
A computer-generated proof that nobody understands – Xena - EvgeniyZh
https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/a-computer-generated-proof-that-nobody-understands/
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eesmith
> If 20 years ago we had raised the possibility that a computer could come up
> with a 1000 page proof of a statement which humans had formulated, however
> “easy” the objects in question were, I think that it would not have been
> hard to find people who would have been very skeptical.

Isn't that pretty much what happened with the 1970s computer-based proof of
the four color theorem?

~~~
ColinWright
This is a common mis-conception, but the answer is no.

The 1976 Haken-Appel proof of the 4CC, now 4CT, proved that provided there was
a collection of graphs that satisfied a certain criterion, the conjecture was
true. In essence, they need a collection such that every graph had one (or
more) of them as a sub-graph (the collection is unavoidable), and such that
each of them was "reducible".

Finding such a collection was tedious and error-prone, and then checking that
each had the required property was _also_ tedious and error-prone, so they
programmed computers to construct the collection and verify the properties.

The computer did not prove anything, and the structure of the proof is fairly
easy to understand.

