Erdosgate
We recorded 5 claims from this post. 2 were checked against evidence. 3 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (5)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“All that really happened is that GPT-5 (oversimplifying slightly) crawled the web for solutions to already-solved problems.”
Our reading: GPT-5 did not solve open Erdős problems; it essentially located existing solutions to already-solved problems on the web.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on treating the crawler wording as the acknowledged simplification.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“I smell a really big dose of people believing what they want to believe.”
Our reading: Quick acceptance of Bubeck's claim was likely driven by people believing what they wanted to believe.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“The claim would have been extraordinary, and should have been vetted closely.”
Our reading: Bubeck's Erdős claim, which would have been extraordinary, should have been closely vetted.
No horizon
Scope: this particular Erdős claim
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I found that the claim of “solution” was pretty misleading, as I summed up in a tweet, and they refused to correct their misleading presentation:”
Our reading: In 2019 OpenAI's claim that its robot 'solved' the Rubik's cube was misleading, and OpenAI refused to correct it.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Disagreement over wording does not by itself prove a factual misrepresentation.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Some things never change.”
Our reading: 'Some things never change': a closing quip linking the Erdős episode to OpenAI's 2019 Rubik's cube 'solved' claim, which Marcus found misleading.
No horizon
Held from this post (2)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: The oversold Sparks of AGI paper dubiously alleged that GPT-4 could reasonably be viewed as an early, yet still incomplete, version of an AGI system.