[Confusion]

I find it strange that he doesn't explain his confidence with at least a general description of the way in which he thinks the proof will fail.

I suppose he could have safely claimed this with Wiles's original proof as well, since it did have at least one non-trivial flaw that required amending. It's quite possible that the proof contains flaws, but will still hold up in the end, because the flaws can be corrected. But I feel that's a bit of a lame gamble.

[marbu]

Well, but Scott Aaronson wrote: "If Vinay Deolalikar is awarded the $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize for his proof of P≠NP, then I, Scott Aaronson, will personally supplement his prize by the amount of $200,000." So I suppose that any non-trivial flaw which will be eventually fixed by author of the paper himself is not a problem here.

[albertzeyer]

Sometimes there are also flaws which can not be corrected.

But I cannot make a qualified guess if this might be the case here.

[Confusion]

Of course, but that's an even larger gamble, if you don't have at least a very specific hunch about the way in which a proof will fail. All in all, this announcement by Aaronson seems rather rash. I don't understand why he would do such a thing.

[eru]

I am OK with it. He put his money where his mouth is, instead of just putting his mouth somewhere.