Talk:1310: Goldbach Conjectures

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 00:40, 1 January 2014 by Ricketybridge (talk | contribs)
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If a bot can create the text I read here, we have made great strides in artificial intelligence. Probably a human editor forgot to change the "incomplete/incorrect" heading. Tenrek (talk) 05:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

You never know, AI has come a loong way. Davidy²²[talk] 06:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Let's ask: Tepples, are you a bot? And 199.27.128.62, what about you? -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I'm a bot. 199.27.128.62 21:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought that {{incomplete|Created by a BOT}} means that the template was inserted by a BOT. 173.245.50.84 13:55, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It does mean that. But as others edit the page, they should keep the "incomplete" reason up-to-date. I've changed it to "incomplete|surely not quite complete yet..." ;) Nealmcb (talk) 14:28, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I will change this text template beginning at the Friday update when I'm back home. Happy NEW YEAR to everybody! --Dgbrt (talk) 15:16, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It all seems to work except that the extremely strong seems to imply the opposite of the extremely weak Djbrasier (talk) 02:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I always find it amusing that people assume that something phrased 'scientifically' is therefore right, whereas something phrased unscientifically (eg religious beliefs taken on faith) are automatically wrong. There seems to be an unexamined assumption that science is some magical dark art for uncovering infallible truths. Of course science is really just a methodological system for testing theories. Whenever I try to explain this concept, I try to come up with a general, untestable (non-scientific) assertion that is nonetheless true, alongside a very specific, repeatedly testable (falsifiable) assertion that is therefore eminently scientific, but which happens to be wrong. (Eg "it sometimes rains on Wednesday" and "it rains at least 100mm every Wednesday in Riyadh"). So for me this comic is a commentary on that principle - that the "strength" of a statement is only really impressive if it has also survived testing. Tarkov (talk) 10:47, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised that the explanation doesn't touch on the puzzling and humorous fact that the "extremely weak" and "extremely strong" conjectures contradict each other, even though they're derived (albeit in opposite directions) from the same thing. Am I wrong? I don't feel qualified to add this to the explanation myself. ricketybridge (talk) 00:37, 1 January 2014 (UTC)