Today we're talking with philosopher Steve Patterson about how a lack of conceptual clarity in the foundations of 20th century mathematics led to problems not only downstream of this in physics, but eventually feeding irrationalist movements in diverse disciplines. From points with no size summing to lines, to sets of infinite quantities, formalism traded truth for usefulness, and that habit was transferred onto everyone from quantum physicists to economists. Ultimately, tolerating contradictions has made it easy for people to accept that our ability to reason is itself broken. We don't think so and propose some courses of action to mitigate the crisis. Steve's website: https://steve-patterson.com/infinite-things-do-not-exist/ PATREON https://www.patreon.com/c/demystifysci OUR BOOK, PARADOX LOST: https://demystifysci.com/paradoxlost HOMEBREW MUSIC : Vinyl: https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/products/vinyl-lp-secretary-of-nature-everything-is-so-good-here Streaming: https://secretaryofnature.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-so-good-here PARADIGM DRIFT https://demystifysci.com/paradigm-drift-show 00:00 Go! Why can physics calculate light but not explain it? 00:04:16 Who convinced us that reason is broken? 00:12:43 What gets lost when you turn the world into math? 00:20:01 Does math discover anything, or just refine it? 00:30:03 What happened when math lost its foundation? 00:37:17 How does anything move if every step can be halved? 00:47:03 Can a line be made of points with no size? 00:58:02 Does 0.999… really equal 1? 01:06:45 How did infinity get written into the rules? 01:15:22 What changes if we give up infinity? 01:24:23 Is reality smooth or pixelated? 01:34:52 Can a rule make anything happen? 01:45:37 What can you only see by zooming out? #Physics #Mathematics #quantum MERCH: Rock some DemystifySci gear : https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/ AMAZON: Do your shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/3YyoT98 DONATE: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@UCqV4_7i9h1_V7hY48eZZSLw@demystifysci RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss MAILING LIST: https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671