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Greg EgangregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz
Sep 10, 2026, 5:52 AM
Open Letter about the Mathathon
This open letter calling for the cancellation of the Caltech “Mathathon”, has received 471* signatures so far. [Only members of the Caltech community or mathematicians at PhD student level or beyond are eligible to sign.]
* Now 771 signatures.
“On October 30th, 2026, Caltech will begin hosting the Caltech Mathathon, a math hackathon in which participants are encouraged to solve open research problems by prompting LLMs. Two prominent AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, will supply participants with 2 million dollars in AI credits. This event is likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community.”
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf6dBeDwjRP4UkchGSpLwLQjiG8qLX5_wW_3-xoC4dImTPp6g/viewform
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Replies

Irene Zhangirene@discuss.systems
Sep 10, 2026, 6:20 AM
@gregeganSF I’m against this but I don’t think anything should be called a mathathon
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Ben Reynoldsbeynolds@c.im
Sep 10, 2026, 7:11 AM
@gregeganSF Proud to be the dumbest signatory. Someone had to do it.
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eestileib (she/hers)eestileib@tech.lgbt
Sep 10, 2026, 7:55 AM
@beynolds @gregeganSF
I just haven't gotten there yet, have no fear
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Jaime Herazojherazob@mastodon.ie
Sep 10, 2026, 12:55 PM
@gregeganSF
Pinging @davidgerard
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Michael Buschmichael_w_busch@mastodon.online
Sep 10, 2026, 2:55 PM
@gregeganSF
As an alum; it is profoundly disappointing to see Caltech be involved in this.
But I cannot express surprise, ever since I encountered someone saying that he was "writing" a mathematical physics textbook by "arguing with ChatGPT".
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Mark T. Tomczakmark@mastodon.fixermark.com
Sep 10, 2026, 4:51 PM
@gregeganSF Hm. :(
If solving math problems (I mean, actually discovering solutions) has negative impacts on the mathematical community... One does find oneself asking the purpose of the community. :(
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Laundryrhelmot@types.pl
Sep 10, 2026, 5:03 PM
@mark @gregeganSF you may be interested in https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-theorem-economy
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Mark T. Tomczakmark@mastodon.fixermark.com
Sep 10, 2026, 5:14 PM
@rhelmot @gregeganSF Oh boy. I am only like a fifth of the way in and this is resonating disquietingly for me.
I wonder if this is why I felt like there were big pieces of my math education missing until I stumbled on 3blue1brown?
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mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)atax1a@infosec.exchange
Sep 10, 2026, 5:15 PM
@mark this is a weird defense of slop, gotta say
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Mark T. Tomczakmark@mastodon.fixermark.com
Sep 10, 2026, 8:08 PM
@atax1a I don't intend to defend it. If it's bad theorems, obviously that's a problem.
The issue appears to me that the theorems are plausibly sound but in real human world nobody actually gets rewarded for verifying work, only for creating work, And as consequence letting the AI do the theorem creation part crashes a significant portion of the self-image of purpose of the project.
It feels analogous to online advertising crashing print media advertising which really threw off the news industry because it turns out that generating and reporting news, while valuable, had become a loss leader for putting advertisements in people's hands.
It is definitely a problem that news media didn't recover from this. I'm trying to wrap my head around what the analogous look problem looks like in the mathematical community.
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mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)atax1a@infosec.exchange
Sep 10, 2026, 8:13 PM
@mark the issue is that the slopbot isn't solving problems at all, and legitimizing this garbage by treating it as anything other than spam is risible, yes
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Mark T. Tomczakmark@mastodon.fixermark.com
Sep 10, 2026, 8:43 PM
@atax1a So is the solution to the Navier Stokes equations flawed or do we just not know yet or is what it output not functionally a solution at all?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7zygy3rl2o
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mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)atax1a@infosec.exchange
Sep 10, 2026, 8:45 PM
@mark our official stance is: who cares? the mathematicians who were allegedly working on it fed their research into the slop bot, which taints their work, and the company that allegedly provided the solution is a slop company. the whole thing is a scam and these people need to be laughed out of polite society
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