4 ms·
> The things you say are always falsifiable. is that necessarily absolutely true? i myself would take a deep breath before making such a wide-sweeping claim. f
by nikofeyn 10y ago
> The things you say are always falsifiable.
is that necessarily absolutely true? i myself would take a deep breath before making such a wide-sweeping claim. first thing that pops into my mind is the axiom of choice and also godel's work. i am sure there are a ton more examples.
> There are no ambiguities in correctly expressed math.
not accurate because define "correctly expressed". ambiguities absolutely exist in mathematics, though people do indeed seek to weed them out.
but i think you are romanticising mathematics too much. it can be messy and confusing because even mathematicians can disagree what the right way to do mathematics is. and once you get into various models and approaches (e.g., set theory vs category theory, classical logic vs intuistic or constructive logic) this is made more apparent. take smooth infinitesimal analysis for example. it completely turns on its head what you know about differentiable functions because it chooses to work in a different logic and model than classical calculus and analysis. the amiguity is clear because which is correct?
people need to relax when bible thumping their mathematical sermons. mathematics is not something etched in stone by the universe. it is very much an art as it is an application of logic and should not be treated as such an elitist subject.
- Smaug123 10y ago> > The things you say are always falsifiable. > is that necessarily absolutely true? i myself would take a deep breath before making such a wide-sweeping claim. first thing that pops into my mind is the axiom of choice and also godel's work. Broadly speaking, if things aren't falsifiable, they're either provably not falsifiable (so everyone knows that debating their truth isn't particularly fruitful, like the case of Choice), or they're precise but not provably unfalsifiable (Gödel might permit this, but we have never yet found a plausible example of such a statement), or they're imprecise (in which case they're recognised as being "not yet rigorous").
- wayn3 10y ago> is that necessarily absolutely true? i myself would take a deep breath before making such a wide-sweeping claim. first thing that pops into my mind is the axiom of choice and also godel's work. i am sure there are a ton more examples. thats kind of true, but axioms are not "results" of math, they are starting points. they are deliberate. although most mathematicians would argue that our set of axioms is "reasonable", we have just agreed to use them. that is true.