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<p>[QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 3055676, member: 27832"]Yes, but it's not the math at issue here.</p><p><br /></p><p>In college and grad school, I learned a lot about formal logic, formal verification, and reasoning about algorithms. It's possible to write fairly large programs that can be <i>proven correct</i> -- in other word, you can prove that they do exactly what their specifications say they should do, for any input.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem is, there's no way to prove that your <i>specifications</i> are correct. At some point, what you want is a system that "does what I mean" -- and there aren't any formal tools to solve <i>that</i> problem, especially when even <i>I</i> don't know exactly what I mean.</p><p><br /></p><p>It's quite possible that Bitcoin "does what Satoshi means", or "does what Bitcoin Farmer Li means", or "does what you mean", or "does what 7-11 means". It's also quite possible that those <i>intentions</i> are different, and possibly quite incompatible. Even if all the parties understand and agree on the <i>mathematical underpinnings</i> of Bitcoin, the <i>mapping to the real world</i> is still ambiguous and in flux.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sorry for going off the deep end a bit -- it's been a long time since grad school, and my math has gotten quite rusty, but this <i>did</i> capture my enthusiasm back then.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I had no idea! I'll try to remember to look into this.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 3055676, member: 27832"]Yes, but it's not the math at issue here. In college and grad school, I learned a lot about formal logic, formal verification, and reasoning about algorithms. It's possible to write fairly large programs that can be [I]proven correct[/I] -- in other word, you can prove that they do exactly what their specifications say they should do, for any input. The problem is, there's no way to prove that your [I]specifications[/I] are correct. At some point, what you want is a system that "does what I mean" -- and there aren't any formal tools to solve [I]that[/I] problem, especially when even [I]I[/I] don't know exactly what I mean. It's quite possible that Bitcoin "does what Satoshi means", or "does what Bitcoin Farmer Li means", or "does what you mean", or "does what 7-11 means". It's also quite possible that those [I]intentions[/I] are different, and possibly quite incompatible. Even if all the parties understand and agree on the [I]mathematical underpinnings[/I] of Bitcoin, the [I]mapping to the real world[/I] is still ambiguous and in flux. Sorry for going off the deep end a bit -- it's been a long time since grad school, and my math has gotten quite rusty, but this [I]did[/I] capture my enthusiasm back then. I had no idea! I'll try to remember to look into this.[/QUOTE]
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