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
Photographing the Strength and Beauty of Rescued Horses | National Geographic
[Katie] These are the horses that don’t fit in in any other place. All of these abandoned animals were getting sent to slaughter. They would have been killed. I think what they’re doing here is incredible. I’m born and raised in New York City. I still l…
Filming Fast Hummingbirds: On Location | Hostile Planet
Filming a show like “Hostile Planet” comes with a lot of unique challenges. Check out this from “Behind the Scenes.” OK, ready? One of the aims of “Hostile Planet” was to try and immerse the viewer in the world of the animals. You want to film something p…
Trick involving Maclaurin expansion of cosx
The first three nonzero terms of the McLaurin series for the function ( f(x) = x \cos(x) ). So one thing that you’re immediately going to find, let’s just remind ourselves what a McLaurin series looks like. Our ( f(x) ) can be approximated by the polynom…
The Price of Adventure | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
Put yourself for a moment in the snow boots of a young Max Lowe. Several years ago, he was on an expedition with three of the world’s most famous mountaineers: author John Krakauer, professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and the leader of the North Face a…
NERD WARS: Captain America vs. xXx (Vin Diesel)
Hootie-hoo! Yeah, we’ve been listening to your suggestions for people to beat the crap out of Vin Diesel or Marvel characters that want to get their ass kicked by Vin Diesel. Either way, we listen to your suggestion and here’s what we come up with: an epi…
Interpreting time in exponential models | Mathematics II | High School Math | Khan Academy
After a special medicine is introduced into a petri dish full of bacteria, the number of bacteria remaining in the dish decreases rapidly. The relationship between the elapsed time T in seconds and the number of bacteria n of T in the petri dish is modele…