Logician, musician, special edition. I run upper division math at Chaminade University, and study computability theory/LEAN when I can. Opinions my own. He/him.
Honolulu, HI
Joined June 2021
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David J. Webb retweeted
A pessimistic hypothesis for complexity theory: every simple and beautiful algorithm can be made log(n)^epsilon faster by making it incredibly ugly
David J. Webb retweeted
An internal model at OpenAI has produced a claimed refutation of ETH! Russell Impagliazzo, Mohan Paturi, and I have been asked to help organize an open and independent examination of this claim. 1/4
David J. Webb retweeted
OpenAI claims that the Exponential Time Hypothesis is false, solving 3SAT (even counting the number of solutions) in 2^{o(n)} time, with a Lean formalization of the proof.
Announcement: openai.com/index/building-sc…
Paper: github.com/openai/math/blob/…
1/2
David J. Webb retweeted
TBF Lean’s rise had little to do with dependent types. Rather, its pleasant UX turned a few mathematicians into enthusiasts who built a library of mostly… classical math, which in turn spurred unprecedented adoption by stars like Terence Tao.
David J. Webb retweeted
Lifehack: avoid evil NDA by just signing the NDA first and the contract of employment second???
The clause also lacks the necessary exemptions for protected disclosures 😡
I believe this non-disparagement clause can have a chilling effect on employees speaking out about serious concerns
Note: when I signed this contract, I wasn't employed by Google yet, so it itself is not covered by this confidentiality agreement and nothing I've ever signed has made it so 😊
David J. Webb retweeted
Assuming 1 try per second continuously, it would take a human ≈ 3.67 x 10^69 years to guess a SHA-256 hash, unless of course it was coded by an Indian infosec company, in which case it would take 4 tries because the answer would simply be “4”
David J. Webb retweeted
really simple intuition for understanding the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem: homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytbu…
David J. Webb retweeted
If you see someone on here using a word that ends with -oid, you can safely disregard whatever they're saying. For instance, "A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors"
David J. Webb retweeted
github.com/jeff87654/busy-be…
Someone else formalized my 254-state "halts iff ZFC is inconsistent" Turing Machine. Claude is really good for this, apparently.
So the 254th Busy Beaver cannot be proven in ZFC.
That leaves only the 238-state PA machine, which will probably come soon.
David J. Webb retweeted
An important version of Vaught's conjecture has been refuted! The original Vaught (for FOL) delenda est 🙏
David J. Webb retweeted
Mathematical logic will be less threatened by AI than other fields of mathematics.
Other mathematicians have already eliminated most of the jobs for logicians.
David J. Webb retweeted
I'm not interested in commentary on math from people who never cared or thought about math prior to the moment it became useful for raising investment $$$ business valuation go up.
David J. Webb retweeted
Man I understand the hatred towards mathematicians coming from people who genuinely struggled at math and other subjects, but seeing it from literal physics and philosophy professors is unreal. "Maybe their job shouldn't be subsidized" bro all of our jobs are for the same reason
David J. Webb retweeted
my friend milo (math phd student at caltech, research intern at logical intelligence) wrote an article on some of the consistency and soundness concerns of Lean, and why they should be taken seriously right now: lesswrong.com/posts/zHhGa3iQ…
