Math Is Hard

And not just for Barbie. This article says that math problems are getting too big for our brains.

Well, that’s one of the thing that transhumanism is for. This part bothers me, though:

Math has been the only sure form of knowledge since the ancient Greeks, 2,500 years ago.

You can’t prove the sun will rise tomorrow, but you can prove two plus two equals four, always and everywhere.

This begs the definition of the words “knowledge” and “prove.” Two plus two can be proven, I suppose (inductively from one plus one equals two), but only within the confines of the mathematics that you’re using. It’s not “sure” or “knowledge” in any absolute sense.

What they really mean is that some of the tougher mathematical problems are not amenable to classic deductive analytical proofs, but are more reliant on brute-force computations, possible now because we have machines that can perform them in a useful amount of time.