| ▲ | SpicyLemonZest 17 hours ago | |
I would frame it differently. The existence of compact counterexamples to a true-seeming conjecture suggests that there’s some deeper understanding waiting to be discovered. Fuzz testing for theorems, if that makes sense. I hope mathematicians in 2036 will be able to explain in detail why the Jacobian conjecture was false and identify which similar, true conjectures the community’s intuition was pointing towards. | ||
| ▲ | ChadNauseam 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
We can take a simpler example. Let's say someone conjectures that all linear maps are isomorphic if they have the same domain and codomain*. A counterexample is easy to find, but true insight would be to notice that all linear maps with the same domain and codomain that are not isomorphic map some non-zero elements to zero. That is much more interesting than just finding a counterexample. Although, that isn't to say that finding a counterexample is not very interesting. *statements only apply to maps whose domain is finite-dimensional | ||
| ▲ | nopinsight 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
I suspect an AI, possibly a successor to current LLMs, will achieve that by the early 2030s. It might help illuminate many mysteries in math and beyond for us all. | ||