1/ Fascinating report by a world leading mathematician, P Scholze, on an open source project to use 'proof assistants' on an important maths proof. Byproduct = the computer improved human understanding. Seems clear these tools will play ever greater role xenaproject.wordpress.com/2021/06/05/hal…
2/ Concept of 'proof assistants' goes back to e.g Hilbert's 1900 question on the possibility of automating maths & Gödel's 1931 proof re incompleteness/undecidability. I got very interested in this history & wrote about it here: dominiccummings.com/2017/06/16/com…
3/ Almost everything you read re Gödel is wrong. Franzen wrote a brilliant book explaining all the misconceptions:
4/
5/ When Gödel first read out his famous result, nobody understood what he was on about - except a very young von Neumann who went to talk to him after the talk...
6/ Gödel summarised the effect of the combination of his & Turing's 1936 proof:
7/ This work led Gödel to formulate the P=NP? problem, central to the potential for 'proof assistants', but it was in an unreported letter to von Neumman as latter lay dying of cancer. It took ~15 years for the problem to be rediscovered rjlipton.wpcomstaging.com/the-gdel-lette…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/ Covid… Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden: noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-lockdown…
One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the ‘tradeoff’ argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering
.@paulg always great but he makes a mistake that is v common among vv successful people: 'politicians are domain experts in political tactics, like how to get elected'. Weird but true: most know *surprisingly little* re how to get elected, campaigns are often provably irrational
If you want examples then I highly recommend this with @juliagalef@davidshor. NB. you hardly ever see how politics/power really works in mainstream media. You have to look elsewhere for useful info: static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/46827…
E.g PM's private secretary on econ, SG, has more influence on what happens than any in Cabinet except PM/CHX. PM's PS on EU, JE, more influence on Brexit negotiations than any in Cabinet except PM. You'll find literally 0 coverage or explanation of such important facts in media
When pundits who ‘explained’ why Vote Leave’s plan to realign politics was mad/stupid/impossible now give post hoc ‘explanations’ for why it’s all so logical/inevitable … ignore their babble… Pundits = noise not signal. Eg ‘the centre ground’ DOES NOT EXIST, it’s pundit fiction
Eg. 2014 dominiccummings.com/2014/06/30/my-… & 2016, CTRL+F centre ground - dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-…. Vote Leave strategy in 16 & 19 was based on SW1 theories re ‘centre ground’ = false. SW1 didn’t learn after 2016 & provided a chance for us to win again in 19, ignoring pundit howling
KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!