Re: Formalizing all of mathematics

On 24 Jan., 19:00, tc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Reason: It is an illusion to believe that formalizing increases
reliability or even yields absolute truth. Reading or constructing a
line of a formalized proof is nothing but an experiment within an
erroneous brain or in a computer that being more reliable though is
not immune against accidental bit reversion.

Your two sentences contradict each other. Is the computer more reliable or
isn't it? Your first sentence says yes; the second says no.

Here is a slight misapprehension. By "formalizing mathematics" I do
not understand doing math on computers but doing math in a formal way.
This can be done by chalk and blackboard as well.
But to answer your question: Yes, I think that computers are by far
more reliable than human brains. I see this always (can only speak of
my own brain, of course) when doing a lengthy calculation by pencil
and paper. And computers reach much farther then brains. (As far as I
know the last "greatest prime number" discovered by paper and pencil
was 2^127 - 1.) But computers can err, in particular if their
programmers were in error.

Regards, WM

[Mod note: I thought I'd let WM clarify his point, but my feeling
is perhaps "general musings" on computer maths v human maths perhaps
don't belong in s.m.r.]
.

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