wizzwizz4

This is a counterexample for the three-variable case, which hasn't been studied as much. The long-standing two-variable case remains open.

Human mathematicians have been being out-counterexampled for at least two decades. The main difference, as I understand, is that (A) we now have a lot more compute to throw at such things, and (B) it is currently trendy to do so. But the sizes of counterexample we're seeing are around about what I'd expect pre-generative-AI counterexample search systems to be able to find.

It's not easy to find a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, by any means – by which I mean to say that naïve brute-force search will take too long – but the scope of existing searches listed on Wikipedia[0] suggest that many tricks are already known, and that people just hadn't looked, systematically, for a counterexample in three variables before. Wikipedia writes:

Tzuong-Tsieng Moh checked the conjecture for polynomials of degree at most 100 in two variables.[17][18]

where reference 17 is from 1983, and reference 18 is a preprint with no given date. Knowing very little about this problem, my impulse is to side with the unnamed faculty member cited in the article:

[who] said to me that the fact that the counterexample was so easy to find just indicated that humans had not spent enough time thinking about the problem,

For context, the auto-generated counterexample is in three variables, has degree 7, and was discovered in 2026.

Sunlight and grow light generally happen at different times.

But, of course, there's no law of nature saying that we have to organise our society according to "rational" market dynamics. Many writers (famously Adam Smith) have opined on the subject.

Provided that the things that used up all the CO₂ were close enough to eat, anyway. Otherwise we'd be left without any agriculture, which would be bad.

Strictly-speaking, that's corecursion.

What does "the user is free to still resolve it if they want" mean in a world where people do not control, or even understand, the software running on their computers? (Because I can tell you, I certainly don't.) This abstraction is a nice idea, but it's unrealistic as part of a serious threat model. Does Joe Q. Public know about the hosts file, or how the Windows network stack selectively overrides its entries, or how some of the Linux userspace uses systemd-resolved, or the things that I don't even know to write here? I'M not the one resolving domains: the software running on MY computer is.

And even if I'm a super genius who's written my own full-stack operating system on my souped-up speccy, I'm still bound by the laws of information theory. If you need information that you don't have, you're necessarily requesting it from a source (here, a computer) external to you (here, outside your control). A complicated network protocol doesn't make that fact go away, and doesn't allow you to ignore it. (It might mitigate various censorship or spoofing approaches, but you only know that if you check: the abstraction won't save you merely by virtue of being an abstraction.)

No, Microsoft should be stopping this because Microsoft is doing it, and it is wrong. HDMI does not, to my knowledge, provide a mechanism for loading code: it's Microsoft software looking the product model up in a Microsoft database, downloading the appropriate malware, and executing it with elevated privileges (bypassing UAC).

There's no such thing as a TLD that's uncontrollable by any entity. How would you imagine such a thing working? Whatever you imagine: how does it stand up to me editing the hosts file, or the browser's source code?

  <a>Info<span class="hide_on_mobile">rmation</span></a>

My vouch works well, but I barely use it: mostly on select comments of shadowbanned users. My flag, on the other hand, feels like it requires heavy consensus: even when it's successful, the comments I flag tend to get vouched back into existence on a hair-trigger.

I try to flag only bad-faith arguing. I need to get more disciplined about flagging bad-faith arguing for stances I agree with: I don't flag those comments nearly as much, perhaps because I simply don't perceive them as bad-faith if I agree with them.

Then again, I'm perfectly capable of perceiving bad-faith comments opposing generative AI. I had dismissed the possibility out of hand, so it's possible that the reason I don't see many bad-faith agrees-with-me comments, AI-bashing aside, is because there aren't many: maybe people who agree with me tend to act in good faith.

You can also have multiple names listed on your passport: for example, if you have a public and private name, or if you're a noble. I've found that the "vague evidence" requirement is actually quite strict, though: even if you use a name in 95% of everyday contexts, the passport office only counts bureaucratic evidence, and there are circular dependencies with most bureaucracies unless you produce a deed poll (which requires you to attest that you only have one name, for some reason: I'm not familiar enough with the law to know whether this is a real requirement, or just ceremonial language like the "I promise that a Catholic will never succeed to the throne" bit in the coronation ceremony). So the de facto rules about passport names are stricter than names in general.

Since he gave up his US citizenship in 2016, I don't think he's subject to a jurisdiction where "legal name" is a meaningful notion. Ultimately, this means his first name is whatever he says it is (provided that he isn't lying): you'd have to ask him. Supposing that his answer changes depending on the social context, then both "Alexander" and "Boris" would be valid answers for "what is this person's first name?".

Count Binface is in a different situation, because "Count Binface" is a stage name, which he (presumably) doesn't go as in his real life. However, stage names are still considered legal enough to go on your UK passport. Ultimately, whether he would be allowed to write "Count Binface" as his name on the registration documents would depend on what the Electoral Commission decides. I had a look last week, but couldn't find their rules.

The first name component of the name "Boris Johnson" is Boris. It's just as valid a name as any other name he goes by, for both social and legal purposes.

Or you could just take a shower, which makes it easy to wipe the excess earwax from your ear.

The statement takes meaning-as-use as a given, sure, but I think the point of the statement is that people are arguing over an uninteresting question / taking meaningless positions about a meaningless issue, rather than "hey, words are moves in a language game!". I referenced two EWDs, which provide the original statements in context (though I can't find the widely-quoted wording anywhere: I thought I remembered it being in EWD1035, but apparently not). If you think my understanding of what Dijkstra meant was wrong, could you explain further, please?

But the part of the ear that needs cleaning can be reached without a cotton bud. This is like shoving a sponge down your windpipe to remove mucus.

The question of whether a SAT solver can reason is about as interesting as the question of whether a submarine can swim. (EWD867, EWD898)

I was, but Wikipedia tells me it was preceded by Muddy Waters Research, and followed by Hunterbrook, both of which (unlike Hindenburg) are still active.

Interestingly, the Hunterbrook Wikipedia article says that Hunterbrook is unique, and the Muddy Waters Research Wikipedia article lists loads of other organisations. Perhaps someone should investigate…?

I don't know about the film, but the Jurassic Park novel is set in 1989.

Someone had a model combining shorting with investigative journalism, a while back. They'd short, then release evidence showing that the company was way overvalued, then make their money when the stock price dropped.

So does anyone familiar with the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

Likeness as IP is a bad framework. Nonetheless, that appears to be the dominant approach. Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

Oftentimes, they are in conflict. "I love you, my Samaritan neighbour: but I disagree with your practice of sacrificing to God upon the altar at Mount Gerizim, as opposed to the altar at Temple Mount, as is right and proper; and your copy of scripture differs from mine at thousands of points, for which I condemn yours as erroneous and heretical; and I disagree with your practice of speaking the Name on holy days, for we lost that tradition with our priesthood at the destruction of the Second Temple, and therefore you must also discard the practice, for those who speak the Name have no part in the world to come; and really I'd rather you stopped being a Samaritan altogether." Does that sound like love, to you?

"Even those you hate" is too strong a reading, in my view. "Even those you are bigoted towards", perhaps. (Jesus did say elsewhere to love your enemies, but I don't think this parable says that.)

Optional[T] was always just an abbreviation for Union[T, None], anyway: it's unsurprising that they didn't choose to give it its own syntax.

Actually, they cite someone else's critique which, as I said, is inadequate. For instance, it claims that making a question more specific (and therefore less likely to apply) for the cis-adapted questionnaire makes the results incomparable. Given the one-tailed test for the main result in Moser (2009) is not in the direction that would be invalidated by an underreport in cis women, that's just a totally nonsense criticism.

If we assume it was reported correctly, then the research is not pseudoscience. The claims are pseudoscience: they are not supported by the evidence produced by the research. Like most such quackery, the category boundaries are ever-nebulous, turning to smoke whenever anyone "misinterprets" the "theory", and turning to steel whenever an "expert" makes an "incontrovertible" proclamation.

You might have too strong of an opinion on this topic to be able to see what I'm talking about, so consider reading Karl Popper's writings on falsifiability in the context of Freudian psychoanalysis. Perhaps also look into the "research" on Simon Baron-Cohen's "Extreme Male Brain" theory of autism published after the 2019 foetal steroids study (coauthored by Simon Baron-Cohen!) that pulled the rug out from under its remaining foundational assumption: you'll see authors citing and "critiquing" the mainstream view (i.e., that the whole thing was an honest mistake resulting from incorrect questionnaires designed to validate, not attempted-falsify, an assumption based on a now-discredited stereotype based on a patriarchal notion of gender roles, and we know better now) and yet carrying on with their "research" that presumes Extreme Male Brain regardless, because their academic careers and their egos are too invested in it. Some of their studies have very large sample sizes, too! and yet they don't show what their authors claim they show: they can't possibly, because those claims aren't true.

Note that Simon Baron-Cohen is among the people reluctant to give this up: you'll see that all throughout the 2019 paper, it establishes correlation and then immediately asserts an arrow of causation, and speculates about various other theories without adequate justification. But while Simon Baron-Cohen is bad at science, and has his pet theories, I wouldn't say he goes as far as pseudoscience: I haven't known him to write disingenuous "critiques" as in the paper you cited, and he does seem to acknowledge when his concrete theories are disproven – for example, his "mind blindness" theory (a component of his "extreme male brain" theory), which he's changed his mind about in the wake of Damian Milton's work. (Work on mind-blindness after double-empathy would be a better example of the "people still publishing discredited theories which never had actual experimental support" phenomenon, except that the shape of the methodological flaws in those works are much closer to Ray Blanchard's, so – depending on what exactly is stopping you from seeing them here – you might not be able to see them in those either.)

Given that I've brought him up in this context, I feel the need to clarify: from what I can tell, Simon Baron-Cohen does care, a lot, about the welfare of his research subjects. He does a lot of work outside his immediate scientific contributions. I do not think he should be condemned for what are understandable mistakes, albeit mistakes he probably wouldn't have made had he adhered to "nothing about us without us" in his early research: the whole point of science is to err decreasingly, and for all his faults (most of which would hardly matter, if he were a less influential academic), he has done that.

I would suggest that your ability to discern when the model is wrong might be the thing that has changed.

One of these "niche linguistic applications" is language learning.