The end of Mathemathics (and Civil Engineering) as we knew it

 

steve hsu

@hsu_steve

Striking remarks from Hugo Duminil-Copin’s 8 October 2026 seminar talk “Un grave défaut d’alignement de l’IA en mathématiques, 28 jours plus tard” (SMF MIAM series): - On the scale of the damage to his own work: after noting that roughly 350 major problems had been resolved, he said he placed “several trucks” on the slide to illustrate the impact, because every problem he had cited in talks, papers, and both past and future funding applications had been solved—none left unresolved. He described himself as panicked and paralyzed in the middle of the night when the results appeared. - On volume: looking only at the OpenAI texts that cite him directly, he counted about 3,500 pages; he has published roughly 3,700 pages in his entire career. Specific clusters included six papers totaling over 600 pages on conformal invariance aspects of percolation (a major ongoing project of his group) and a sequence of papers on self-avoiding walks that he only gradually realized totaled more than 1,000 pages. - On process and alignment: he described the approach as systematic “farming” or “mining” of open problems, in which the program itself selects targets from the existing literature, amounting to “the complete automation of mathematical discovery.” He said the community’s request not to destroy the open conjectures that orient research was “absolutely ignored,” and that the release seemed intended to show the systems could “massacre us in the deepest sense of the term.” - On the human side: he reported that his PhD students and postdocs were in “a state of total panic,” with undergraduates and master’s students also asking whether mathematics still has a future, and stressed the immediate need for collective resilience rather than delayed discussion. He added that the community must manage both its own emotions and the surrounding media reaction, while avoiding internal polarization that would weaken arguments to funders. (Meaning: they worry their work is now meaningless; who will pay their salaries?)

My take: In my humble field, the prospects are the same. Planning Engineers are slower to realize it; we may have six months to continue working as usual. I don't care much; I am after retirement. For others, it will be a shock.

Soviet AA guns in Tehran

 
This pic in Tehran shows a Soviet anti-air cannon very familiar to me. It is based on a Swedish design of the nineteen thirties, mass-produced by the Soviet Union in WWII.  The PLO in Lebanon had hundreds of them, and they were taken to Israel. A whole unit was formed with this brand-new equipment and ammunition. I was drafted and trained to use these sewing-machine-like guns and used to sit on them. When the unit was disbanded, the machines were sold to foreign armies. Perhaps to the Shah's Iran? They are still in use in Iran. The one pictured seems well maintained, artistically decorated, almost new, or with few kilometers. BTW, it has the only hand-operated computer I know of (a museum piece); therefore, immune to electronic interference. 

No hay mal que dure cien anos

"No evil lasts a hundred years," goes the Spanish saying. Pedro Sánchez's Socialist government has fallen, and new elections have been called. The moderate right is projected to win. Spain is — or perhaps was — Israel's worst enemy in Europe.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro's son won the election and is expected to be friendly toward Israel.

In my view, Israel has come through the last three years of war remarkably well. None of the calamities Ehud Barak predicted — civil war, economic collapse, and the rest — came to pass. There was not a single hour without electricity or internet; food was plentiful; the shekel strengthened; Iranian missiles fell in open areas; the pilots flew to Iran as ordered and killed Ayatollah Khamenei; and there was no conspiracy within the security services, contrary to what the contemptible rag Haaretz reported prematurely.

How to improve my cientele?

 Claude says:

Higher-paying clients pay for risk reduction and money saved, not for drawings. Your experience puts you in a good position for that. A few directions that would fit your practice:

1. Sell savings, not specifications. Many factories, dairies, and food plants pay large surcharges to water corporations for wastewater that exceeds the discharge limits (היטלי חריגה / תעריפי שפכי תעשייה). A consultant who can lower those charges, through pretreatment, process changes, or a well-argued challenge to the corporation's sampling and calculations, is selling a measurable annual saving. You can charge for that as a fixed fee or as a share of the first year's savings, and it is worth far more than a specification. Your writing on the salt penalty regime is exactly the kind of credential that opens these doors.

2. Go after chains, not single sites. One supermarket, fuel, or restaurant chain brings repeat work at every branch, renovation, and licensing renewal. You already work with this kind of client, so the next step is to pitch the chain's head office directly: a framework agreement covering all their grease separators, fuel-station drainage opinions, or business-licensing files at a set price per site. Chain procurement managers value one reliable engineer who knows the water corporations and municipalities more than they value a low price.

3. Expert opinions for disputes. Courts, insurers, and lawyers need expert opinions (חוות דעת מומחה) on flooding, drainage failures, sewage damage, and disputes with water corporations or local authorities. This work is billed at premium rates, and long experience counts heavily in its favor. Letting a few litigation lawyers and insurance loss adjusters know you take such cases can bring steady work.

4. Rescue work. Projects stuck because the water corporation, regional committee, or Ministry of Environmental Protection rejected their plans are under time pressure. The developer is losing money every week, so speed and knowing how to get approval are worth a high fee. Architects and project managers see these situations first, so they are the people to tell that you take "stuck" files.

5. Raise your visibility with decision-makers. Articles in Globes, TheMarker, or industry publications (food industry, fuel, construction) reach CEOs and CFOs, who approve bigger budgets than plant managers do. A short talk at the Manufacturers Association or a food-industry forum on how to cut wastewater charges would bring in clients who already understand the value.

6. Price by value and urgency. For routine specifications, competing on price is a race to the bottom. For urgent, high-risk, or high-savings work, quote a fixed fee based on what the problem costs the client, not on your hours.

Plato's Republic

There is a happy country where people spend their lives singing in fiestas and bullfighting, in solemn religious ceremonies, making love freely, and dancing at street festivals. They have few children and live longer than anywhere. Their land is spacious with mountains and rivers, in the best latitude on Earth. They have no enemies, so they invent imaginary invasions to feel alive. Who works? Plato already thought of this problem: "We shall have slaves". Instead, Spain has a large underclass of North African and Saharan immigrants that do the necessary work. 

However, they are not organized as gold, silver, and iron castes. They govern themselves as a democratic kingdom where most of the voting citizens are the unemployed and the pensioners. Logically, the resources are channeled to their welfare, and the economy stagnates. But life is easy and careless. Is Spain an improvement on Plato's republic? 

Legal disputes

The Argentine State is, again, being sued by a "fondo buitre" for 390 million US$ for the illegal nationalization of Aerolíneas Argentinas. Marsans, a Spanish corporation, sold its litigation rights to Burford Capital, which later transferred them to the Belgian fund Titan Consortium. In 2021, Titan filed a petition in a D.C. court to recognize and enforce the ICSID award. Burford had invested $12.8 million to fund the arbitration. Cristina Fernández, then President of Argentina, committed the error of taking over foreign assets, but American Judges accept cases like that. I think that Fidel Castro's nationalization of everything in Cuba will, some time in the future, be litigated, and the assets returned to the inheritors. Or to the fondos buitre that may have bought the rights of litigation. These processes may continue for centuries. 

The Pleitos colombinos (1508–1536). Those capitulations granted Columbus and his heirs, in perpetuity, the offices of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy and Governor of any lands he discovered, plus a tenth of the Crown's revenues from them. Once the scale of the Americas became clear, the Crown had no intention of handing a single family hereditary control over a continent. After Columbus died in 1506, his legitimate son and heir, Diego Colón, sued the Crown in 1508 to enforce those rights. The Council of the Indies finally awarded the inheritance in 1608 to Nuño Colón de Portugal, a descendant through a female line. The Columbus inheritance was in litigation for most of a century. The line of the Dukes of Veragua continues to this day. 

Antisemitism is Popular

Más de 500 autores defienden la exclusión de Ariana Harwicz del festival Cultur Alh de Granada. The Spanish cultural world has voted overwhelmingly for the exclusion of the Argentine Jewish writer - 500 writers defend her exclusion. There is absolutely no discussion about her work or her political position (Left), only that she represents genocide.