Great discussion of AI and the future of math. proofsandprompts.com/2026/10…

Flysch cliffs, Zumaia, one of most amazing geological formations I've seen. These vertical layers run for 8 kilometres along Basque coast, each a page+forming a book covering 60 million years of planet's history. Created when Iberia crashed into Europe and things went all squishy

"Our study reveals an interesting aging effect that complicates the prevailing narrative of declining innovation over a scientific career." More persistent disruptive (PD) work by senior scientists than younger counterparts pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…

Young people actively hate AI. My two younger daughters are 19 and 18, both at universities - one in the UK the other in Italy. Through them, I happen to know quite a few kids their age. And ALL OF THEM seem to universally hate AI. To them it's "something old people invented that we now have to deal with... as if climate change wasnt enough" AI is cringe. When they introduce me to their friends, they literally say "heyya, meet my dad, he's a software engineer but nonono, NOT IN AI, dont worry, hahah". They hate it for flooding their social feeds with slop, ruining music, taking phone scams to the next level, also destroying careers & devaluing their hobbies - why become an architect, this skill is about to become worthless? Why learn a musical instrument if session musicians are already obsolete? The outcome is interesting, though - they're spending less and less time on public social, meeting up IRL, moving their online lives into private group chats with actual verified friends. TikTok and Reels are increasingly cringe-something for old dudes. Which, I guess, might be a net positive after all...

"when OpenAI published their..October 6, 2026, Drop..they mentioned having tried 4000 problems, reporting success for some hundred.. seems to imply the existence of a potentially large group of problems on which the frontier LLM failed to find solutions" terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/…

If we want to continue progress in science, we must be prepared to acknowledge that the correct description of nature will eventually simply be too complicated for humans to understand. I do not think it is wise to make human understanding a requirement. AI is the way forward.

This reminds me of my own post-PhD experience. It was after the 2008 crash, and research oriented industry jobs in the US were scarce. I applied to triple-digit jobs online and didn't get a single interview call. By the standards prevalent at the time, I had an extremely good CV with all the right credentials. But I made two big mistakes. First, of graduating in a tough job market, of which I couldn't do anything about. Two, not reaching out to potential employers via my network. Part of it was pride. But a large part was also driven by my extremely high opinion of my own capabilities -- I thought that if someone wanted me, they should come to me (the former is still very true, btw). Eventually, I realized my mistake, and reached out to my network and I ended up getting 5-6 interviews. Those translated to 3 offers, one of which I eventually ended up taking. The whole experience taught me two very important lessons: 1. Network effects matter, irrespective of how good your CV is. 2. If you want something you need to go to people; they won't come to you, irrespective of your capabilities.

Mathematician Terence Tao: "one thing this whole era of AI is teaching us is that our idea of intelligence is not really accurate" The history of AI has been: 'here’s a task only humans can do', and then one by one, an algorithm does it too Maybe we're not quite as smart as we think

the "junior hiring isn't cooked" crowd is currently undergoing an overdose of copium