[__mbm__]

This is the crankiest comment I've seen on HN in a while. You "know Fields medalists"? Right.

You think that Pricipia Mathematica is the source of all truth in mathematics? Wrong. Most mathematicians working on foundational questions start out by learning Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, which is well-understood, and avoids several difficulties that Russel had. While few people have read PM, it remains important because it goes through the hard task showing that high-level mathematics (calculus, &c.) can have rigorous, first-principle proofs.

"PM is like a compiler before there were compilers." What?

"I asked a math professor about the '=' sign and how things can be equal at all (...)" OMGWTFNO. I've seen comments like this before. Typically, it creates debate around a non-issue by sowing confusion and never nailing down precisely what we are talking about (hence the need for formal methods—it helps us call bullshit on comments like this).

"Two things are equal iff their transformation leads to the origin. [A - B = 0]". Wrong. There are equality relations that do not require the existence of a zero or the concept of addition or subtraction.