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# WasIs Grothendieck a computer?

I can't resist asking this companion question to the one of Gowers. There, Tim Dokchitser suggested the idea of Grothendieck topologies as a fundamentally new insight. But Gowers' original motivation is to probe the boundary between a human's way of thinking and that of a computer. I argued, therefore, that Grothendieck topologies might be more natural to computers, in some sense, than to humans. It seems Grothendieck always encouraged people to think of an object in terms of the category that surrounds it, rather than its internal structure. That is, even the most lovable mathematical structure might be represented simply as a symbol $A$, and its special properties encoded in arrows $A\rightarrow B$ and $C\rightarrow A$, that is, a grand combinatorial network. I'm tempted to say that the idea of a Grothendieck topology is something of an obvious corollary of this framework. It's not something I've devoted much thought to, but it seems this is exactly the kind of reasoning more agreeable to a computer than to a woolly, touchy-feelly thinker like me.

So the actual question is, what other mathematical insights do you know that might come more naturally to a computer than to a human? I won't try here to define computers and humans, for lack of competence. I don't think having a deep knowledge of computers is really a prerequisite for the question or for an answer. But it would be nice if your examples were connected to substantial mathematics.

I see that this question is subjective (but not argumentative in intent), so if you wish to close it on those grounds, that's fine.

Added, 11 December: Being a faulty human, I had an inexplicable attachment to the past tense. But, being weak-willed on top of it all, I am bowing to peer pressure and changing the title.

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I can't resist asking this companion question to the one of Gowers. There, Tim Dokchitser suggested the idea of Grothendieck topologies as a fundamentally new insight. But Gowers' original motivation is to probe the boundary between a human's way of thinking and that of a computer. I argued, therefore, that Grothendieck topologies might be more natural to computers, in some sense, than to humans. It seems Grothendieck always encouraged people to think of an object in terms of the category that surrounds it, rather than its internal structure. That is, even the most lovable mathematical structure might be represented simply as a symbol $A$, and it's its special properties encoded in arrows $A\rightarrow B$ and $C\rightarrow A$, that is, a grand combinatorial network. I'm tempted to say that the idea of a Grothendieck topology is something of an obvious corollary of this framework. It's not something I've devoted much thought to, but it seems this is exactly the kind of reasoning more agreeable to a computer than to a woolly, touchy-feelly thinker like me.

So the actual question is, what other mathematical insights do you know that might come more naturally to a computer than to a human? I won't try here to define computers and humans, for lack of competence. I don't think having a deep knowledge of computers is really a prerequisite for the question or for an answer. But it would be nice if your examples were connected to substantial mathematics.

I see that this question is subjective (but not argumentative in intent), so if you wish to close it on those grounds, that's fine.

I can't resist asking this companion question to the one of Gowers. There, Tim Dokchitser suggested the idea of Grothendieck topologies as a fundamentally new insight. But Gowers' original motivation is to probe the boundary between a human's way of thinking and that of a computer. I argued, therefore, that Grothendieck topologies might be more natural to computers, in some sense, than to humans. It seems Grothendieck always encouraged people to think of an object in terms of the category that surrounds it, rather than its internal structure. That is, even the most lovable mathematical structure might be represented simply as a symbol $A$, and it's special properties encoded in arrows $A\rightarrow B$ and $C\rightarrow A$, that is, a grand combinatorial network. I'm tempted to say that the idea of a Grothendieck topology is something of an obvious corollary of this framework. It's not something I've devoted much thought to, but it seems this is exactly the kind of reasoning more agreeable to a computer than to a woolly, touchy-feelly thinker like me.