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
Italy diaries🇮🇹 | solo trip in Rome, eating yummy food,shopping
Hi, it’s me Judy. While watching this video, you might think, “Aren’t you a med student, Rudy? What are you doing in the middle of the year in Italy?” The reason why I went to Italy is that I took an exam. I took a medical exam in Italy, and here is the j…
Are we in a REAL ESTATE BUBBLE?!
What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here. So first off, I want to say this is a bit of a technical video. It might be a little bit more in-depth than the other videos I’ve done, but for those that are into that sort of stuff, I think you guys are really going…
Bridge of Terror | Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks
I gotta worry about navigating the boat through the bridge without the shrine. This bridge is the reason why you know people are afraid to go fishing here. It’s our 16th day in the water; we’ve only caught one fish and that was on our first day. We’re des…
Shutting down or exiting industry based on price | APⓇ Microeconomics | Khan Academy
We’ve spent several videos already talking about graphs like you see here. This is the graph for a particular firm; maybe it’s making donuts, so it’s in the donut industry. We can see how the marginal cost relates to the average variable cost and average …
AP US history short answer example 2 | US History | Khan Academy
All right, in this video we’re talking about the short answer section of the AP US History exam. In the first part of this video, we talked about the first two sections of this question, which asked for examples of how contact with Europeans changed Nativ…
Time Is But a Stubborn Illusion - Sneak Peek | Genius
What is time? A deceptively simple question, yet it is the key to understanding relativity. It is sort of the reason my hair is going gray. [laughter] When we describe motion, we do so as a function of time: 10 meters per second, 100 miles per hour. But t…