Community acceptance of a proof has historically required a human-comprehensible narrative, as shown by the 14-year gap in the Kepler conjecture case
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[quiet]
[stable]
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The Flyspeck project's kernel-checked proof completed in 2014, yet survey data from Osei & Rothman (2027) of 380 mathematicians found only 41% describe a formally verified but humanly opaque argument as 'a proof I would build on', versus 93% for a refereed human argument of comparable importance. Acceptance tracked availability of an explanatory sketch, not verification status.
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Cited as evidence in 1 claim:
By 2035 a machine-generated proof of a previously open Anna…
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By 2035 a machine-generated proof of a previously open Annals-level conjecture will be formally verified in Lean and accepted without a human-written proof sketch
ai-forecasting
formal-verification
mathematics
virtues: Accurate unrated · Falsifiable unrated · Clear unrated · Novel unrated · Important unrated
this claim:
Community acceptance of a proof has historically required a human-comprehensible narrative, as shown by the 14-year gap in the Kepler conjecture case
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Journals accepting formalized-only submissions grew from 0 to 3 between 2025 and 2029, but all three require an accompanying informal exposition
mathematics
publishing
virtues: Accurate unrated · Falsifiable unrated · Clear unrated · Novel unrated · Important unrated
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Evidence Against (1)
Journals accepting formalized-only submissions grew from 0 to 3 between 2025 an…
Institutional policy is the operationalization of the acceptance norm, and current policy is not merely silent but affirmatively requires a sketch. The escape hatch a defender would use is the second clause: if machine-generated exposition vouched for by a human counts, the claim's 'without a human-written proof sketch' condition may already be satisfiable.
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