On 4/13/2022 3:12 PM, David Petry wrote:
> I don't understand WM's explanation of his intuition
> behind "dark" integers, but maybe they're the same as
> "non-standard" integers.
I think that the best description of WM's dark numbers
that I've been able to devise is that they're
general-purpose counter-examples.
Everlasting proof-stoppers.
If we matheologians claim that natural numbers
gyre and gimble in the wabe, then WM claims that
_dark numbers_ do not gyre and gimble in the wabe.
This produces the appearance of WM being able to discuss
gyring and gimbling in the wabe, without requiring him
to find out what it means to gyre and gimble in the wabe.
Whatever the defects this strategy may have, I admit
that it is very efficient in its use of WM's time.
I too have, in the past, thought that dark numbers
could be non-standard numbers. That never quite worked
out, somehow. It seems to me now that non-standard
numbers are contrary to the purpose of dark numbers,
because one can prove claims about them, infinitely-
-many though they are. It seems to me that the purpose
of dark numbers to to keep things from being proved.
> Maybe this is his intuition:
>
> Consider the sequence of sets S_n = {n, n+1, ... 2n-1}
>
> If that sequence has a limit, then that limit must
> contain no standard integers,
If the limit is taken for each natural, each n
leaves the sequence and does not return.
The limit would be the empty set.
And, yes, it does not contain any standard integers.
But this is utter matheology.
> but must contain infinitely many integers that are
> bigger than any standard integer, and these "bigger"
> integers can be called "dark" integers, or perhaps
> "non-standard" integers.
>
> I see no reason to believe that such an intuition
> couldn't be formalized in a consistent way.
I expect that part of WM's intuitions can be formalized
in a consistent way. Robinson arithmetic springs to mind.
All of WM's intuitions?
That seems very unlikely to me.
WM explains inconsistencies in his posts
as proof of the incorrectness of everyone else.
I think that claiming that everyone else is wrong
is something he would be very slow to give up.
I don't know how this could be tested, but I suspect
that, if somehow all WM's intuitions were found
to be consistent, he would turn to new intuitions.
Being an iconoclast seems to be very important to him.