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The flip side is that you lost the ability to "program" a solution. And they are not always simpler. Good constructive proofs usually goes by "Look at this obje
by jlouis 8y ago
The flip side is that you lost the ability to "program" a solution. And they are not always simpler. Good constructive proofs usually goes by "Look at this object, now back at me, now at this object, I'm on a boat, I do a little computation, I'm on a horse, I do a little reduction, and I end up with the result I want, Qed."
That is, they start by claiming that a given object has the property you want and then proceed to show that it is the case.
I'm not a constructivist by any stretch of the word, but knowing different kinds of proofs of the same object is often giving us insight which we wouldn't have otherwise.