[Ads-l] Formal versus informal senses: unsolvable - difficult to solve

[Dennis During]

I'm not one to defend authors and editors, but it may be that what was
meant was that the problem was thought to be PROVABLY undecidable. Not only
was the problem not proven to be undecidable, but someone went beyond
proving that the problem was decidable, and solved it, the best proof.

On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 4:34 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The Technology Review website recently posted an article with the
> following odd (to me) title.
>
> Article: Google DeepMind used a large language model to solve an
> unsolvable math problem
> Date: December 14, 2023
>
> The word "unsolvable" has a specific meaning in the domains of
> mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. For example, here
> is a citation for a famous article. The title uses the word
> "unsolvable" with a rigorous meaning. If a problem is unsolvable it
> cannot be solved.
>
> Alonzo Church, "An unsolvable problem of elementary number theory",
> American Journal of Mathematics, 58 (1936), pp 345–363
>
> Apparently, the person who constructed the title for the Technology
> Review article is using an informal interpretation in which
> "unsolvable" means difficult to solve.
>
> If you follow the link to the article you will find that the title has
> been updated. The word "unsolvable" has been replaced by "unsolved":
>
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/14/1085318/google-deepmind-large-language-model-solve-unsolvable-math-problem-cap-set/
>
> Article: Google DeepMind used a large language model to solve an
> unsolved math problem
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
Dennis C. During

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org