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MrMind comments on Open thread, Nov. 23 - Nov. 29, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: MrMind 23 November 2015 07:59AM

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Comment author: passive_fist 23 November 2015 10:14:00PM 3 points [-]

Present day mathematics is a human construct, where computers are used more and more but do not play a creative role.

It always seemed very strange to me how, despite the obvious similarities and overlaps between mathematics and computer science, the use of computers for mathematics has largely been a fringe movement and mathematicians mostly still do mathematics the way it was done in the 19th century. This even though precision and accuracy is highly valued in mathematics and decades of experience in computer science has shown us just how prone humans are to making mistakes in programs, proofs, etc. and just how stubbornly these mistakes can evade the eyes of proof-checkers.

Comment author: MrMind 24 November 2015 08:13:20AM 0 points [-]

I think the difficulty is in part due to the fact that mathematicians use classical metalogic (e.g. proof by contradiction) which is not easily implemented in a computer system. The most famous mathematical assistant, Coq, is based on a constructive type theory. Even the univalence program, which is ambitious in its goal to formalize all mathematics, is based on a variant of intuitionistic meta-logic.