[valenterry]

Nah, actually I agree with you. What counts as believe and what as fact is rather abitrary. Is 2+2=4 a fact? Is global warming a fact? What about man-made global warming? Ask 100 people whether something is a fact or a believe.

To top that up, it's fact that there have been "proves" that were wrong (or maybe that's just my believe? :^]) even for a long time.

Hence, I think we can say that there are 4 options for a theorem:

1) Some mathematician believes the theorem is correct (but can't prove it)

2) Some mathematician believes the theorem is incorrect (but can't prove it)

3) Some mathematician believes the proof of a theorem is correct

4) Some mathematician believes the proof of a theorem is incorrect

Proving that a proof is correct is kind of meaningless. At that point it's all believe anyways.

[blowski]

Brilliant episode of the BBC’s In Our Time that goes down this rabbit hole. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59gz

[konschubert]

^ Exhibit A why using "believe" is a bad choice of words.

Mathematical poofs are either correct or false. There is no middle ground.

[karmakurtisaani]

Well.. there is. Middle ground being a very complex, but somehow convincing argument that no one can reasonably check. There was one of these cases in number theory some years ago, can't remember the details. Proofs can be only true or false, but accepting proofs is in the end a social process.

[nhatcher]

A couple come to mind

* The proof of the classification of simple groups[0]

* The work on topological four manifolds by M. Freedman [1]

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_sim...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28471159

[unclad5968]

A convincing argument that cannot be checked is not a proof. If you want to extend the definition of proofs you're welcome to do that, but for academic mathematics the meaning of proof doesn't contain a middle ground.

[valenterry]

Why would it not be a proof?

What is your criteria of "can be checked then"? If a proof for "sqrt(2) is not a rational number" can't be checked by a 5yo, it's still a proof no?

[konschubert]

> Proofs can be only true or false

Yes.

The fact that we don't know the truth doesn't mean there isn't one.