If you picked the median human by mathematical ability, and put them in this setup, I would be rather surprised if they produced a valid proof of Fermats last theorem.
I would too. IDA/HCH doesn’t have to work with the median human, though. It’s ok to pick an excellent human, who has been trained for being in that situation. Paul has argued that it wouldn’t be that surprising if some humans could be arbitrarily competent in an HCH-setup, even if some couldn’t.
Epistemic status: Intuition dump and blatant speculation
Suppose that instead of the median human, you used Euclid in the HCH. (Ancient greek, invented basic geometry) I would still be surprised if he could produce a proof of fermat’s last theorem (given a few hours for each H). I would suspect that there are large chunks of modern maths that he would be unable to do. Some areas of modern maths have layers of concepts built on concepts. And in some areas of maths, just reading all the definitions will take up all the time. Assuming that there are large and interesting branches of maths that haven’t been explored yet, the same would hold true for modern mathematicians. Of course, it depends how big you make the tree. You could brute force over all possible formal proofs, and then set a copy on checking the validity of each line. But at that point, you have lost all alignment, someone will find their proof is a convincing argument to pass the message up the tree.
I feel that it is unlikely that any kind of absolute threshold lies between the median human, and an unusually smart human, given that the gap is small in an absolute sense.
I would too. IDA/HCH doesn’t have to work with the median human, though. It’s ok to pick an excellent human, who has been trained for being in that situation. Paul has argued that it wouldn’t be that surprising if some humans could be arbitrarily competent in an HCH-setup, even if some couldn’t.
Epistemic status: Intuition dump and blatant speculation
Suppose that instead of the median human, you used Euclid in the HCH. (Ancient greek, invented basic geometry) I would still be surprised if he could produce a proof of fermat’s last theorem (given a few hours for each H). I would suspect that there are large chunks of modern maths that he would be unable to do. Some areas of modern maths have layers of concepts built on concepts. And in some areas of maths, just reading all the definitions will take up all the time. Assuming that there are large and interesting branches of maths that haven’t been explored yet, the same would hold true for modern mathematicians. Of course, it depends how big you make the tree. You could brute force over all possible formal proofs, and then set a copy on checking the validity of each line. But at that point, you have lost all alignment, someone will find their proof is a convincing argument to pass the message up the tree.
I feel that it is unlikely that any kind of absolute threshold lies between the median human, and an unusually smart human, given that the gap is small in an absolute sense.