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by _0w8t
2257 days ago
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The article argues for intuitionistic mathematics, not constructive mathematics. This is important. Just as classical mathematics is constructive math plus some arbitrary unprovable assumption (law of excluding the middle), intuitionistic mathematics is constructive math with another unprovable assumption (the existence of the choice sequence). The article also made a claim that physics assumes classical mathematics. Which is wrong. The equations of physical models and their solution stays exactly the same in constructive mathematics as in classical one. |
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FWIW, the term "intuitionistic mathematics" sounds a bit odd to my ear. Usually you hear about "intuitionistic logic" or "constructive logic" which are both part of the larger program of "constructive mathematics."
Anyway, the "Five Stages" paper I link does a good job of introducing the broader ideas of constructive mathematics and, perhaps, gives a taste of what Gisin is excited about.
> The equations of physical models and their solution stays exactly the same in constructive mathematics as in classical one.
I'm not a cosmologist, but AFAIU the Hilbert formalism of QM relies on Hilbert spaces always having a basis, which is famously equivalent to the Axiom of Choice. I'm not sure you can formulate the concept of self-adjoint operators without that, at least for arbitrary Hilbert spaces.
My suspicion is that AoC simply broadens the class of phase spaces to include pathological ones that "don't actually matter," so your point probably stands in all practical applications. However, it would take (hard) work to carefully extricate AoC from the current formalisms.