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Re:Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem (2016) by pmiller2 on Sunday August 06, 2017 @12:06PM (#14941836)
I have to agree that this argument is utterly unconvincing, even as a reason to believe FLT may be true intuitively. It simply dismisses with a wink and a nod the idea that there might be one single counterexample out there for one single exponent (or, a finite number of counterexamples for a finite number of exponents). In other words, it does nothing to argue against the set of counterexamples being of measure 0. Indeed, until Wiles finally proved FLT, the relative lack of progress on Siegel's conjecture on the infinitude of regular primes would tend to lend support to the view that a counterexample might exist somewhere out there.
Re:Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem (2016) by thaumasiotes on Sunday August 06, 2017 @02:14PM (#14942548)
> It simply dismisses with a wink and a nod the idea that there might be one single counterexample out there for one single exponent (or, a finite number of counterexamples for a finite number of exponents). In other words, it does nothing to argue against the set of counterexamples being of measure 0.

Those "other words" are substantially weaker than the statement before them. If x^n + y^n equaled z^n for every integer x, y, z, and n, the set of counterexamples to Fermat's last theorem would still be of measure 0. Nothing can argue against the set of counterexamples being of measure 0, because the entire problem space itself has measure 0, and the set of counterexamples is necessarily a subset of the problem space.

Re:Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem (2016) by alimw on Sunday August 06, 2017 @12:54PM (#14942078)
I haven't read it closely, but it looks to me as if the calculation estimates the expected number of counterexamples rather than the "measure" of them (however you've chosen to define that).
Re:Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem (2016) by mathemancer on Sunday August 06, 2017 @02:29PM (#14942647)
The set of possible counterexamples has Lebesgue measure zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebesgue_measure