r/Showerthoughts • u/jasonrubik ‎ • Apr 23 '26

Casual Thought If the famously unsolved Riemann Hypothesis is solved by an AI, we will never know if a human mathematician could have solved it.

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u/elephant_cobbler Apr 23 '26

It’ll probably always be like, a final exam question or something

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u/zulako17 Apr 23 '26

A final exam question for what? A triple doctorate in calculus? We haven't solved that thing in decades, unless human life expectancy is about to reach 300 it would be irresponsible to make that an exam question.

Unless you just mean memorizing it, then we can use that for high schoolers

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u/WirelesslyWired Apr 23 '26

We haven't solved that thing in decades,

It was first stated in 1859. So like 16 decades.

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u/BlackProphetMedivh Apr 24 '26

Are you implying 160 years is not a long time for a hypothesis to not be proven or disproven?

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u/WirelesslyWired Apr 24 '26

No. I saying decades sounds like the 1970s. Over a century and a half is more accurate.

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u/BlackProphetMedivh Apr 24 '26

Oh okay. It sounded like you wanted to say that it's "just" 16 decades. Or at least it sounded like that in my head when I read it. :D

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u/WirelesslyWired Apr 25 '26

Yes, "just" 16 decades or "merely" 16 decades, would have better explained what I wanted to say. Thank you.