there's a particular kind of math nerd who doesn't realize that they don't know what math is and it's so funny to me
math is when you pick a few axioms and see where they go. that's it. it happens to be very useful for understanding a lot of things about the world but math? mathematics? it's entirely "if i assume these things to be true, what else has to be?"
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@monorail formalists have interesting opinions on this take—to them, it’s not even really a question of what is true based on your axioms but what statements are expressable as a consequence of your axioms. math from such a purrspective is just a bunch of string manipulation rules and meaning is merely a consequence of interpurretation
@aescling @monorail and then you encode your string manipulation rules into arithmetic, and you make Bertrand Russel sad O uO