curses! wrong, again.

about what i wrote in the last post,

today i thought i had proved something great.

well, i found a gap in the argument: last night. it bothered me so much that i couldn't sleep well at all, and i worked on it all of today ..

"all of today" meaning from noon to nine, with some omitted few hours in between. i ended up oversleeping and missing basketball, because an interrupted cup of coffee is more important than sport.

noon to five pm was one long worksession; i thought i nailed it at five, though something seemed .. off. anyways, i went running and it was around mile 3 or 4 that i realised something.

wait.
the logical quantifiers are in the wrong order.
it won't work. it's not a proof.

i kept running, of course, cursing my stupidity and the poor footing from the falling snow.

i still believe that the "theorem" is true, but i'm starting to doubt that the technique will work. maybe it's too much to hope for: it's too close to something else which shouldn't be true ..

rather, it might be true, but it would require a LOT of leverage and in the process, it would probably prove another conjecture.

i haven't thought it through, of course.

i'm tired of this: wanting to prove what i think is true. nobody should want to prove a theorem.