Because for many people who pursue these fundamental truths, the reward is not necessarily personal fame, fortune, or even personal understanding. Advancing humanity's total knowledge (even if that knowledge is by proxy through AI) is reward enough.
replyI think when your work is no longer required, you will probably come to regret this sentiment, not that it matters.
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replyI spent years grinding to learn mathematics because it was the language I needed to solve problems that excite me. If the tools I need to do so change, I can change too. Research training is not so rigid that it can only applied to the single set of skills I developed it in the context of. I can learn this too.
replyMoreover, truth be told, I don't really see myself doing any less math and requiring less from my skills. At least from the moment I've begun incorporating LLMs into my research workflow to now, the demand I've had from my own skills has only grown. At least in an era prior to Lean formalization.
If one only found meaning in life through external factors like work (no matter how "intellectually rewarding") then it seems like a life destined for eventual disappointment.
replyDoes it terrify you to look at children?
replyNot so many years from now, some of them will surpass you. A few years after that all (that survive to that point) will surpass you.
Does that terrify you just as much?
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replyWhat's happening is the verbal/linguistic equivalent of the invention of calculus. No intellectual field will ever be the same again. Who wouldn't find that exciting, and want to experience it?
replyPeople who enjoy thinking. Ya know, the "intellectual" part.
replyThis is the beginning of thinking, not the end...
replyThe so called "progressives" prove that they were the same ones crying after the printing press, automobile, calculator, washing machine, etc
replyYou made up a group in the past and you made up things they say and then draw the inference that a different group in the present is somehow morally disadvantaged by obvious inference.
replyPerhaps your name-calling is not actually as logically grounded as you think. It definitely seems to depend on unfounded leaps.
I'm not sure I grasp the analogy to the invention of calculus. Calculus helped us solve new and interesting math/physics problems. Repeated for emphasis: helped *us* solve.
replyThis technology is solving interesting math/physics problems for us, which is completely different.