Math's unwritten no-scooping norm sparks debate over Anthropic vs OpenAI on math
alz_zyd_ · x · 2026-09-07
A thread on math's unwritten norm against scooping others' research projects:
- @nihilunbounded argues there's a commonly understood social norm not to scoop someone's ongoing project, and quips that it's "increasingly clear that Anthropic gives less fucks about math than OAI", with irony about Buzzard being undermined by a monster of his own making.
- @alzzyd muses that many hard problems stay unsolved because only one person works on each while everyone else deliberately stays away.
- @littmath (prominent mathematician) pushes back: the norm exists for protecting young people on small problems, but not for major open questions—math is huge, so few people per problem is natural.
- @nihilunbounded adds that results announced but unpublished for two years are still off-limits once talks have presented the key ideas.
The underlying tension: whether AI labs entering math research are eroding traditional academic etiquette.
Related event: Claude's FLT Proof Ignites Math Community Scooping-Ethics Debate(26 posts)→
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