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by thebooktocome 1531 days ago
> Whether or not humans ever mastered mathematics, what is and isn't mathematically true would not change. Humans can create notation and formalisms, but they do not invent the truths those mathematics represent.

We quite literally have no way of ever knowing this. This proposition and its negation are both beyond the scope of human knowledge.

2 comments

We do have a way of knowing this, it is as simple as saying that the finish line of a symbol game will stay the same given the initial symbols and the rules that can be used to move them around.
OP is explicitly not talking about something open to human interaction (“saying”, “symbols”, “moving (symbols) around” are all human operations).
None of those are human-specific, machines and animals can do them. (Except saying, but I'm the one doing that verb, talking about moving symbols.)
It's almost as if there is a phase diagram with impedance mismatches between systems of belief.