This is very closely related to a discussion in my post on simulacra levels, but I think this is importantly false.
Yes, mathematics refers to nothing outside itself, but that is not to say that things within it cannot prove other things within it. It is a highly abstract field (my simulacra level 5, which is a form of Baudrillard’s 4), but that is not why it hasn’t been solved.
Take the question “what is 2 + 2”. This is made up of pure abstraction (calling this abstraction simply “1s” is not actually correct—“1” is a quantity defined in this abstraction), and does not directly apply to reality, except through a translation layer where the symbol “2″ is equated to * *. However, the answer is still 4.
This is very closely related to a discussion in my post on simulacra levels, but I think this is importantly false.
Yes, mathematics refers to nothing outside itself, but that is not to say that things within it cannot prove other things within it. It is a highly abstract field (my simulacra level 5, which is a form of Baudrillard’s 4), but that is not why it hasn’t been solved.
Take the question “what is 2 + 2”. This is made up of pure abstraction (calling this abstraction simply “1s” is not actually correct—“1” is a quantity defined in this abstraction), and does not directly apply to reality, except through a translation layer where the symbol “2″ is equated to * *. However, the answer is still 4.