Doron Zeilberger over idea-crunching
[T]here is still room for beauty, suitably defined, but we have to learn to live with the division of labor. We, humans, would do the simple part, and computers will do the complex part. And by “complex”, I do not mean just tedious number crunching. Ninety-nine percent of what mathematicians do today is just one notch above number-crunching, it is symbol-crunching, and occasionally idea-crunching, but as computer algebra systems, suitably programmed, are already showing, computers are already surpassing humans in symbol-crunching in many areas, and very soon will surpass them completely. A good rule of thumb is that if you think too hard, you are on the wrong track. You should have looked at the big picture, designed an algorithm, and let the computer do the thinking.
Doron Zeilberger, Opinion 84: Bye-Bye Understanding, Hello Meta-Understanding (6 oktober 2007)
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