On Sun, Jun 8, 2025 at 7:25 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*> "Proof by intimidation." Wait'll Trump hears about that.* > *Even without AI we may be getting close to that. 13 years ago a mathematician published a 500 page proof of an important open problem in pure mathematics called the "ABC Conjecture", and today world-class mathematicians are still arguing about it; some very good mathematicians say the proof is valid, other equally good mathematicians say it is not. * *A mathematical proof that's only true in Japan* <https://www.newscientist.com/article/2482461-the-bizarre-story-of-a-maths-proof-that-is-only-true-in-japan/> *It's weird, if somebody is a first class mathematician and you have a valid proof of the Riemann Conjecture but it would take him as much brain power to understand your proof as it would for him to come up with a proof of it on his own, then your proof is of no use to anybody except yourself. It makes me wonder, maybe P really is equal to NP. Maybe at some fundamental level understanding a proof is just as difficult (or just as easy) as discovering a new proof on your own. * *> I've long thought that computers would take over mathematics, but I > thought it would be software instantianting logic, like Prolog. How ironic > that mathematics is taken over by reasoners that no more can explain how we > do it than Poincaire' could.* *Until about a year ago the only thing in the known universe that could do high level mathematical research was the human brain, but now there are 2 things that can do it. Maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that it does it the same way we do, but much much faster. * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* *3v1* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0uEhA4ygBtmfHv5%2BjFcR7iHfDjuy_ZcFwhsyh0D%2BSWVw%40mail.gmail.com.
