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Comment by btilly

When you say "given ZFC", you're assuming a lot. Including a notion of mathematical existence which bears little relation to any concept that most lay people have of what mathematical existence might mean.

In particular, you have made sufficient assumptions to prove that almost all real numbers that exist can never be specified in any possible finite description. In what sense do they exist? You also wind up with weirder things. Such as well-specified finite problems that provably have a polynomial time algorithm to solve...but for which it is impossible to find or verify that algorithm, or put an upper bound on the constants in the algorithm. In what sense does that algorithm exist, and is finite?

Does that sound impossible? An example of an open problem whose algorithm may have those characteristics is an algorithm to decide which graphs can be drawn on a torus without any self-crossings.

If our notion of "exists" is "constructable", all possible mathematical things can fit inside of a countable universe. No set can have more than that.

parent btilly 1 year ago

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