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I know nothing of OP, or the professor he talked to, but I think they might be talking about the higher level concepts of math. For example, set theory. If set

I know nothing of OP, or the professor he talked to, but I think they might be talking about the higher level concepts of math. For example, set theory. If set theory allowed self reference you could have set R, a set of sets that do not contain themselves. Would R contain R? It can’t, but it can’t not either. It’s self contradictory. The solution, reached through consensus, was to restrict the definition of the set to not allow sets to reference themselves [1]. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo https://youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo

graycat 4y ago
The way I learned how to resolve the Russell paradox: Over here on the left in a pile we have the elements we will work with. Now, for the sets, they are made of the elements and are in a separate pile, are over here on the right. Sooo, with this little preliminary step, there is no way to consider the set of all sets that are not elements of themselves. As I recall, there was a paper by Robert Tarjan where he observed that most paradoxes are from self referencing. Soooo, rule out self referencing and will rule out most paradoxes!