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akoboldfryingtoday at 3:01 AM2 repliesview on HN

Well, if you can formalise the problem statement (this is the hard part) sufficiently well that the computer can produce a proof, you can be very sure the proof is sound.

A fundamental property of any formal proof is that it can be checked by a fairly stupid machine, automatically, because every step is a simple mechanical operation that names one of a handful of axioms and refers to a handful of earlier steps, the truth of which has already been established. So while coming up with a proof may require genius-level thinking, checking an existing fully fleshed out proof is simple -- just potentially very tedious because of the sheer number of steps.

That said, a typical human-written proof omits many steps considered "obvious" to a trained mathematician. Converting this to a formal proof involves interpreting what the original author "must have meant", which requires a lot of expertise and can go wrong -- or it may reveal that there is some inconsistency in the original claim itself.


Replies

whattheheckhecktoday at 5:28 AM

Complexity theorists are in a good spot

bsdertoday at 3:50 AM

> checking an existing fully fleshed out proof is simple

The controversy around Mochizuki and the "abc Conjecture" proof is a contrary example.

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