The Man Who Almost Broke Math (And Himself…)





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A huge thank you to Dr Asaf Karagila, Prof. Alex Kontorovich, Prof. Joel David Hamkins, Prof. Andrew Marks, Prof. Gabriel Goldberg and Prof. Elliot Glazer for their invaluable expertise and contributions to this video.

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0:00 What comes after one?
2:42 Some infinities are bigger than others
6:17 The Well Ordering Principle
10:32 Zermelo And The Axiom Of Choice
17:22 Why is the axiom of choice controversial?
23:16 The Banach–Tarski Paradox
27:53 Obviously True, Obviously False
29:58 Your Proof Your Choice

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References:

Up and Atom – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X56zst79Xjg
Minutephysics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-QoutHCu4o
PBS Infinite Series – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRZadc5KpI&t=125s
Vsauce – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86-Z-CbaHA&t=474s
Ernst Zermelo via Wikipedia – https://ve42.co/zermeloBio
Axiom of choice via Wikipedia – https://ve42.co/choiceAxiom
Georg Cantor via Wikipedia – https://ve42.co/cantorMath
Gregory H. Moore (2013). Consequences of the Axiom of Choice. Dover Publications – https://ve42.co/choiceBook
Georg Cantor (1874). On a property of the class of all real algebraic numbers. Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik – https://ve42.co/MeyerCantor1874
Heinz-Dieter Ebbinghaus (Dec 2012). Zermelo and the Heidelberg Congress 1904. Historia Mathematica – https://ve42.co/SciDirect1904
Herbert B. Enderton (1977). Elements of Set Theory. – https://ve42.co/SciDirectGCH

Additional References – https://ve42.co/AoCAdRefs

Images & Video:

Foundations of a general theory of sets by Georg Cantor via ViaLibri – https://ve42.co/grundlagen
Alfred Tarski by George Bergman via Wikimedia Commons – https://ve42.co/tarski
Alfred Tarski Offprint Group by Alfred Tarski via Bonhams – https://ve42.co/tarskipaper
La mission strasbourgeoise de Maurice Fréchet by Laurent Mazliak via Images des mathematiques – https://ve42.co/frechet
Kurt Gödel by Alfred Eisenstaedt via New Yorker – https://ve42.co/godel
Leopold Kronecker by Granger via Fine Art America – https://ve42.co/kronecker
Lashi Bandara (2006). Zermelo-Frankel Set Theory and Well Orderings. ResearchGate – https://ve42.co/zermelofrankel
Heidelberg, Germany 1936 by Wagner & Debes via Ward Maps – https://ve42.co/heidelberg
Pythagoras by J. Augustus Knapp via the marginalian – https://ve42.co/pythag
Paul Cohen by C. J. Mozzochi via C. J. Mozzochi – https://ve42.co/paulcohen
Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada. Lecture 01: Introduction: a non-measurable set via Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llnNaRzuvd4&t=834s
Simons Foundation. Fields Medal: James Maynard. Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un-z8kgOrV0&t=8s

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Directed by Kaela Albert
Written by Kaela Albert and Emily Zhang
Edited by Jack Saxon and Luke Molloy
Assistant Edited by James Stuart
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Andrew Neet, Alex Zepharin, Mike Radjabov, Emma Wright and Ivy Tello
Illustrations by Jakub Misiek, Maria Gusakovich, Cainejan Esperanza, Tommy A. Steven and Emma Wright
Additional research by Emilia Gyles, Gabe Bean, Geeta Thakur and Vincent Cheng
Produced by Kaela Albert, Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Emily Zhang, Zoe Heron, Rob Beasley Spence, and Tori Brittain
Additional Editing by Luke Molloy and James Stuart

Thumbnail contributions by Ben Powell, Peter Sheppard and Ren Hurley

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound

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29 Replies to “The Man Who Almost Broke Math (And Himself…)”

I'm not sure if you can use the words, "more" or "less" or "larger" or "smaller" and so on, in dealing with numbers. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to do so because of infinity. Of course you can use those words in a practical application, but when dealing with theories of infinity, it seems perhaps those things don't exist, or perhaps we just don't have the correct terminology to describe what we're trying to say. ========= OH, it figures I stopped the video to make this comment right before your mentioning Galileo's conclusion. Ugh. Well I'm glad at least I had the same conclusion.

So what are numbers? Im using the axiom of choice to prove there aren't numbers anymore, and thus rendering all math to have disappeared from the Earth, and we can just get laid in college as the good Lord intended.

Why can’t we well order the reals by first. Decimal length, magnitude, then sign

All positives are followed by their negative so I’ll just the positive values
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0.1,0.2,0.3

So first from 0 to 1 is 0.1 first positive is 1

For irrationals they’re ordered by magnitude square root of 2 before pi

From pi to sqrt(11): 3.2,3.3,3.14,3.15…

This seems well ordered to me

Can you be our math teacher😂 your explaining defecult stuff but where still interested to listen but every time i watch math videos for reviewing my topics in math all i see is math antics😢

The issue with duplication of the balls is because axiom of choice relays on your choice never being the same, also you are putting the ball and make it move in 4 directions.
Okey if you have an origin point and each mapped point can be an origin, then that means when you picking up a direction where the ball to move if you have infinite points you have infinite directions too, not just four, if we see a set of numbers with a point of origin or starting point then exactly the opposite result of our origin is the end. While infinity doesn't theoretically have beginning or an end, because it is infinite. If we are to pick a starting point of a set then exactly the opposite of that set should be the end, we don't know where that is, with that in mind if you have +numbers and -numbers, then 0 is the only number where you have no positive or negative origin point because 0 is 0, therefore if you align all numbers in a set at some point in time they should come back to 0, but if thats true then you have measurable quantity by a definition of a modern math solutions. The paradox we are facing here is… you cannot measure infinity but to prove infinity exists that means it is measurable.

You know what always confused me…
Realistically, it seems like our conception of time MUST be inherently flawed due to the fact that time elapses at all

Consider this, I propose that there MUST be a limit to infinity or infinity doesn't exist..
if there TRULY are an infinite amount of real numbers, would've that entail that an infinite amount of "time" would HAVE to elapse before progressing to the next "second"

If we could break a single second down, & take account every single "infinite" real number existing within each second, then what EXACTLY triggers the inevitable switch from 1.99999999..∞.. to 2.0?

I suppose what I'm asking is, with our current understanding of numerology & mathematics, how do we account for the passage of time when our way of tracking time infers that an infinite series of "0.999's" could theoretically continue on forever before changing to 1.0?

There are two infinites, the uncreated, the spirit of God, of whom there is no law against, and as it passes into the created it becomes negative. Churchill had a vision one night and saw as it involved politics, this being part of the greatest complexity, and how the eventual tergiversation of truth and theology was inevitable, as mentioned in the bible in the book of Revelation, though it was after dinner and he let it go.

Having difficulties understanding how all positive integers first, then all negative is well ordered. Suppose I have a mapping 0,1,-1,2,-2,… I could name any arbitrary integer, positive or negative (-345697845594587498 maybe). Just by counting for long enough I would arrive at this number. In the other case, all positive first, I just have to name -1. I will never arrive at it. Where is the supposed definitive starting point?

So 0 isn't considerd a real Number by it's own? Edit. Also i thought we already know that Infinitys can exist in other Infinitys … Im talking about Infinity in General Not Just in "math" wich is weard since everything could be explained in / with numbers …

I believe this video is above my head and about 90% of the people here. Not because he does a bad job of explaining (this vid is actually amazing) but because this concept is so meta and is hard for a human to wrap their head around. Check out a book called Making Numbers Count. It goes into how the brain just naturally understand these higher concepts of numbers since it’s not a real tangible thing technically

Holy cow! 8m views. This is insane. Feel like there are much more interesting people in the world then I ever realized. Where are all these interesting people hiding?!

The problem is math isn’t real. It’s just a way humans understand the world. There is no amount of something no matter how far you try and understand it, it’s just there. For example you do 1+1 of an item. You get 2 of that item. But if you somehow combine those items into 1 singular item, you only get 1 of an item of the same kind, just with more mass. There is no way to correctly scale an item to math, and you can try using formulas to exchange different values like density into mass etc. but in the end you will still get what it is, and what has always been. This doesn’t mean we don’t need math as humans since it helps us understand the world, it’s just that math is a very human thing, and it doesn’t actually exist, it’s just a way of us communicating with reality.

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