> But at the same time, people often call either flawed proofs or purported proofs formal proofs in a looser sense. They are wrong. A purported proof is only a

> But at the same time, people often call either flawed proofs or purported proofs formal proofs in a looser sense. They are wrong. A purported proof is only a proof if it is actually correct. If you cannot reliably come up with a proof, not mere purported proofs, then just be honest and say so. We are not in a consultant-client relationship, so you gain nothing by lying about your skills to me. > You know that my point was that a manually verified proof might still be wrong. Only if you cannot reliably come up with correct proofs. > And yet rather than addressing that point you decide to evade it by an ill-considered nit pick on whether an incorrect proof is still a proof. It is not an “ill-considered nitpick”. It is essential to my point. If you can prove that your assertions hold, you do not need to check them dynamically. (Of course, this is logically a triviality, and it is awful that I need to explicitly make this point.)