Grant Sanderson (@3blue1brown) - Past, Present, & Future of Mathematics

I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about:

- Whether advanced math requires AGI
- What careers should mathematically talented students pursue
- Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher
- Tips for self teaching
- Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually matter
- Why are good explanations so hard to find?
- And much more

Timestamps:
(0:00:00) - Does winning math competitions require AGI?
(0:08:24) - Where to allocate mathematical talent?
(0:17:34) - Grant’s miracle year
(0:26:44) - Prehistoric humans and math
(0:33:33) - Why is a lot of math so new?
(0:44:44) - Future of education
(0:56:28) - Math helped me realize I wasn’t that smart
(0:59:25) - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem matter?
(1:05:12) - How Grant makes videos
(1:10:13) - Grant’s math exposition competition
(1:20:44) - Self teaching

[AnenLaylle]

Funny story about mathematicians working in other fields. During graduate school for computational biology I focused on modeling agricultural systems. I found out during graduate school that I really liked farming. I'm a relatively talented mathematician, that was offered a job where I went to graduate school immediately upon graduating, a research position. I declined and asked if I could just be a mere lecturer, and they obliged. I have since started farming and sell at local markets. In about 10 years it is my intention to quit teaching mathematics and just farm. There is a lot of similarities in farming in mathematics, believe it or not.

[timothyoh]

If Grant becomes a high school teacher I'm going back to high school to learn from him.

[rtcomments]

This interview is how I, a frequent YouTube watcher who happened to benefit from Grant’s videos during school, find out that Grant does his own animations 😂 so inspiring

[-drome]

Grant really stands out to me for staying grounded in the face of people trying to overhype his own work. It's so inspiring to see a guy who has a legitimate claim to leading his field with respect to encouraging pure-math exploration that still values all that in the context of improving the world and helping young kids learn better.

[deepakkumarjoshi]

An AGI can self learn new things, come up with new thoughts/ideas without fine tunning and re-training, It needs to be beat me in all tasks, work, driving, thinking, ideas.

[emmafountain]

100% agree with his take that programming is useful, but not just for computers. Learning to program, especially under the lens of software development, teaches you to think about problems and models in terms of layers of abstraction in order to manage complexity. That is an incredibly useful skill that can reframe how you view the world

[Iamfafafel]

on the issue reallocation of mathematical talent: i'm one of the guys that got duped by grant into doing a phd in pure math (haven't met him though), and i've been thinking about this issue one-and-off for a few years now. it's clear that there's a waste of talent at the phd+ level due to the undersupply of academic jobs. the training you get when studying math gives you a high level of insight for general problem-solving skills, but you lack the knowledge in any other field to make use of it. so effectively you're only good as a outside consultant, unless you want to dive into a whole new field. this (+ $$$) is why the two canonical non-academic paths are tech or finance, as those two fields have low barrier to entry in terms of content. if you can think well, you can float in those two fields much easier than e.g. biology

[yeetyeet]

People calling machine learning programs "intelligence" just shows they don't understand it at all. Grant seems to get that a lot more than Patel.

[benjamindorsey]

He nailed this entire interview. I especially love the repetitions of calculations. That is 100% accurate, in my case.

[TryTri]

I agree as a self-learner after graduation, I stopped doing the calculations. I still want to learn more HEP-th, but without time for "homework" I know it's pretty useless to try.

[AICoffeeBreak]

Wow, thanks for this. He is al down to earth 🌍🌎 and inspiring. 😊

[anthonypace]

It might just be me, but often his explanations aren’t as clear as he’d like to think. He likes to hear his “imitation Sal” voice, more than he likes to be direct about the connections between concepts. His explanations for the Fourier Transform, and quaternions were terrible. The only thing good about those videos were the graph interfaces he linked to.

[haroldwhitney]

He has an incredible ability to explain things clearly to people at all levels. He speaks with eloquence.

[jacejunk]

Wow! I was surprised to hear the reference to Lars. I knew him in college. Will definitely watch your interview with him.

[DwarkeshPatel]

Please share if you enjoyed! Really helps out a ton! 😎

[SquidofCubes]

Solving math questions is hard. But asking the right questions is what requires genius (or intelligence). I wont be surprised if LLMs can solve lots of problems. I dont see them asking good questions. Because "good" is an anthropomorphic concept, that I do not believe is properly captured by any data set. Indeed the definition of "good" evolves over time.

[AndreInfanteInc]

I have to shout out Kerbal Space Program as by far the finest educational game ever made. There is no better curriculum for building an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics than spending a couple of weeks doing a mars program in KSP. I think the best educational games are games that *simulate* (in a fun-focused way) the process that the student is meant to understand, rather than trying to use a game framework to do traditional teaching.

[BreezeTalk]

I enjoy a conversation in which people are speaking genuinely and intellectually and happily. So much of the internet is out of context and mentally degrading.

[highgroundproductions]

Grant may have only a BA in math, but he knows as much as an average math MA I'm sure, and as much as many PhD students. I'm a fourth year math student, decently above average I'd say, and pretty wide-ranging and deep, but I know barely anything about functors between categories, or chaos theory, and I know nothing about information theory. His command of algebra, topology, number theory and combinatorics is well above mine. I probably match him in analysis, linear algebra, vector calculus and differential geometry, but that's it. He has what it takes to be a truly great mathematician.

[undeniablySomeGuy]

I just want to remind everyone that "computer generated art" doesn't exist. Computer generated art has been fed a great number of human works. It's a synthesis of human creativity, not the invention of a creative robotic mind. Computers have learned chess and go from zero human input, not art or music.