FOM: intuition

[Martin Davis]

I think a partial answer to this interesting posting is given in the word 
"robustness". A proof is "robust" if the conclusion survives under various 
minor perturbations. And much of the "intuition" comes from satisfaction 
with a proof in which the proof-path is robust (so the prover sees various 
alternate routes at various steps). If a proof seems really really 
delicate, people will want to be very sure before accepting the conclusion.

Martin



                           Martin Davis
                    Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley
                      Professor Emeritus, NYU
                          martin at eipye.com
                          (Add 1 and get 0)
                        http://www.eipye.com