It's a bit like true random and infinity. It's best not to think about it to much and only useful for post doc bar conversations or impressing stoned Econ undergrads of your preferred gender. Even then, it's best not to think about it too much.
It's a bit like true random and infinity. It's best not to think about it to much and only useful for post doc bar conversations or impressing stoned Econ undergrads of your preferred gender. Even then, it's best not to think about it too much.
Speaking as a pure mathematician: It's really not.
When I say this stuff is pointless, that it doesn't affect ordinary mathematics, I'm not just talking applied math; I'm talking, well, all of ordinary mathematics, pretty much. Number theory, combinatorics... every now and then a question comes up whose answer depends on the continuum hypothesis admittedly but it's seriously rare (and on those few occasions when it has happened, I think often someone comes along and says that this means that you were really asking the wrong question in the first palce).
I mean, OK, there are people such as Harvey Friedman who work out arithmetic consequences of such assumptions. But the statements they come up with are seriously contrived, not the sort of thing ordinary mathematicians care about, even if the statements no longer involve infinities.
Hell I work with infinities sometimes and I don't care about this stuff! Of course, I'm not a proper logician or set theorist. But doing computations with ordinals and well partial orders is fun... and the answers you get never end up depending on this sort of stuff. :P
Infinity is a rubbish idea, by the way. I've given it much thought and concluded it is best to just not think about it. Cantor was a lunatic, and I'm not entirely certain that infinity isn't a causal factor.
Don't get me started. It doesn't end well. ;-)
Eventually I go off on the absurdity of 'true random' and our presumption to know the differences between it and unpredictability. It's hubris and madness, all the way down.
They really should stop teaching mathematics by rote. If you're familiar with my posting history, I very seldom say 'should.'
That doesn't mean it's not beautiful and interesting, particularly to those who study it.
Also, the claim that 'everybody ignores set theorists' is patently false.