Re: Cardinality question

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:30:25 GMT, "Larry Hammick"
<larryhammick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Torkel Franzen" <torkel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:vcbr7hlcz7c.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> David C. Ullrich <ullrich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>> > Uh, do you have any reason to think that there is such a
>> > "movement", which is picking up steam, other than the
>> > crackpot posts here on sci.math?
>>
>> I haven't noticed any increase in anti-Cantor activities over the
>> past fifteen years or so. In news we have our regular rants from David
>> Petry, and contributions from a few assorted crackpots. In the fields
>> of computer science and programming, people are interested in set
>> theory only to the extent that they can make use of it, but
>> of course no sensible person will rant and rave about how horrible
>> something is just because it's not relevant to his personal concerns.
>Well, this buildup against AC and the like is mostly in the realm
>of crankery, of which sci.math is the international capital.
>http://www3.telus.net/ldh/charter.html
>But I've also seen (unless I'm getting paranoid, which is quite
>possible) that some computer people have picked up
>mannerisms such as
>"depends on the Axiom of Choice"
>"in first-order logic"
>"constructive mathematics".

I don't see how that indicates that there's an "anti-Cantor"
movement.

>Teaching math to computers is proving to be difficult. You've
>probably heard of efforts at DARPA and the EU to spell out
>a format for mathematical results, so that theorems can be
>stored and linked linked just like modules in a computer
>program. Easier said than done, and my theory is that a
>resentment of things like cardinals is one of the results of
>frustration. But again, it might be paranoia on my part.

Of course teaching math to computers is difficult. But
I don't see how that has anything to do with infinity.
When _people_ prove things about infinite this and that
they use finitely long arguments, and I don't see why
formalizing arguments about infinite sets so that a
computer can "understand" them should be any harder
than doing the same thing with any other branch of
mathematics.

>LH
>


************************

David C. Ullrich
.

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