this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
79 points (96.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43747 readers
1517 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Eli5?
So modern math is proven to be incomplete and we cannot prove that it is consistent either. Those 2 words, incomplete and consistent have a very technical meaning here.
The first is that there is a statement in modern mathematics, which is true, but cannot be proven. And even if we expand it, there will always be such a statement. Hence, incomplete.
And the second, we cannot have a system that proves everything as that system will be inconsistent. Basically if a system can prove everything, then we can easily prove 1=1 AND 1 โ 1. If both are proven, then we lose meaning since there is no "truth". But a consistent system cannot prove its self consistency. Ergo, with modern math, we cannot know if math is consistent.
Now, the problem lies in that we use math to model our perceived reality. It means there is a limit to human knowledge, or put simply, there will be something in the universe that we may never know the answer to.
My favorite is the busy beaver function. There exist, at a certain number, that our modern math cannot make any meaningful statement about the function. Here is a great video about it. (youtube link warning). But you can also look at veritasium video for more in depth explanations.
Two addenda:
Incompleteness applies to all formal systems of logic, not just maths, which means that the systems we based the scientific method and our best attempts at justice systems and formal argumentation/debate and academia are all subject to incompleteness.
Incomplete systems can also be inconsistent, it's possible everything we base our collective knowledge on are such systems.