This paper suggests that the annual attrition rate for a man 30 years past his PhD (which is how old Tao is; he got his degree way back in 1996!) is about 4%

@duck_master Nice find!

Still holding onto my black swan... 🤣 the paper is from 2023, it doesn't account for the-- well, you know, the tail of the Gaussian that is the current academic climate (unfortunately).

Ken Ono is not normal. Terry has spent substantial effort on community building and infrastructure in academia; it would require a huge change in priorities. Note he's been able to sell out his brilliance for a long time before this.

@ArtimisFowl Broadly agree; though with the Black Swan caveat amidst the obvious academic-bureaucratic elephants in the room... who knows? Seeing as to his Lean-advocacy, and the obvious attention auto-formalization is getting in the AI-Math space, who knows?

It has, after all, been somewhat of a 202X zeitgeist for intellectual freedom to move into private yet retaining the academic spirit of publishing open-source whitepapers for all (Biotech, QuantFinance, ML, ... , etc).

All that to say, I do hope you are right