I know why the mathematicians weep
- ID
- 35994
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 15 Oct 2026, 9:44 PM
- Fetched
- 16 Oct 2026, 3:46 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why-the-mathematicians-weep
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 16 Oct 2026, 3:47 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- ai_ml_learnersdeveloperssaas_founders
What happened
Derek Thompson's paid Substack essay (Oct 15, 2026; 274 points and 433 comments on the HN thread) says OpenAI published hundreds of math findings across number theory, theoretical computer science and logic that had stumped mathematicians for decades or centuries, and frames the reaction as 'technological grief.' It quotes 2022 Fields Medal recipient Hugo Duminil-Copin — 'Tuesday night, I cried and it woke up my daughter... They have annihilated my field of research' — and Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz, who said he 'literally cried' when speaking to Wired and described peers using phrases like 'strip-mining our subject' and 'nuking the landscape.' Only the intro is visible: the Strogatz interview is paywalled, and no OpenAI paper, proof list, or benchmark is linked.
Why it matters
Treat the 'hundreds of decades-old math proofs' claim as an assertion in an essay, not a measured result — this text links no primary source, so if you cite it in a pitch, blog post, or roadmap you are citing Derek Thompson quoting unnamed work, not a reproducible artifact. If you want to argue about AI capability in math this week, the 433-comment HN thread is the actual substance; go there, and find the underlying OpenAI release before repeating the number.
Discussion angle
If models really can produce publishable results in a narrow field, what happens to moats that depend on hard math — cryptography, formal verification, quant, optimization — and what standard of evidence (paper, Lean proof, independent replication) would you accept before believing it?