Math's Fundamental Flaw

I love Veritasium. Derek has done a number of videos that are awesome like this. The videos are great and educational, but he also manages to subtly weave in an almost spiritual subtext to them as well. For example, in this one, you learn about imaginary numbers in some cool ways, history, how awesome e^ix is, etc, but also this yen-yang balance between embracing not only what is real but taking a chance on what is imaginary. Some of my other favorites: - link - ▶ this video - link - link - link I think he’s going to lose the $10,000 bet on the car though.

I used to think similarly, but learning about the proven incompleteness of sufficiently rigorous analytic systems has moved me towards appreciating less rigorous ways of interfacing with reality. Veritasium has a nice video on Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It’s quite ironic that it was mathematically provable that analytic systems can never be complete, and can’t be provably coherent. ▶ this video

It's very entry-level (my level :)) but I found Veritaseum's video about it really clear and instructive: ▶ this video

Veritasium - Math's Fundamental Flaw ▶ this video At 13:46 it gets into the "is there a way to prove every complete statement?" and furthermore goes into the Godel math for "there is no proof for the statement with Gödel number g" where that statement itself has a number "g". The entire video is a good watch though. And the related problem is that with Godel we don't know if math is consistent either.

But what if the statement is "this statement can't be proven"? You haven't proven the statement, you've proven that it can't be proven. See ▶ this video for instance which is (IMO) a fairly good explanation of the proof and why you end up with something both true and not provable. Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" also discusses this topic at length (within the context of whether human brains can be emulated). I wasn't convinced with his argument regarding AI but his overview of the problem of what's computable and what's not is rather good if a bit dense.

Veritasium recently released a very good video that explains Gödels incompletenes theorem such that even I could understand it: ▶ this video

I'm not sure if it is what you want, but Intuitionism [1] is one area that challenges modern fashions in Mathematical thinking. It suffered greatly under the formalist approach lead by David Hilbert and still has little main-stream support despite Gödel and his incompleteness proofs. Veritasium's latest video on Gödel's incompleteness [2] gives a pretty fair account of how we settled on the current fashionable foundations of Math (including nods to Cantor and Hilbert). For a more formal history there is a book "The Philosophy of Set Theory" [3] that sketches out how we got to where we are. I have always been unsatisfied with the current foundations of math and their obtuse basis in Set Theory. Although I must admit, Category Theory has alleviated that quite a lot, especially with the relaxing of equivalence compared to equality. 1. link 2. ▶ this video 3. link

I think most here would know that math is not complete, consistent or decidable. ( ▶ this video ) But I'm going to leave that aside as it's pretty high level math for me and I never run into those problems in my life. My personal problem with math that prevents me from seeing it as "discovery of fundamental principles claimed to exist in an objective reality" is natural numbers. It's impossible for me to clearly find the number 1 (for example) anywhere. The boundaries between one unit and 0.X or 1.Y seem arbitrary and chosen to help us create models. Religion and philosophy deal with this, but it's also apparent in digital signal processing. Or medicine: are the numerous bacteria in our bodies us, or not? Is the heat radiation from my body me? What about the fact that 1 + 1 rarely if ever equals 2? Meaning that two things together physically interact to create more than the sum of both parts. From celestial bodies to a replicated database the complexity goes through the roof when you have more than one thing.

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] ▶ this video

Going through a shitty phase (which happens often) I've been trying to cope in various ways, reaching high and low, inside and outside, for meaning and purpose and guidance. I don't subscribe to most existing models, not out of a rebellious choice but because I cannot find or follow their logic to a satisfactory conclusion. So far this is what I have, make of it what you will: • There must be a default state, and a part of it must reside in everything built upon it. It doesn't make sense that something began from Nothing, but I like to think that something began from Everything. • But it doesn't mean that a superset system can control a subset system 100% – Think of our relationship with computers and the programs running on/in them, along with all the physics involved and the virtual results. • Veritasium's video on "Math's Fundamental Flaw" [0] was a good source of inspiration: Shit may be coded with hard immutable logic but still have virtually infinite possibilities. • If you think your mind, or your "will" or "heart" or "soul", matters in any way and can make any difference, try to find the cutoff point between -where- that metaphysical quality starts , what sets "you" apart from everything else: What's the difference between you and every other person's mind/soul? Or a person's mind and a computer program? The difference between a world with no humans in it, and a world with 1 human? A barren asteroid and a planet with life? Can a rock access the mysteries of the Univer

I found this nice presentation about Godel's theorems. ▶ this video "There is no proof for the statement with Godel-number g". What I'm struggling with is trying to understand if self-reference can be formally represented by some symbol. Can it? Godel's proof seems to rely on a trick that allows a formal system to talk about itself but is that possible? There would need to be a symbol for that and thus a symbol that refers to itself? A picture of a pipe is not a pipe. Similarly a representation of a proof is not a proof, is it?. Not saying I believe I'm right and Godel wrong, but it just feel strange to me that a formal system could ever "prove" anything about itself. What does it mean that something is "true"? That it can be proven?

This was a great video. But the one titled "Math Has a Fatal Flaw"[1] was even more interesting: the meta-mathematics, thus mathematics of entire mathematics (Gödel). [1] ▶ this video