@St_Rev BTW, I’ve been working for past couple days on my page on the foundational crisis in math in early 20th century…
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Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev Remember the discussion we had puzzling about why none of our teachers were willing to explain what math is or how to do it?2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev Have a new hypothesis, that the crisis left an institutional PTSD, so that everyone learned it was better not to go there, and my >1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev asking questions like “so what is a real number” actually provoked visceral anxiety and therefore the angry response I got.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev because in fact you can’t get real numbers without actual infinities (Dedekind cuts or Cauchy sequences) and those were triggers2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev Apparently constructivists tried to find ways to do analysis without any hidden actual infinities, but it was an abject failure.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev So basically somewhere around 1960, everyone agreed just not to deal with the foundational crisis anymore and to get on with >1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@St_Rev doing-math-as-usual and trying to forget the whole thing. But they actually know the issues haven’t gone away, and are afraid2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@Meaningness They call it "shut up and calculate" in physics, yeah.2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
@St_Rev Toward the end, this talk by Chaitin http://arxiv.org/html/nlin/0004007 … points at one of the places where mathematicians get super squicked
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