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
- Tweets3.2K
- Following34
- Followers288
- Likes60.4K
David J. Webb retweeted
What a heartbreaking week it has been. Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did. Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work.
My heart goes out to Sunny and his family. He will be deeply missed.
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.
