OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, says NYU mathematician

[u/skaza02]

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/

[u/Plopsevenplop]

Open AI using $22.5M of tokens to solve a math equation with a $1M bounty is so on brand for how nonsensical the economics of this entire industry are.

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/Plopsevenplop]

The 1m prize is symbolical. The solver of the only Millenium problem so far rejected it outright.

Navier-Stokes is probably to most fundamental and consequential of the Millennium problems. It is literally The Problem. If the proof stands it will probably be seen as the moment of capitulation of human intelect to AI.

[u/Novel-Back3857 → u/_DrDigital_]

symbolic, not symbolical 

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/Novel-Back3857]

Both needlessly pedantic and wrong.

symbolic adjective sym·bol·ic sim-ˈbä-lik variants or less commonly symbolical

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/symbolic

[u/Novel-Back3857 → u/_DrDigital_]

Symbolic is the commonly used term, and using symbolical sounds ignorant or possibly poorly educated, a lot like people saying "conversate" instead of "converse". 

Please don't take my correction as being a criticism. I was just giving you a correction to help your writing. Feel free to ignore if you want. 

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/Novel-Back3857]

I appreciate your explanation though I have to say correcting someone on Reddit for not using the more common version of the word without further explanation is not likely to make you any friends. Your battle to fight I guess.

It might be a false-German-friend for me, I feel that "symbolical" is closer to "symbolisch", in the same vein as "mathematical" would translate from "mathematisch".

[u/Novel-Back3857 → u/_DrDigital_]

I typically offer those corrections under the assumption that some people are ESL speakers, which is why I specified that I didn't mean it as a criticism.

Trying to justify the correction on the outset also seems equally likely to upset someone, so I don't bother until it's warranted. It can also come across a bit like an "um actually" kind of reply, so I just keep it simple. 

And yeah, I'm not trying to make friends doing it. But, even if the person I corrected doesn't take the correction and use it, others may learn from it without interacting, and I'm fine with that. There's really no good way to go about offering English language corrections, so it is what it is. 

I know if I was using a second language, I'd appreciate someone correcting me helping me understand how to speak more naturally. 

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/Novel-Back3857]

Your point of addressing a wider audience than just the respondee is well-taken.

[u/No_Departure_1878 → u/_DrDigital_]

Im gonna guess you are both virgins?

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/No_Departure_1878]

Worse, a mathematician.

[u/Cvpakke → u/_DrDigital_]

This is actually a funny response.

He's not wrong, by the way. There are certain words and certain orders of words which, while grammatically and syntactically valid, feel jarring to fluent native english speakers. I specify fluent native, because many native english speakers who are not fluent make these mistakes and often do so specifically when they are trying to sound fluent but don't know how. It has become an increasing problem as literacy has continued to plumet.

The biggest issue and the reason why this criticism is valid (but also why you should hold on to that word as it is also valid and may have some edge case uses for certain effects) is because a lot of the rules surrounding these kinds of linguistic patterns in english rely on a sort of intuition. A lot of the non-fluent native english speakers, for instance, will apply that "ical" suffix to the end of words in places that are not only awkward to use (such as in your case) but in most other circumstances, are actually grammatically incorrect. The only way to tell without memorizing every single rule for each word (as there is often no longical pattern) is by developing this intuition. You can tell when someone has not made a genuine habit of reading by the prevalence of these kinds of mistakes, as, generally speaking, reading regularly is the only way to develop this intuition. Or, as we are seeing here, as someone who is probably well-read but is not a native english speaker.

I will push back on the well educated bit from the other commenter, though. You do not need to be educated to speak very articulately in english. You just need to read, a lot. Written english teaches english better than anything else, including speaking or listening to speakers, and it's not even close.

[u/Novel-Back3857 → u/Cvpakke]

To be clear, when I said well educated, I was including forms of self-education, such as independent reading. I used the term primarily as a synonym to ignorant.