Mathematicians (of whom I am one) drive me crazy. The other day at a conference the speaker said

“A rigorous mathematical proof of [such-and-such] is not known.”

The thing is, the speaker knew that such-and-such was false! So of course, no amount of rigor was ever going to make it true. Mathematicians are so obsessed with theorems and proofs as the gold standard of knowledge that “we can’t prove it” becomes their way of saying “it isn’t so”.

[26 July 2023]