> > 2. Provide a stable archive of this information for all future time. > I don't think people appreciate how ephemeral information is. > The main logic system of the western world for centuries was > Stoic logic; we know very little about it, because practically > everything has been lost since. Modern civilization is even *less* > good at archiving; most storage devices only last around 10 years, > not thousands. Yet many civilizations have collapsed over the > centuries, > and it is hubris to think it could not happen again. > I want to see etched copies of these databases > put in caves, deep in the sea, on the moon, and sent out to space > so it's possible for others to recover them after much else is lost. > There are organizations like the Arch Mission Foundation > (a non-profit organization that archives the knowledge and species > of Earth for future generations, https://www.archmission.org/ ) - but > they have to have material to work with. >
I share this concern but let's not fool ourselves. There are enough dead languages already which nobody understands. And without Rosetta stone formal systems are as easy or even easier to lose. Just ask yourself what would happen if all computers will become obsolete and no books survive either (which are already mostly in a digital form). We should admit that information is still transferred from one human to another within a single culture and without it semantic is lost. I don't believe in transcendent semantic so I'm not sure if we could understand alien mathematics because soundness doesn't exist in syntax alone. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metamath" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/metamath/d5a50846-73ef-42e8-ac7b-75d37d1c74b8%40googlegroups.com.
