This is a great question that rarely gets answered. It’s partially that a ton of student students went to school for computer science because they saw how much money could be made, another fraction is people that switched into software from related fields, maybe with a boot camp or something.
That may be true I’m not gonna say one way or the other, but if AI comes for that then almost all knowledge work is effectively dead, so all that’s left would be sales or physical labor.
I wonder though, can AI make the next JS framework. I mean that in sincerity, there was the leap from jQuery to React for ex. If an AI only knows jQuery and no one makes React, will React come out of AI.
Plainly, we don’t have to pretend like there could be unforeseen consequences. This is a thing that exists in many jurisdictions and many societies around the world and we can see that many reasonable people become police officers in those societies.
Indeed, pedagogy is important to staving off the end of mathematics.
That sounds dramatic, but it’s really obvious if you think about it. Right now, a person has to study for about 20 years (on average) to make novel contributions in mathematics. They have to learn what’s come before, the techniques, the results, etc. If mathematics continues, eventually it could take 25 years, or 30 years, or even a whole lifetime. At some point, most people will not be able to understand the work that’s been done in any subfield (or the work required to understand a subfield) in a human’s life. I claim this is the logical end of mathematics, at least as a human endeavor.
Now, there will be some results which refine other work and simplify results, but being able to teach a rapidly growing body of literature efficiently will be important to stave off the end of mathematics.
There's a Scott Alexandar story that plays with this exact topic: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis [1]
To your point, I think you're right. I'm not in mathematica, but the value of good pedagogy on shrinking the time it takes to get people to the forefront of any field feels like it's heavily overlooked.
Spending some time in and around applied research labs and seeing how poorly the sausage looks before it gets made into a paper is quite distressing.
I’m sure there are labs out there doing excellent work (especially those focused on theory), but most of the applied research I’ve seen up close and personal is very poor indeed.
I’ve met some exceptional people: top researchers from top universities from several fields, super well paid engineers working on products you probably use, some of the best hackers an advanced persistent threat actor could ask for; they’re just people.
I think if you get a collection of competent, thoughtful people together they would come up with similar solutions to the problems discussed in this talk.
I am sure they are, my fascination is how they manage to get so much more out of the same 24 hours than me. Sometimes I would just like to know how others manage all the worldly churn that seems to suck my time. starting from cleaning the kitchen, toilets and the home, food prep and washing up, being active, moving the lawn, reading a good book, doing taxes, bringing the vehicle to service, fix that phone for grandma etc. so how do they do it? Is it character, personality, upbringing... What helped put them on this trajectory. So in short I'm curious about their story.
I assume that Jane Street employees likely use house cleaners, food delivery, laundry services, etc. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if part of the employee onboarding includes a list of common convenience services like these. Some employers pay for or subsidize such services; I don't know if Jane Street does.
Personal sacrifice is often expected. Fixing the phone for grandma would simply be neglected for many employees in these positions.
Do they? Are they doing more work, or is the set of things they've chosen to be good at more stereotypically impressive than the set of things you've chosen to be good at?
> all the worldly churn
Surely all of that adds up to <1hr/day (assuming exercise does double-duty with other intellectual activities and general unwinding)? You could work a pretty intense schedule and still have plenty of time for personal development with that level of overhead, so long as you actually stuck with it and got everything done.
> food prep and washing
I'd be curious to hear more about what this looks like for you. I might have ideas.
Diffe-Hellman-Merkel key exchange is vulnerable to attacker-in-the-middle attacks.
Eave could just do key negotiation with Alice and separately do key negotiation with Bob. You have to use a slightly more complicated cryptographic protocol to avoid this issue.
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