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Allan Hotti

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Is Mathematics a pure language, free of the ambiguities and pitfalls present in ordinary language communication?

Ordinary communication is riven with ambiguities, contradictions, manipulations, emotions, misunderstandings etc. etc., that makes communication so inefficient and contentious at times.

Is the language of Mathematics different? Can we rely on it to speak the truth?

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    Krisztián Pintér 200+

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    Feb 24 2013: language of math is much more formalized than natural languages, but still not perfectly formalized. that is why after a proposed proof of a conjecture comes out, mathematicians spend weeks or months of time to validate it. there was a proposal some time ago, to use a perfectly standardized and abstract, 100% precise formalism in articles. such a formalized proposed proof could be tested by a computer, in microseconds. however, presenting a proof in this format takes a ton of time. basically, you need a staff to rewrite your arguments in this proposed format, using up hundreds of expert man-hours of work. this approach is not practical even in the very abstract field of math.

    if you want to formalize real world statements precisely, you will need many lifetimes of work of experts. by the time they come up with a totally precise formulation of statements, we have arrived at a solution long ago. it is hopeless.

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