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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   19636 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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I'm skeptical of math as a field and how Tao practices it.

This is an important concern.

Tao has almost certainly been offered dump trucks full of cash to join quant funds. Perhaps if he made global derivatives arbitrage a few points more efficient he could save every American's retirement fund a few hundred bucks a year. Would that be a better contribution to humanity than whatever he's doing now?

Don’t underestimate just how much you can get fatigued by money overtime. I have a known technical skill set that some of my close friends and family know about and by proxy to others who know them, I’ve been offered a good amount of money to engage in work for them in the past (nothing like Tao probably has; not even close, but around low 5 figures). I’ve even received direct phone calls about it. I declined all of them because it’s very precise, very high pressure work, plus it’s very inconsistent and intermittent which disrupts and prevents me from establishing and keeping the stable track I’m already on. It’s hard for people to believe but money really isn’t everything.

by money

*by work

Well, if someone’s going to give me free money I am going to take it, but salaries often increase with the difficulty of the work you do. I’d much rather take a lower end job where I got to pursue the things I wanted than a high end one where life outside of a paycheck was terrible.

Good point, and grim. But he was also offered those dump trucks by OpenAI, and he took it. But he's not contributing to AI research, just branding. I don't blame him, AI research sucks. There's no theory to it, it's just try random things. Same with quant research.

Does MIRI not do research anymore?

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