I've been close friends with two mathematicians. The both say,
"I'm a Platonist Monday thru Friday. On the weekend I'm a
nominalist."
Brent
"I raised just
this objection with the (extreme)ultrafinitist
Yessenin Volpin during a lecture of his. He
asked me to be
more specific. I then proceeded to start
with 2^1 and
asked him whether this is "real" or something to
that effect.
He virtually immediately said yes. Then I
asked about
2^2, and he again said yes, but with a
perceptible
delay. Then 2^3, and yes, but with more delay.
This continued
for a couple of more times, till it was
obvious how he
was handling this objection. Sure, he was
prepared to
always answer yes, but he was going to take 2^100
times as long
to answer yes to 2^100 then he would to
answering 2^1.
There is no way that I could get very far with
this."
-Harvey M.
Friedman
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R: Re: What are among the world's most important problems to solve, why?
'scerir' via Everything List Wed, 13 Jul 2016 12:58:21 -0700
