Terence Tao

So we've been convinced of things like agreement of hypothesis and things over time, but some of it is experimental evidence.

Some is the few times we've been able to make theoretical results they've always aligned.

It is possible that the consensus is wrong and we've all just missed something very basic.

There have been paradigm shifts in the past in scientific history.

But we don't really have a way of measuring this.

I think partly because we don't have enough data on how math or science develops.

We have one timeline of history and we have like a hundred stories of turning points in history.

If we had access to a million alien civilizations and each of the different

development of history and of science in different orders then maybe we'd actually have a decent shot at understanding of how do we measure what is progress and what is a good strategy and we could maybe start formalizing it and actually having a framework

Maybe what we need to do is actually start creating lots of mini universes or simulations of AI solving very basic problems in arithmetic or whatever, but coming up with their own strategies for doing these things and having these little laboratories to test.

I mean, there are people who investigate what's the smallest neural network that can do 10-digit multiplication and things like that.

I think we could actually learn a lot of just some

from evolving small AIs on simple problems.

We could learn a lot.

Yeah, so I certainly identify with kind of the, yeah, we talked about depth and breadth before, and it's not purely human AI distinction.

I mean, humans also split, so I think it was Irving who split them into hedgehogs and foxes, and it's a hedgehog knows one thing very, very well, and a fox knows a little bit about everything.

So I definitely, you know, I think of myself as a fox.

You know, I work with hedgehogs a lot, and sometimes I can be a hedgehog if need be, but

Yeah, so...

I've always had a little bit of an obsessive streak.