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n4r9 19 hours ago

Trivially false. Let P be the set of maths problems and I be the interesting subset of P. If I is finite, then there exists an element x belonging to P\I whose description is minimal among P\I. Then x is interesting. QED.

karmakurtisaani 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why is x interesting? Just because it has a minimal description in P\I? That makes it interesting in strictly technical sense only.

Smaug123 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

An interesting problem must have a description that fits in a brain, at least for now. Your description-length argument assumes arbitrarily large storage.

dcl 5 hours ago | parent [-]

the smallest problem that cannot fit in a brain would be pretty interesting

Smaug123 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sorry, I assumed the inductive construction was implied; you can indeed describe properties of that particular interesting problem (though of course you can’t hold its definition in your head), so it goes in the list. Keep going. At some point you’ll hit problems where the process of constructing the problem doesn’t even fit in a brain, etc. There are at least countably many problems, but finitely many problems which any algorithm-which-fits-in-the-brain can describe given finitely many inputs-which-fit-in-the-brain.

This isn’t an enormously important point - the actual question at issue is an empirical one, “in a steady state, can we produce interesting problems at a rate that exceeds our ability to solve them and integrate our understanding” or something like that - but I did rankle at a “trivial” proof which is invalid due to equivocating between multiple definitions of the word “interesting” (which should really take an object, “interesting to me” vs “interesting to something smarter than me”).