puzzling out the proofs for concepts so utterly fundamental to math by myself that it’s like if Genesis 1:3 was And God said, 'Let there be integer,' and there was integer

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
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    2 months ago

    And then you study foundational Maths and you are convinced of the Demiurge.

    • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
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      2 months ago

      Cantors diagonal argument and the continuum of the reals is my demiurge. It'd be one thing if it was like a weird tangential fact about the reals, but no, you have to accept choice to construct them in the first place, and then that means that there has to be a well ordering on any subset, and of course, wtf is a well ordering on (0, 1)

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
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        2 months ago

        It took me until following down the "how do we dodge Gödel's theorem maybe we can use probability or restrict proofs to a subset or something idk." Thoughts of the 1940s logical empiricists that I truly realised how perverse Maths is.

        • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
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          2 months ago

          i found out that cantor's diagonal argument is more of a persuasive argument than an actual proof and it's been sort of driving me a bit insane since. math is truly a perverse spiral.