Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
laziness, impatience, and hubris
 
PerlMonks  

comment on

( [id://3333]=superdoc: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??
What he described is less ambitious than Hilbert's Program.

He just wanted to have computers (which hopefully are less fallible than humans) systematically verify known mathematics. While I see this as interesting to attempt, it is also doomed to fail because more math is being produced faster than you can possibly verify it.

Which brings up a dirty little secret of mathematics. You can consider a mathematical proof as being like a computer program that has been specced out in detail, but never run. Yeah, you think that it would work. But if you tried to implement it you'd run into little roadblocks. Most of them you could get around. But you never have any idea what is lurking in there, and no real way to find out.

And no, this is not a trivial problem. In fact entire areas of mathematics have fallen apart because problems were found, and found to be serious. My current favorite example is the classification of finite groups. Nobody has really reviewed the proof. Everyone knows that the proof has flaws. And the situation is serious enough that there is a decades-long effort under way to find a different proof of the result! (The effort was started by some of the people who made their reputation working on the original proof.)


In reply to Re^3: What do you know, and how do you know that you know it? by tilly
in thread What do you know, and how do you know that you know it? by tilly

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post; it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
    <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
  • Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
  • Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.
Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others imbibing at the Monastery: (4)
As of 2024-04-16 04:27 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found