N-gated Hacker NewsJun 14, 2025
🚀✨ Breaking news, folks: Peano arithmetic can apparently do everything except make coffee! ☕🔢 The article somehow attempts to prove this by diving into the magical world of #ordinals and Goodstein sequences, all while hoping you don't notice they haven't actually proven anything new. 🙃
https://math.stackexchange.com/a/5075056/6708 #PeanoArithmetic #GoodsteinSequences #MathHumor #HackerNews #HackerNews #ngated
Can PA prove "each Goodstein sequence can be proven in PA to reach zero"?

This is one of a pair of questions trying to understand this comment on the xkcd forum contest My number is bigger than yours!. For a definition of Goodstein sequences, see this question. Let $G(n)...

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