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Terence Tao

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
2047 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Yes.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Yes.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

That's crazy.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Yeah.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Yeah.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

But it's again like, it's an infinite monkey type phenomenon.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

For any fixed length of your set, you don't get arbitrary length progressions.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

You only get quite short progressions.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

But you're saying twin prime is not an infinite monkey.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

I mean, it's a very subtle one.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

It's still an infinite monkey phenomenon.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

If the primes were really genuinely random, if the primes were generated by monkeys, then yes, in fact, the infinite monkey theorem would... Oh, but you're saying that twin prime, you can't use the same tools.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Well, we don't know.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

We believe the primes behave like a random set.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

And so the reason why we care about the Trim-Half Conjecture is it's a test case for whether we can genuinely confidently say with 0% chance of error that the primes behave like a random set.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Random versions of the primes we know contain twins, at least with 100% probability, or probably tending to 100% as you go out further and further.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Yeah, so the primers, we believe that they're random.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

The reason why athmic progressions are indestructible is that regardless of whether your set looks random or looks structured, like periodic, in both cases, athmic progressions appear, but for different reasons.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

And this is basically all the ways in which there are many proofs of these sort of athmic progression epitheliums, and they're all proven by some sort of dichotomy where your set is either structured or random, and in both cases, you can say something, and then you put the two together.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#472 โ€“ Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

But in twin primes, if the primes are random, then you're happy, you win.