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I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A math paper generally says 3 kinds of things: X is true, this is the high level idea of how we can prove X is true, and t
by bo1024 5y ago
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A math paper generally says 3 kinds of things: X is true, this is the high level idea of how we can prove X is true, and this is the detailed proof that X is true. As the post mentions, usually when there’s a mistake, X is still true.
- ConceptJunkie 5y agoWell, when there's a mistake found in a proof, the mistake needs to be rectified before the proof can be accepted. There have certainly been proofs that X is true, where X has turned out not to be true based on the fact that there's a mistake in the logic. While it's possible a mistake won't be found, it's a much different problem than running empirical experiments and getting different results.