Thank you, Norman.

El dia divendres, 1 d’octubre de 2021 a les 16:36:43 UTC+2, Norman Megill 
va escriure:

> In our construction of the complex numbers, even the "simple" natural 
> numbers are complicated objects, and there isn't a simple direct ZFC proof 
> of 2+2=4 that doesn't require going through the construction, leading to 
> the large number of steps you see.
>
> However, there is http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/o2p2e4.html which is 
> 2+2=4 for the ordinal natural numbers (finite integers starting at 0).  It 
> uses the von Neumann ordinals, where 0 is the empty set, 1 is {0,{0}}, 2 is 
> {1,{1}}, etc. I think that is about as close to the ZFC axioms as you can 
> get.  'show trace_back o2p2e4/count/essential' still shows about 14K steps 
> (many of which are just propositional and predicate calculus and could 
> probably be made much shorter if the only goal were to prove o2p2e4).  In 
> addition, the set.mm proof involves transfinite recursion to get the 
> addition operation for finite and infinite ordinals at once, and it would 
> be somewhat shorter if we limited ourselves to finite recursion.
>
> There is a real number construction (not in set.mm) that uses the finite 
> ordinals as the official natural numbers, then adds a disjoint set 
> extending the collection to the integers, then adds rationals, and finally 
> adds reals, each stage adding new elements to the existing stages.  It is 
> described in Levy, Azriel, Basic Set Theory, Dover Publications, Mineola, 
> N.Y. (2002), p. 217.  I assume it can be further extended to complex 
> numbers (which Levy doesn't do).  That would get you a complex number 
> construction where each stage would be about as close to ZFC axioms as 
> possible for that stage.  In principle this could be a drop-in replacement 
> for the complex number construction section in set.mm.  I think it is 
> elegant in its own way, although I don't know how the size of the full 
> construction would compare the existing one in set.mm.
>
> Norm
>
> On Friday, October 1, 2021 at 7:35:05 AM UTC-4 Anarcocap-socdem wrote:
>
>> As discussed in the Proof Explorer page, the Metamath proof that "2+2=4" 
>> has 26,323 steps. 
>>
>> The reason for such a long proof is Metamath first defines the real and 
>> the complex numbers. There are good reasons to do so.
>>
>> However, I would like to check the proof that "2+2=4" using basic ZFC, 
>> which would probably result in a shorter proof.
>>
>> I see there is another proof (the one of Principia Mathematica), but I 
>> think (but I am not 100% sure) that this proof is not the simple one I am 
>> looking for.
>>
>> Has a simple proof for "2+2=4" been written in metamath?
>>
>> Thank you in advance.
>>
>

-- 
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/4bc682ad-41e8-4c24-9e51-516fa4efe408n%40googlegroups.com.

Reply via email to