Timeline for Did Edward Nelson accept the incompleteness theorems?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 15, 2020 at 15:58 | answer | added | Sam Sanders | timeline score: 8 | |
| Dec 13, 2020 at 20:16 | vote | accept | BPP | ||
| Dec 13, 2020 at 8:07 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Dec 13, 2020 at 7:25 | answer | added | Emil Jeřábek | timeline score: 22 | |
| Dec 13, 2020 at 6:08 | answer | added | Timothy Chow | timeline score: 15 | |
| Dec 13, 2020 at 3:36 | comment | added | none | bof, Nelson published a mistaken proof of an inconsistency in Peano arithmetic some years back, but he withdrew it when Terry Tao pointed out the error. He did believe for a long time that PA was inconsistent. I don't know why he thought that: I can understand believing that PA is false or meaningless, but "inconsistent" is a stronger claim. The stuff on his web site doesn't really explain this. LSpice, we lost Ed Nelson in 2014 so we unfortunately don't have a way to receive any new answers from him. | |
| Dec 13, 2020 at 1:24 | comment | added | bof | Isn't Edward Nelson the guy who claims arithmetic is inconsistent? Doesn't the incompleteness theorem say something like "if arithmetic is consistent, then a certain statement is unprovable"? So isn't it automatically true if arithmetic is inconsistent? (I don't know anything about logic so I'm probably talking nonsense.) | |
| Dec 13, 2020 at 0:46 | comment | added | LSpice | The first question seems like the sort of thing that could only be answered by Nelson. Is it a reference request? | |
| Dec 12, 2020 at 23:39 | history | asked | BPP | CC BY-SA 4.0 |