CAPVOY

Tigers with a frozen milk brick on a hot day

— josé olivarez // natalie diaz

So, ok, I suspect that AI will obviate the utility of this before it could ever have the chance to get off the ground, but this all makes me imagine a world where techniques for learning to visualize higher dimensions are well-known and practiced, and have become a functional necessity for being a working geometer in higher-than-3-dimensions. And these techniques require a lot of persistent practice and training, which (by the nature of the thing) is hard to precisely communicate to students. So part of becoming a geometer involves training in what is basically a meditative practice, where, à la Zen, much of the process involves not directly teaching the student but giving them prompts and mental exercises that are meant to trigger internal, incommunicable revelation. But instead of enlightenment it's geometric intuition. And so if we're getting a math PhD in, say, differential equations or something, it's mostly like it is today. But if your PhD is in low-dimensional topology there's like a whole monastic apprenticeship style thing that just comes along with it. People sometimes drive themselves insane. People sometimes drive themselves insane.

I think this is true, and probably the better analogy is that we'll keep doing math the way people keep playing chess. But the game will change; I do think there will come a point, probably in my lifetime, when the major tasks of mathematical research as it exists today are done by computers, and the role of the human is principally to direct AIs towards the questions we find interesting and then to study their results for our own edification. I think there will be a time when being a math researcher looks more like being a math student, incessantly asking questions of a professor who knows more than you ever will and just trying to understand the answers.

So, ok, I suspect that AI will obviate the utility of this before it could ever have the chance to get off the ground, but this all makes me imagine a world where techniques for learning to visualize higher dimensions are well-known and practiced, and have become a functional necessity for being a working geometer in higher-than-3-dimensions. And these techniques require a lot of persistent practice and training, which (by the nature of the thing) is hard to precisely communicate to students. So part of becoming a geometer involves training in what is basically a meditative practice, where, à la Zen, much of the process involves not directly teaching the student but giving them prompts and mental exercises that are meant to trigger internal, incommunicable revelation. But instead of enlightenment it's geometric intuition. And so if we're getting a math PhD in, say, differential equations or something, it's mostly like it is today. But if your PhD is in low-dimensional topology there's like a whole monastic apprenticeship style thing that just comes along with it. People sometimes drive themselves insane. People sometimes drive themselves insane.

Morning Dream, Alex Venezia

From February 16 to 17, 1913 Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka First published : 1973

Clarice Lispector, from "Too Much of Life Complete Chronicles," publ. in 2022

— Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

— Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude