Barkley_Rosser comments on Infinite Certainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 January 2008 06:49AM

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Comment author: Barkley_Rosser 09 January 2008 06:37:28PM 0 points [-]

Well, the deeper issue is "Must we rely on the Peano axioms?" I shall not get into all the Godelian issues that can arise, but I will note that by suitable reinterpretations, one can indeed pose real world cases where an "apparent two plus another apparent two" do not equal "apparent four," without being utterly ridiculous. The problem is that such cases are not readily amenable to being easily put together into useful axiomatic systems. There may be something better out there than Peano, but Peano seems to work pretty well an awful lot.

As for "what is really true?" Well... . . . .