Timeline for What would be some major consequences of the inconsistency of ZFC?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 22, 2019 at 1:50 | history | edited | Suvrit | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
permuted and rephrased based on comment thread.
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| Apr 22, 2019 at 1:40 | comment | added | Suvrit | @YemonChoi I'm not referring to anything other than what I literally wrote; I've been a largely offline of MO for almost a year now, so am unaware of the trend you are mentioning. All I meant was (sorry for not being explicit) was a suggestion that you may have mistaken the whole question to be just about the arXiv paper, and hence "triggered" a closure based on that. I agree that we may not get much more beyond what Henry wrote, but that does not necessarily mean closure. In any case, editing out the arXiv thing is a great idea, because that indeed is a distraction at this point! | |
| Apr 21, 2019 at 23:50 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @Suvrit note that I am not arguing that the question was off-topic for MO, it just seems that we're not going to get much more than what Henry has pointed out. Perhaps we could compromise by editing out the reference to the arXiv paper, which is a potential distraction - it certainly misled me, as I had forgotten the details of your original question | |
| Apr 21, 2019 at 23:46 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @Suvrit Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not sure why you ask your second question: I have spent not inconsiderable time over the last several days voting to keep open various upvoted questions about set theory and infinite cardinals, which some one (or some people) seem to be consistently trying to close. (If you are referring to that regrettable trend; it certainly wasn't me) | |
| Apr 21, 2019 at 18:45 | comment | added | Suvrit | @YemonChoi -- the literal question about the arXiv paper may not be relevant, but a clarification of the topic itself remains relevant / open to additional commentary (even though of course there are excellent existing answers below). Perhaps your closure is motivated more by some other reasons? | |
| Apr 20, 2019 at 14:54 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I'm voting to close this question as "no longer relevant" (the arXiv post has been updated to indicate the author aceepts there are mistakes) | |
| Apr 20, 2019 at 0:30 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 20, 2019 at 16:04 | |||||
| Apr 27, 2014 at 16:00 | comment | added | goblin GONE | I think it would be good if ZFC was discovered inconsistent, since trying to control these inconsistencies would no doubt spur the creation of new and interesting ideas in the foundations of mathematics. | |
| May 26, 2013 at 15:17 | answer | added | Flash Sheridan | timeline score: 5 | |
| May 25, 2013 at 18:41 | comment | added | Joseph Van Name | If we find an inconsistency with ZFC, then the apocalypse would happen!!! | |
| May 25, 2013 at 15:22 | answer | added | The User | timeline score: 2 | |
| Mar 16, 2012 at 0:50 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @Guillaume: qu'est ce qu'on peut faire avec ces gens-la ... (I believe this is the author esc-toulouse.fr/fr/f41/professeur/GERMAIN-Laurent.html ) | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 21:12 | comment | added | Guillaume Brunerie | @Yemon : nice argument, "When you are far enough in an infinite binary tree, counting the number of nodes is the same thing as counting the number of paths to infinity, hence $\aleph_0=2^{\aleph_0}$" | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 20:42 | answer | added | none | timeline score: -3 | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 15:08 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | Related MO question: mathoverflow.net/questions/40920/… | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 14:08 | comment | added | Andreas Blass | @Mark Sapir: I'm afraid Wiles is only partially responsible. There were plenty of set-theory cranks even before Wiles shooed away some of the number-theory cranks and turned them into set-theory cranks. As far as I can see, cranks will cluster around any topic that they can imagine they understand. | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 8:14 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila♦ | @Suvrit, the problem cranks have with ZFC is exactly the problem in the "article" Yemon Choi linked to (I have to admit that I read that article before, and wanted to link it here myself). Namely the fact that there are "many infinities". People lacking the mathematical training required to tackle infinities can object to this idea because "an infinite set is infinite", or "how can there be more irrationals than rationals?" kind of arguments. | |
| Mar 13, 2012 at 2:24 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @Martin, @Henry: here's a case in point arxiv.org/abs/0809.4144 | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 17:26 | comment | added | Suvrit | @Mark: thanks for your assessment, I can now un-jolt myself. I did not know that ZFC was so contentious (I can certainly imagine tons of junk claims about RH, PNP, etc., but not this). | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 17:21 | vote | accept | Suvrit | ||
| Mar 11, 2012 at 17:21 | comment | added | Suvrit | Well Gerald, the paper showed up in the CS section on arXiv---and there one hardly ever sees such things! Also, I was "jolted" by the bold claim, not by the content because I lack the background to judge it! | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 17:12 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | If you were "jolted" by the paper, then you haven't been browsing arXiv very long. "Contradiction in ZFC" is a frequent topic there, along with "Simple proof of FLT" and so on. | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 16:15 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | @Martin: The arXiv tries to filter out obviously inappropriate articles at the time of submission, but doesn't always succeed. Once an article appears, it's important to maintain the historical record, so even the author cannot fully remove it from the arXiv (it can be officially withdrawn, but the previous versions remain available). | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 12:58 | comment | added | Martin Brandenburg | I wonder why these nonsense articles are "allowed" to stay on the arXiv. | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 5:57 | comment | added | Samuel Reid | The paper provides a train wreck of an argument at page 4 and 5 which links together disparate definitions and statement to give a 1-paragraph proof of the inconsistency of ZFC which doesn't make any sense. | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 5:39 | answer | added | Henry Cohn | timeline score: 77 | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 4:30 | comment | added | user6976 | The paper is a complete nonsense. For example, there are no proofs there. It is all Wiles' fault. If he did not prove FLT, these people would keep peacefully trying to prove it. Now that FLT is proved, they turn to extremism aiming at destruction of Peano arithmetic. | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 4:00 | comment | added | François G. Dorais | Depends on the type of inconsistency. There were a bunch of big inconsistencies in the late 1800's and early 1900's and we dealt with them pretty well. We also did well handling inconsistencies related to the use of infinitesimals, but it took a very long time before we fully resolved that issue. Future inconsistencies, if they come, will probably be handled in a similar way... | |
| Mar 11, 2012 at 3:51 | history | asked | Suvrit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |