6/9     A claimed proof of the Riemann Hypothesis is now a top story on /.
          -- ilyas
        \_ This isn't really news. De Branges has been claiming this for a
           long time. He's not a kook, but most of the experts don't seem
           to believe him. (In particular, note that the paper referred to
           in this recent press release is actually dated March 2003.)
           my name is lewis.
           \_ awww.  Well, it would be neat if RH were true. -- ilyas
              \- It is true. We just have not proven it.
              \- It is true. We just have not proven it. --psb
                 \_ Yeah, I agree with Feynman's intuition in these things.
                    It would be too ugly for RH to be false. -- ilyas
                    \- an interesitng contrast is the continuum hypothesis.
                       i remember being in a room with large math brains and
                       all of a sudden they started saying things like "i think
                       the continuum hypothesis is true" "i dont think it is
                       true!". although on another occasion the largest brain
                       of all in this area i believe came down on "i think
                       there is some weird set that can be constructed that
                       would show it to be false".  --psb
                       \_ CH is independent of ZFC.  We finished proving this
                          just today in class.  The problem with discussing
                          the truth or falsity of CH or any other statement
                          involving infinite quantities is that you ultimately
                          have to make the case that our world is a model of
                          ZFC.  That claim seems very dubious to me -- I am
                          not even sure our world contains aleph_0.  For me,
                          the truth or falsity of such statements can only be
                          established w.r.t. some model. -- ilyas
                          \- well the famous indep proof gives people a little
                             bit of an out not avail in the case of RH, where
                             so many papers have to issue the "assumes RH is
                             true" disclaimer. this is not really my area and
                             i neither know much about it nor have good
                             intuition ... i was never lost as fast in a
                             math talk as one by a german fellow on model
                             theory. however the chiatin's omega stuff
                             sound kind of conceptually interesting. worth a
                             look if you are not familiar with it. back to
                             CH/ZFC: some time back P COHEN made the comment
                             "i am an analyst  ... but i did some good work
                             in set theory" in 10 Evans. "you had to be there".
                             i could not follow WOODIN's work in this area.
                             --psb
                             \_ I think Omega exists like Pi exists.  We have
                                slightly better algorithms for approximating
                                Pi, of course.  I think I ll need another
                                year to follow Cohen's forcing stuff. -- ilyas
                             \_ I saw a talk by Woodin on this topic
                                a couple of years ago. He thinks the CH is
                                false. If I remember correctly, his argument
                                is that there are structures that can be
                                built up in ZFC + Projective Determinacy that
                                have nice properties and the potential to
                                yield very interesting new fields of
                                mathematics. One can build similar structures
                                in a different level,  but to do so requires
                                that the CH is false.
                                \_ That's not an argument for the falsity of
                                   CH, that's an argument that the falsity
                                   of CH is useful to assume to get interesting
                                   math done. -- ilyas
                                   \_ And when talking about questions that
                                      are independent of the standard axioms
                                      what exactly is the difference?
                                      \_ 'False' without qualification means
                                         'false in the real world.' -- ilyas
        \_ He's still been trying to convince people of this. The proof
           is pretty painful, and you can't really claim this without
           getting other people (a lot of other people) to look at the proof.
           It still might be true, I haven't looked at the proof (and probably
           couldn't understand it if I did) -chialea
           \_ Does your motd entry actually say anything?
              \_ Does she ever?