banteg sparks debate: pure-math AI research is 'math psychosis' divorced from reality

banteg · x · 2026-09-22

Developer banteg argues much of current AI-adjacent math research is pure "math psychosis": rabbit-hole puzzles with no plausible real-world applications — "mathematicians are mad their sudoku is being taken away."
A quoted reply pushes back philosophically: proofs and symbols that never check conclusions against reality's frictions are indistinguishable from fantasy — "proofs must eventually answer to measurement, or they're simply poems with numbers."
The core claim: internal coherence without external correspondence just means consistency with one's own hopes; numbers are either compressions of reality or compressions of nothing.

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