I Vibed a Proof of Conway's Conjecture

(overreacted.io)

37 points | by m-hodges 35 minutes ago

5 comments

  • vatsachak 9 minutes ago
    That's awesome! Congratulations!

    I'd imagine that in three months when we all have access to communicating agent swarms this should be easier

  • howunfortunate 21 minutes ago
    > On the second day, there are two gaps: “between nothing and zero” and “between zero and nothing”. Two numbers spawn in those two gaps. Call them –1 and 1.

    Got lost here. I think I'm officially too dumb for math.

    • dubcanada 15 minutes ago
      I think it's just we don't have a way to say/write these numbers. So you make up a way to write them (-1 and 1) and continue.

      The numbers don't matter and you could replace -1 and 1 with anything. It's just easier to begin your new fake number at - 1 and 1. Because position does matter.

    • Smaug123 11 minutes ago
      It’s a terrible explanation. A surreal number is defined as a pair of sets of surreal numbers (where you fiddle around the recursion in that definition by defining them in waves, so strictly speaking you’re defining “the surreal numbers born at time T” for each individual T given access to the surreal numbers born at all earlier times, and then you “take the union across all times”, scare quotes because there are too many times for this to result in a set). Zero is a surreal number but the LLM is using the word “zero” to mean “the set containing just the surreal number 0”; “nothing” here is the LLM’s obtuse word for the empty set. Wikipedia may actually be easier to follow.
    • svachalek 6 minutes ago
      The image helped for me at least.
    • echelon 6 minutes ago
      > I think I'm officially too dumb for math.

      I'm hoping someone develops an interactive tutor that can teach any subject to any depth.

      The tutor should optimize its pedagogy. It should use online RL to adapt to a learner's ideal learning style, model what the student understands and to what degree, and understand what the gaps and next steps are.

      I'd subscribe in a heartbeat.

    • jdw64 16 minutes ago
      I feel the same way. Want to become a dumb and dumber duo? I believe you could be my friend.
      • howunfortunate 12 minutes ago
        Pitch: a mini-series where a Dumb and Dumber duo get access to unlimited tokens via a roommates's account (who is an intern at a frontier lab).

        In each episode they make a major science-fiction style breakthrough and grapple with the consequences without revealing themselves.

  • cyclopeanutopia 9 minutes ago
    Someone please vibe-prove that ZFC is inconsistent.
  • tonetheman 7 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • GPerson 12 minutes ago
    “Guy amuses himself in token burn rpg while simultaneously demotivating anyone who would have found value in this process.”
    • nbulka 5 minutes ago
      He seems genuinely interested in Surreal numbers. Seems like he found value in exploring them and the Lean process, devoting time and interest to it and understanding what it's like to be a mathematician. I think a lot of people who go into Computer Science may have been mathematicians in the 30s before they became separate majors at the university level.
    • dcre 6 minutes ago
      What is stopping anyone from finding the value they would have found before?
    • addlatt 3 minutes ago
      Nihilistic view