anonymouz

There is a point in distinguished a formal proof from an intelligible one, notwithstanding the fact that one can, with effort, be extracted from another. That's a key point of the discussion that we mathematicians are having now, and fits into the bigger question as to what it means to gain mathematical understanding. In fact, Tao happens to have some older posts about this himself. The naive formalist reduction that you are making is not really bringing us forward in having a useful reflection about this, as the discussion is already beyond that.

Maybe, but it's not worth discussing the content if you dont comprehend what the authors are actually saying.

I recommend rereading the text.

No, because knowing a proof exists is just a small part of math. It's value is rather limited to actual math, as the article explains quite eloquently and nicely.

You can, mathematicians generally don't. That's what the article is partially about - a purely formal proof doesn't get us much.

The authors discuss the dual roles of proofs, and the new need to differentiate them better, clearly in the article.

Who is "we"?

But if we had a large number of undetected cases in the past, then we should also have a large number of undetected cases now, contrary to the study. (Unless we already have herd immunity, but there is no data at all suggesting this.)

Well, in principle it does sound like a possibly "vaccine", but without the long-term testing I still don't see how we can be sure we have found this attenuated strain. Personally, I am youngish (30s) and healthy, so I would probably fall into the core group of those that "should" be infected. But given the choice, I don't think I'd do it, because even now, three months after this virus became big, there is still huge uncertainty about its lethality (even among young people), the number of severe cases (possibly causing long-term long tissue), and how this virus behaves in the long-term: how long would immunity even last? [seems unclear now]. There were also reports from China, and now South Korea, about possible reinfections or reactivations. Under these circumstances, I'd rather pass and keep to social distancing/masks etc. until a better solution comes along or the safety of an attenuated strain has actually been proven through a large scale, controlled trial.

I don't see the point of this. Nature has most certainly not established the long-term effects of this virus, seeing as it has only been spreading in humans for a short while.

Skirting the regulations is pointless, because the important thing is the intent of the regulations. If it were just a problem with the regulations, we could also just change the regulations and give the untested vaccine.

Plus, if you want to argue from a pure legal background, this approach would probably still run into trouble, as in most countries it would be highly illegal to infect people on purpose.

It seems the reason the vaccine will take so long (12-18months) to develop is because it needs to be tested for long-term safety which takes a trial with long-term monitoring. As this is essentially a sort of (active) vaccine, how do you propose ensuring it's long-term safety? It seems you'd run into essentially the same problem as with developing the vaccine.

You can't bike across the crosswalk, but you can get off your bike, step onto the sidewalk and walk your bike across the pedestrian crossing.

I assume you live in the EU (or somewhere else outside the US), where it is the most natural thing to just send money from your account to another one.

This simply isn't a thing in the US, as I discovered when moving to there for a time. They use third-party apps, cheques, and wire transfers (which are expensive and seem to work via ACH, a pull type system). It's simply not possible to go into your ebanking app and transfer money to someone elses account. (With very restrictive exceptions, e.g. same bank, or maybe the bank has integrated a third party service...)

As inconceivable as the American system is in the beginning for somebody coming from the EU, I guess for many people from the US it's similarly non-obvious that a push system can (and does) exist somewhere else.