nobody actually believes in induction, right?
we all just agree that it works as part of some kind of collective fiction, right?
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i think believing in induction is pretty much identical to believing that the natural numbers "really exist" and i think a lot of people do believe that. like, the natural numbers are the thing such that induction is true of them
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may i introduce to you the ultrafinitist alexander esenin-volpin
mathoverflow.net/questions/4420
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wow 😳
that's a really delightful and persuasive argument on the part of the ultrafinitists
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i think of this as a koan
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