Hacker News: rf_physics

New comment by rf_physics in "I don't understand quantum physics (2018)"

rf_physics — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 22:47:29 +0000

This makes me wonder if we could also argue that there were multiple denominations of classical mechanics. Newton's laws, Hamiltonians and Lagrangians come to mind. I recall that people including Newton were also unsettled by Newton's law of gravity ('action at a distance')[1] and tried to come up with more 'intuitive' theories. The one where the law of attraction arises from being bombarded by particles from the universe (screening) was an amusing one that doesn't work due to thermal effects [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_explanations_of_gra...

New comment by rf_physics in "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem"

rf_physics — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 03:02:52 +0000

My initial read of this

> Pretty much all of math and science history is basically this pattern again and again. I'm sure all of that was rude as well.

was that you were trying to suggest that it wasn't. It seems we actually share similar views here then? I cannot say anything about how common it is, since I've been pretty lucky when collaborating I guess.

New comment by rf_physics in "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem"

rf_physics — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:29:50 +0000

Apologies if this is against the rules, but could I ask if you have some background in scientific research (maybe you could elaborate lightly on topics you've worked on)?

From my perspective, this practice is quite bad mannered, unusual, and heavily frowned upon, but I recognize it's possible that these stories might be more common in other fields. Still, I'd appreciate a strong sign that you aren't making these statements up based on secondhand accounts of what 'academia is usually like'.

New comment by rf_physics in "Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]"

rf_physics — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:22:18 +0000

They were working on it for almost a year, and Buckmaster has evidently been interested in Navier-Stokes for a while. This seems to be more of an innocent collaboration between two researchers than a strong company PR effort. Maybe Anthropic should have stepped in and made a large team to help them finish the proof (and maybe they tried and didn't succeed, who knows).

If what he wrote is accurate, it does suggest that OAI is effectively extremely hostile to cutting edge researchers (eg, if we hear rumors about your partial success on a problem that has huge PR benefits, then we'll assemble a strike team of researchers with unlimited compute to claim the win for ourselves, possibly by training on your data). It's also not a good look for them to request author removals based on company affiliations.

I think what you have in mind is more appropriate for more normal corporate projects and the like. But academic collaborations are not usually so political/'profit' driven, if that makes sense.

New comment by rf_physics in "Danish high schoolers will have to verbally defend written assignments"

rf_physics — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 02:52:08 +0000

This follow up idea is a fun one! Not likely I'll have to be teaching a course like this again, but I will suggest it to some people I know.

New comment by rf_physics in "Using AI to write better code more slowly"

rf_physics — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:32:31 +0000

I feel like there's an overly negative vibe to this response when it just seems like rubber duck debugging - I would assume the user isn't trying to argue like how you might have to argue specs, but is merely trying to clarify their own ideas and learn possible alternatives.

New comment by rf_physics in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

rf_physics — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:19:52 +0000

Thanks for sharing this. It's unfortunate that the more honest framing about the value of mathematics that he suggests is going to be really, really hard because of all the pitfalls and agendas he mentioned here. I can only hope when the dust settles something will be left.

New comment by rf_physics in "Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce"

rf_physics — Fri, 08 May 2026 02:40:03 +0000

pretty minor since the rest are fine but your linkedin link is broken