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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>…</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> [ExI] favor for a friend<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>He wanted to know the meaning of this statement:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Mathematics is true, but it doesn't exist.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>"</span><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>bill </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>w<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>Bill it is a mathematician’s joke, a little self-referencing humor. Pure mathematics is all about proving theorems. There are many mathematical ideas called conjectures until they are proven. An example is the conjecture that an odd perfect number exists. Plenty of people agree that one is true, but we have no known way of finding it, nor is there a proof that it exists (or doesn’t exist.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>I chose that example because I worked on it for a while, but found myself not smart enough by a coupla orders of magnitude. A better example is the Riemann hypothesis:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:28.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'>In mathematics, the <b>Riemann hypothesis</b> is a </span><span style='font-size:20.0pt'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjecture" title=Conjecture><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white;text-decoration:none'>conjecture</span></a></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'> that the </span><span style='font-size:20.0pt'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function" title="Riemann zeta function"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white;text-decoration:none'>Riemann zeta function</span></a></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'> has its </span><span style='font-size:20.0pt'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_of_a_function" title="Root of a function"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white;text-decoration:none'>zeros</span></a></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'> only at the negative even integers and </span><span style='font-size:20.0pt'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number" title="Complex number"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white;text-decoration:none'>complex numbers</span></a></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'> with </span><span style='font-size:20.0pt'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_part" title="Real part"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white;text-decoration:none'>real part</span></a></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'> </span><span class=num><span style='font-size:16.0pt;color:black;background:white'>1</span></span><span class=slash><span style='font-size:16.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white'>/</span></span><span class=den><span style='font-size:16.0pt;color:black;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white'>2</span></span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;color:black;background:white'>.</span><span style='font-size:28.0pt'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>That one is true, but no one has ever been able to prove it. That a proof doesn’t exist is more remarkable than my example with odd perfect numbers because math graduate students are given instruction on the Riemann zeta function and plenty of them take a shot it. But the zeta shoots back, hard. The fusillade of return fire is awesome on that one.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>Do feel free to forward what I have written to your friend.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>