SPECIOUS-SIMPLIFICATION

Major Section:  MISCELLANEOUS

Occasionally the ACL2 theorem prover reports that the current goal simplifies to itself or to a set including itself. Such simplifications are said to be ``specious'' and are ignored in the sense that the theorem prover acts as though no simplification were possible and tries the next available proof technique. Specious simplifications are almost always caused by forcing.

The simplification of a formula proceeds primarily by the local application of :rewrite, :type-prescription, and other rules to its various subterms. If no rewrite rules apply, the formula cannot be simplified and is passed to the next ACL2 proof technique, which is generally the elimination of destructors. The experienced ACL2 user pays special attention to such ``maximally simplified'' formulas; the presence of unexpected terms in them indicates the need for additional rules or the presence of some conflict that prevents existing rules from working harmoniously together.

However, consider the following interesting possibility: local rewrite rules apply but, when applied, reproduce the goal as one of its own subgoals. How can rewrite rules apply and reproduce the goal? Of course, one way is for one rule application to undo the effect of another, as when commutativity is applied twice in succession to the same term. Another kind of example is when rules conflict and undermine each other. For example, under suitable hypotheses, (length x) might be rewritten to (+ 1 (length (cdr x))) by the :definition of length and then a :rewrite rule might be used to ``fold'' that back to (length x). Generally speaking the presence of such ``looping'' rewrite rules causes ACL2's simplifier either to stop gracefully because of heuristics such as that described in the documentation for loop-stopper or to cause a stack overflow because of indefinite recursion.

A more insidious kind of loop can be imagined: two rewrites in different parts of the formula undo each other's effects ``at a distance,'' that is, without ever being applied to one another's output. For example, perhaps the first hypothesis of the formula is simplified to the second, but then the second is simplified to the first, so that the end result is a formula propositionally equivalent to the original one but with the two hypotheses commuted. This is thought to be impossible unless forcing or case-splitting occurs, but if those features are exploited (see force and see case-split) it can be made to happen relatively easily.

Here is a simple example. Declare foo to be a function of one argument returning one result:

(defstub foo (x) t)

(defaxiom forcer
 (implies (force (not (true-listp x)))
          (equal (foo x) t))
 :rule-classes :type-prescription)

(thm (implies (and (consp x)              ; hyp 1
                   (true-listp (cdr x))   ; hyp 2
                   (true-listp x))        ; hyp 3
              (foo x)))                   ; concl

(implies (and (consp x)                   ; rewritten hyp 1
              (true-listp (cdr x)))       ; rewritten hyp 3
         (foo x))                         ; unrewritten concl

(implies (and (consp x)                   ; rewritten hyp 1
              (true-listp (cdr x))        ; rewritten hyp 3
              (true-listp x))             ; FORCEd hyp
         (foo x)).                        ; unrewritten concl

If ACL2 were to adopt the new set of subgoals, it would loop indefinitely. Therefore, it checks whether the input goal is a member of the output subgoals. If so, it announces that the simplification is ``specious'' and pretends that no simplification occurred.

``Maximally simplified'' formulas that produce specious simplifications are maximally simplified in a very technical sense: were ACL2 to apply every applicable rule to them, no progress would be made. Since ACL2 can only apply every applicable rule, it cannot make further progress with the formula. But the informed user can perhaps identify some rule that should not be applied and make it inapplicable by disabling it, allowing the simplifier to apply all the others and thus make progress.

When specious simplifications are a problem it might be helpful to disable all forcing (including case-splits) and resubmit the formula to observe whether forcing is involved in the loop or not. See force. The commands

ACL2 !>:disable-forcing
and
ACL2 !>:enable-forcing

To illustrate what we mean by the claim that specious simplifications often arise because the system forces a false hypothesis, reconsider the example above. At the time we used the :type-prescription rule, the known assumptions were (consp x) and (true-listp (cdr x)). Observe that this tells us that x is a true list. But the hypothesis forced to be true was (not (true-listp x)). Why was the falsity of this hypothesis missed? The most immediate reason is that the encoding of the two assumptions above does not produce a context (``type-alist'') in which x is recorded to be a true-list. When we look up (not (true-listp x)) in that context, we are not told that it is false. More broadly, the problem stems from the fact that when we force a hypothesis we do not bring to bear on it all of the resources of the theorem prover. Thus it could be -- as here -- that the hypothesis could be proved false in the current context but is not obviously so. No matter how sophisticated we made the forcing mechanism, the unavoidable incompleteness of the theorem prover would still permit the occasional specious simplification. While that does not excuse us from trying to avoid specious simplifications when we can -- and we may well strengthen the type mechanism to deal with the problem illustrated here -- specious simplifications will probably remain a problem deserving of the user's attention.