We really need to work harder at poisoning the training data for math problems.
My generous statement: Knuth, being a scientist, is used to an "adversary" that plays fair. As we have known for decades, a scientist can be tricked in situations that a magician will see through. This applies all the more now with the Sycophancy Engines, which make mathematics into a casino vacation. Just one more prompt, bro. Just one more prompt.
My less generous statement: Knuth is almost 90 years old. Sure, age doesn't imply a person will become a doddering fool, but people do tend to slow down, to have less energy and more need to spend it managing their health. "Thinking about a problem for a few weeks" counts for less in a situation like that.
My extremely ungenerous statement: Hey, remember when Michael Atiyah claimed to have proved the Riemann hypothesis in 2018? And the community reaction was a pained, "Atiyah is one of the great mathematicians... of the 20th century."
I know I've said somewhere on here before that "Harry Potter for pop science nerds" is fanfiction on easy mode, but I'll stand by it.
You can't build a fandom full of that many fucked-up people without some of them getting horny in a fucked-up way.
Edit to add: example of a non-erotic fanfic https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436
That header pic sure takes me back
Felicitations!
("A job," Blake thinks. "I need to find one of those.")
From the replies:
But every man under the age of 30 that I've ever met at Lighthaven, that I've had the opportunity to speak with privately, has completely and totally integrated IQ differences into their ontology.
The entirety of Lighthaven needs locker insertion
I would also not put my finger on those microscope slides
womp, and wait for it, womp
Do you want Tylers Durden? Because this is how you get Tylers Durden.
Hypothesis: When he wrote Surreal Numbers, Knuth was a poet and thus unknowingly of the Devil's party.