3 ms·
This article makes me very happy. One of the many reasons I love math is the feeling I've always had that with it, we're building skyscraper-sized mental struc
by ur-whale 2y ago
This article makes me very happy.
One of the many reasons I love math is the feeling I've always had that with it, we're building skyscraper-sized mental structures that are built on provably indestructible foundations.
With the advent of "modern" proofs, which involve large teams of Mathematicians who produce proof that are multiple hundreds of pages long and only understandable by a very, very tiny sliver of humanity (with the extreme case of Shinichi Mochizuki [1] where N=1), I honestly felt that math had lost its way.
Examples: graph coloring theorem, Fermat's last theorem, finite group classification theorem ... all of them with gigantic proofs, out of reach of most casual observers.
And lo and behold, someone found shaky stuff in a long proof, what a surprise.
But it looks like some Mathematicians feel the same way I do and have decided to do something about it by relying on the computers. Way to go guys !
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki