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A comment on What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists. Parent comment

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:56PM (#12271148)
As a theorist, theories in physics describe experiments and mathematics is the study of formal axiom systems. So if you want to reject the axiom of infinity, that is fine. If you want to have stronger axioms, like large cardinal axioms, equally fine.^1 However from experience, babbling on about truth in mathematics does almost never lead anywhere interesting.

^1 Basically large cardinal axioms give you additional types of infinity.

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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mattmanser on Thursday August 11, 2016 @04:11PM (#12271257)
I'm guessing mindcrime's talking about Cantor and Godel and the continuum hypothesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis

I remember learning about them in the philosophy of maths, but have no idea if they have any consequences in Physics. And like /u/lasfter I'll stop there before I embarrass myself.

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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @06:01PM (#12271922)
Probably, but in my view Godel's theorem basically states that there are limits to axiom systems. (In much the same way that you can not write a web server without touching sockets.) My point is, if it would be necessary to switch to a stronger axiom system than ZFC in physics, then one would do that, without claiming that that stronger system is real.
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mattmanser on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:45PM (#12272531)
I honestly can't tell if this is utter gibberish or a real comment...
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @09:29PM (#12272926)
Yeah, I should stop commenting publicly on an ongoing thought process, before I figured out how to communicate that thought :/ Basically I am drifting towards hard mathematical anti-realism and towards a rather minimal scientific realism. (And when I saw the discussion I jumped the gun...)
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