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by skissane 695 days ago
> Because meta-mathematical proofs often use transcendental induction and associated "non-constructive" and "non-finitistic" arguments. The diagonilization argument itself is an instance of something that can not actually be implemented on a computer because constructing the relevant function in finite time is impossible.

Humans reason about transcendental induction using finite time and finite resources-the human brain (as far as we know) is a finite entity. So if we can reason about the transfinite using the finite, why can’t computers? Of course they can’t do so by directly reasoning in an infinite way, but humans don’t do that, so why think computers must?