[vouaobrasil]

The point is that even with mathematics and programming, there is an underlying community aspect that cannot be ignored, but is hidden under layers of utility. For example, even in programming, people getting together to code, collaborating, and sharing their projects is a small but significant drop in people creating a community.

With mathematics, the sharing of ideas and slaving over the proof of a theorem brings meaning to lives by forging friendships. Same with any intellectual discipline: before generative AI, all the art around us was primarily from human minds and were echoes of other people through society.

Post-AGI, we abandon that sense of community in exchange for pure utility, a sort of final stage of human mechanization that rejects the very idea of community.

[akoboldfrying]

If a change in other people's ability to do mathematics affects your level of enjoyment in doing mathematics, you don't really enjoy mathematics. You enjoy feeling smarter than other people, of belonging to an exclusive club.

Preserving people's access to this kind of enjoyment is not something that should carry any weight in my opinion.

[vouaobrasil]

Oh come on, that's ridiculous. I wasn't referring to a change in ability, but a change in culture. The modern culture of mathematics is getting worse in my opinion, and many feel the same. Besides, I don't even practice math any more...

[wwweston]

One of Bill Thurston's answers on MathOverflow should be required reading on this and a lot of related topics. When basically asked "How do I cope with the fact that I'm no Gauss or Euler?" he replied:

> The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves... mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining --- they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematici...

Ongoing relationships and cooperation is how humanity does its peak stuff and reaches peak understanding (and how humans usually find the most personal satisfaction).

LLMs are powerful precisely because they're a technology for concentrating and amplifying some aspects of cooperative information sharing. But we also sometimes let our tools isolate.

Something as simple as a map of a library is an interesting case: it is a form of toolified cooperation, you can use it to orient yourself in discovering and orienting library materials without having to talk to a librarian, which saves time/attention... and also reduces social surface area for incidental connection and cooperation.

That's a mild example with very mild consequences and only needs mild individual or cultural tools in order to address the tradeoffs. We might also consider markets and the social technology of business which have resorted in a kind of target-maximizing AGI. The effects here are also mixed, certainly in terms of connection / isolation, also potentially in terms of environmental impact. A paperclip maximizer has nothing on an AGI/business that benefits from mass deforestation, and we created that kind of thing hundreds of years ago.

The question is if we're going to maintain the kind of social/cultural infrastructure that could help us be aware of and continue to invest in the value the social/cultural infrastructure.

Or, put more simply, if we're going to build a future for people.

[zmgsabst]

Chess has never had a larger community — entirely because computers enable streaming and exciting faster games.

[vouaobrasil]

Again, I am not arguing against ALL computer use of chess. Just the chess engine/AI itself. Why do you insist on taking all of technology as an indivisible unit in your argument?

[zmgsabst]

They’re the same technology: you don’t get to select only some of the applications, which appeal to your personal aesthetics.

We arrived at engines before online chess, and the two have come up together — both being enabled by the growth of computers. You can choose not to use an engine, but it will exist either way because others will choose to use it when it’s enabled by those same things.

To get rid of the engine, you have to get rid of computers — or in the case of Freestyle/Chess960, create so many openings a human can’t memorize them all so only has a short time to prepare.

[vouaobrasil]

You are right in some sense. Of course, my objective is a long-shot: to encourage people to eschew many advanced technologies and go to a simpler way of life. Some will listen, others won't. But I do think there is a future where technology is more restricted along the lines of the Amish way. A long shot I said, but one I intend to promote regardless.

And a suspicion and dislike of advanced technology IS growing among people outside the technophile sphere.

[williamcotton]

I don’t think AGI is going to have any impact on the communities of open mic folk singers of the world.