hairyfigment comments on The two meanings of mathematical terms - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: JamesCole 15 June 2009 02:30PM

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Comment author: hairyfigment 02 June 2016 01:21:52AM 0 points [-]

since there is no algorithm to determine whether any given N satisfies the conclusion of the conjecture.

I think you mean, 'determine that it does not satisfy the conclusion'.

Comment author: Dacyn 02 June 2016 05:30:59PM 0 points [-]

I think my original sentence is correct; there is no known algorithm that provably outputs the answer to the question "Does N satisfy the conclusion of the conjecture?" given N as an input. To do this, an algorithm would need to do both of the following: output "Yes" if and only if N satisfies the conclusion, and output "No" if and only if N does not satisfy the conclusion. There are known algorithms that do the first but not the second (unless the twin prime conjecture happens to be true).