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Friday Fun Thread for July 17, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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If Terence Tao is increasingly reliant on it

Do you mean "reliant" in the sense of "having or showing dependence" or in the sense of "confident; trustful"?

The latter.

Ok, that is by far the more reasonable option, even if I find it less natural as a matter of language.

It is, of course, difficult to strictly evaluate the extent to which a third party is "increasing" in a sense of reliance/confidence/trust. That said, I would note that a couple days ago I referred to this recent blog post by Tao, where he presented some criteria that he says he uses to guide his usage. I don't necessarily agree with them all, but I do get the sense that he maintains a distrust of them, even while trying to get as much value out of them as possible. In the comments on that blog post, he re-endorses his comments on using "AI on the red team" from this paper, which also reads to me as having a sense of distrust and trying to describe ways of working with the thing that he has a sense of distrust in, while leveraging its strengths.