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by TheOtherHobbes 1594 days ago
No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incomplete_proofs

You seem to be arguing from a personally idealised view of math, which doesn't match reality.

Real math is full of full of mis-starts, dead ends, and established mistakes which are later corrected.

Math is exactly like science. There's a cumulative core we can be very confident about, and more exploratory edges where results are more tentative and subject to review, correction, and expansion.

1 comments

Sure there are incomplete proofs and dead ends. But I have yet to see an example of an "established mistake" which disproved an entire line of research that depended on the mistake. Sure, mistakes have been published. But it never led to an entire branch of "knowledge" based on a false belief -- something that happens regularly in other fields.