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Normal_Anomaly comments on The Crackpot Offer - Less Wrong
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Since everyone is sharing their stories, here's mine. When I was around 10, a family friend introduced me to the four-color map problem. I spent months trying to draw a map that required five colors, and one time I thought I had it. I dreamed of fame and glory for a few hours, then I showed the map to a relative who colored it with four colors. Shortly after, I accepted that I wasn't going to get it and stopped.
If you really did prove the 4-colour theorem at age 10 then dreams of fame and glory would have been quite justified.
Demonstrated satisfactorily =/= 100% proven
Most things outside mathematics can never be proven, but many can easily be demonstrated satisfactorily.
The 4-colour theorem is not outside mathematics. I think I sort of understand what you mean by 'demonstrated satisfactorily' but in my experience such demonstrations aren't worth much, not only can they be wrong in principle, they are often wrong in practice. Mathematics is nothing if not counter-intuitive.
I don't mean I proved it. I just meant that I worked at it long enough that I became pretty confident I wouldn't be able to do it. Edited my earlier post to make that clearer.
I understand that, I was being intentionally facetious.