Alberto Monteiro wrote: > I love the Conservapedia. It's an endless source of humor. Maybe > I should sign in and create an account. Some articles, like... > > http://www.conservapedia.com/Axiom_of_Choice > > ... lack enough "conservatism"; there's no line claiming that > the Axiom of Choice is atheistic mathematics and the work of Satan.
Alberto-- Hi. Thanks for pointing out the status of the Conservapedia. I'd say it's a good thing, since I don't really want the authors trying to edit Wikipedia! There is an interesting question: Could Conservapedia just copy articles on non-controversial subjects from Wikipedia? Maybe if they included an attribution in 6-point type? (I'm shaky on exactly what the public license for Wikipedia content says.) There are some thorny problems for religious fundamentalists, even in mathematics. The only safe thing to do might be to have a completely finitary mathematics, making no assumptions about infinite objects whatsoever. One does, however, lose lots of mathematics by doing so! You can argue that the Infinite is the domain of the Deity, and hence unknowable. Or decide that Infinite sets should be "neat and clean", since the Great Spaghetti Monster would not tolerate "messiness". If you go the latter route, I'd recommend assuming the Axiom of Constructibility, which states that "the only sets that exist are the ones required by the other axioms of set theory". There doesn't seem to be an entry on Conservapedia, yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_constructibility (Maybe they'll get around to copying material for it eventually.) But this axiom implies the Axiom of Choice. ---David Large Cardinal Heresy, Maru _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
