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by OscarCunningham
2377 days ago
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The point is that if ZFC is consistent then there are no such integers. So a computer program searching for them would run forever without returning any output. But since we can't prove that ZFC is consistent you would never know whether your computer program was really running for ever. Even after a million years you wouldn't be able to prove that it wouldn't finally give some output in five minutes time. |
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Assuming is ZFC is consistent, the theory says there are polynomials whose zeros we could forever fruitless search for but which couldn't be proved to have no zeros in ZFC. We could forever fruitlessly search for a proof of the polynomail having no zero, in fact (putting it this way, returns the situation to something marginally understandable, in fact makes something that would follow from the halting problem).
If ZFC is inconsistent, we actually could prove that this polynomial had a zero and we could prove it didn't have a zero, since we could prove anything, at least anything in the vocabulary of ZFC.