BAbachback·Feb 27, 2016
Have you followed Gödel's proof in detail? I know Fields medalists who like to speculate about Gödel, but haven't read Russell and Whiteheads Principia Mathematica (PM). Gödel's system is PM, but PM is quite an impossible read. Most of this discussed has been discussed over 30 years between 1900-1930. By the way Turing also builds on PM in his on computable numbers paper. PM is like a compiler before there were compilers. Today it would look more like metamath.org or https://github.com/vladimirias/Foundations
> Formal mathematics has no concept of absolute truth; this is left for philosophy.
No, it is called logic which is the intersection of both. And most mathematicians haven't done any logic whatsoever. They avoid it, because it means you actually have to think about things. You have to think about why greek symbols have special meanin
Read the rest
gs. And as computer scientists/hackers know, computer code is an alternative medium.
I remember when I asked a math professor about the "=" sign and how things can be equal at all, since if they are either the same (A=A is trivial), it is trivial, or if they are different they are not the same (A=B is false). About 10 years later I discovered this is why physics has the notion of symmetries, which is a statement of the form A - B = 0. Two things are equal iff their transformation leads to the origin. But I should have known this all along, because in computer programs "=" can stand for various kinds of operations. It is just that the language of mathematics in general is so inaccurate that one gets lost on the way.