people fall into "reactionary" stances.

The first definition of reactionary that I found was this:

"A reactionary is a person or policy that opposes political, social, or economic change and seeks to reverse progress to restore an earlier, idealized state of society."

I think that fits with my usage.

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ComplexSystems 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What situation? The development of an algorithm that can prove mathematical theorems?

	▲	qw123a 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The systems need Lean, training material, benchmarks, data labeling, experts, publicity and more. OpenAI gave out free researcher accounts to collect more training material. All of which was provided and encouraged by a small group like Tao, Gowers, Tsimerman, Avigad, Schmitt etc. It isn't just "an algorithm".

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azan_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> He is one of the people that brought about this situation.

Yeah, sure... What the hell are you talking about? Do you think that if not Tao we would not have the Oct. 6th release? That's totally insane.

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robotpepi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's a bit funny: all that psychological jargon and shaky speculation about his mental state, but you missed that Tao didn't write the post.

	▲	paulpauper an hour ago \| parent [-]
		similar to banner blindness or sidebar blindness, people have disclaimer blindness.

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ActionHank 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Did you even read it? Wild the fanboyism for AI has rotted out the brains of so many people. It's a tool, it's useful, people will adapt.

The reaction was from the strip mining of pending human discovery, mathematicians were already using LLMs from frontier labs who then published suspiciously similar solutions or found connections that were just waiting to be discovered.