How can a math problem be unsolvable?
In: Mathematics
There is no such thing as an unsolvable math problem.
There is such a thing as an unsolved math problem. Usually, these problems require the invention of entirely new ways of even thinking about math to even generate the tools or framework you would need to solve the problem. Sometimes, the genius to see a way towards the solution before it exists is a bit beyond the mortals who have tried so far.
So, don’t think about it like “6×32+17 = ????” and just no one knows. It’s more like if I asked you “prove that there are no non-prime numbers larger than 10^17 that do not have at least 6 prime factors.” That’s a terrible example because I don’t know the extremely high-level math it would take to even know what the questions really look like (and in fact I once tried to look at the 7 unsolved prize problems and I literally couldn’t even understand the wikipedia pages explaining the terms they used to even summarize what the problem was), but they’re kind of like that in format just far more complex and far harder. The point is you’d have to learn some new things that the rest of humanity doesn’t even know yet in order to even develop a way to go about proving those things, and that’s just really, really hard.
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