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kskz | 12 years ago

A lot of the difficulty in mathematics is trying to come up with the correct, precise definitions for "fundamentally simple" ideas (the French are historically well known for this). There is literally no way to get the precision afforded by mathematics without requiring substantial jargon, it would be like trying to write an entire operating system without functions. Mere intuition doesn't cut it here, we want logically airtight proofs, and for this you need exact definitions and terminology.

For example, everyone intuitively knows what holes are. Well, how do you rigorously define a hole? It took centuries to come up with the correct definition, which is given in terms of homotopy groups, and the definition of homotopy groups will look incomprehensible to the non-mathematician. Seemingly "easy" statements like "bounded three dimensional objects without holes are spheres" (i.e. the Poincare conjecture) turn out to be very, very hard (worth a million dollars and a Fields medal!)

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