yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

We Can’t Prove Most Theorems with Known Physics


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

The overwhelming majority of theorems in mathematics are theorems that we cannot possibly prove. This is Girdle's theorem, and it also comes out of Turing's proof of what is and is not computable. These things that are not computable vastly outnumber the things that are computable, and what is computable depends entirely upon what computers we can make in this physical universe.

The computers that we can make must obey our laws of physics. If the laws of physics were different, then we'd be able to prove different sorts of mathematics. This is another part of the mathematician's misconception: they think they can get outside of the laws of physics. However, their brain is just a physical computer. Their brain must obey the laws of physics.

If they existed in a universe with different laws of physics, then they could prove different theorems. But we exist in the universe that we're in, and so we're bound by a whole bunch of things, not least of which is the finite speed of light. So there could be certain things out there in abstract space which we would be able to come to a more full understanding of if we could get outside of the restrictions of the laws of physics here.

Happily, none of those theorems that we cannot prove at the moment are inherently interesting. Some things can be inherently boring; namely, all of these theorems which we cannot possibly prove as true or false. Those theorems can't have any bearing in our physical universe. They have nothing to do with our physical universe, and this is why we say they're inherently uninteresting. There's a lot of inherently uninteresting things...

More Articles

View All
A Place for Cheetahs | National Geographic
The last thing we want to do is lose this cat after a long journey and all this effort and all the permitting and everything that’s gone into getting him here. Yeah, and if you’ve got a dart gun, right, running full here into this fence. So these are four…
HOW TO BUY: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum (Step by Step)
What’s up you guys! It’s Gran here. So, this has been something that has been requested in the hundreds of times. People have been hitting me up on Snapchat, on Instagram, and many, many times in the comments, asking how to go about buying Bitcoin, Liteco…
WHICH PLAYER SHOULD I CHANGE? | Maresca hits back at calls for more Chelsea substitutes
Must proved a very frustrating end to the afternoon for you, and what does it tell you about your Chelsea team? No, yeah, as I said, I just said that probably we did enough to win the game today. Between the first half and second half, I think we created…
Warren Buffett: How to Invest for 2023
So 2022 was a rough year for investors, and people are worried about what’s ahead. That’s not a secret. The US stock market has been down over 20 percent, and this only tells part of the story. There are many stocks that were formerly high flyers that are…
What Does the Moon Smell Like? #kurzgesagt #shorts
What does the Moon smell like and how do we know that? Certainly not by smelling samples from the Moon, that would be extremely stupid. Luna dust is toxic; inhaled, it can be swallowed up by immune cells such as macrophages and trigger further immune reac…
Startup Experts Reveal Their Favorite Pivot Stories
You don’t know what the thing is that you’re chasing when you wake up every morning? Then you probably need to pivot. Right? So many founders have to work on the wrong thing before finding the right thing. It’s like they’ve internalized, “I’m gonna fail, …