Sunday, November 19, 2006
JSH: Scary, eh?
Thousands of people around the world I'm sure have the expertise to trace through Wiles's paper—with the assumption that it is wrong—to see if that assumption leads to a contradiction.
That simple test shows that it does not.
Supposedly, showing an error in a major paper at that level would make a person famous, and gain them prestige and even could lead to money.
Wiles turned down millions in endorsements, while receiving quite a bit of money from math prizes alone.
But no one will do it because the math world is not what most people think.
No one will do it because they know that mathematicians who control things would close ranks around Wiles, deny any assertions of error, and block them, so they'd get nothing, but pain and misery.
Maybe they could post about the problems on Usenet and get called
stupid and insane.
I like the test I outlined above which is called the null test as the thing to do is reply back with the line in Wiles's paper where assuming the opposite of what he claims to prove leads to a contradiction.
One poster—Arturo Magidin—already made a false claim, where he re-worked some of the lines of a crucial point in Wiles's work, and claimed an error with the conclusion of what Wiles calls "Theorem 5.2".
But that can only happen if the proof is by contradiction, so Magidin tried to claim he'd turned Wiles's work into that, but sorry, creativity at protecting your hero does not math make.
To pass the null test a contradiction has to be shown with Wiles's actual paper, not with something creatively re-worded, and a contradiction would not show at the conclusion of an argument, as the logical break has to occur before then.
Remember, mathematical proofs are logical chains. An actual proof will show a break in the chain BEFORE the conclusion if you assume something that goes against its logic.
That simple test shows that it does not.
Supposedly, showing an error in a major paper at that level would make a person famous, and gain them prestige and even could lead to money.
Wiles turned down millions in endorsements, while receiving quite a bit of money from math prizes alone.
But no one will do it because the math world is not what most people think.
No one will do it because they know that mathematicians who control things would close ranks around Wiles, deny any assertions of error, and block them, so they'd get nothing, but pain and misery.
Maybe they could post about the problems on Usenet and get called
stupid and insane.
I like the test I outlined above which is called the null test as the thing to do is reply back with the line in Wiles's paper where assuming the opposite of what he claims to prove leads to a contradiction.
One poster—Arturo Magidin—already made a false claim, where he re-worked some of the lines of a crucial point in Wiles's work, and claimed an error with the conclusion of what Wiles calls "Theorem 5.2".
But that can only happen if the proof is by contradiction, so Magidin tried to claim he'd turned Wiles's work into that, but sorry, creativity at protecting your hero does not math make.
To pass the null test a contradiction has to be shown with Wiles's actual paper, not with something creatively re-worded, and a contradiction would not show at the conclusion of an argument, as the logical break has to occur before then.
Remember, mathematical proofs are logical chains. An actual proof will show a break in the chain BEFORE the conclusion if you assume something that goes against its logic.
# posted by James Harris @ 17:59 
