logoalt Hacker News

yorwbayesterday at 8:10 PM1 replyview on HN

It just means that there are two indistinguishable coordinate views a + bi and a - bi, and you can pick whichever you prefer.


Replies

czgnomeyesterday at 8:23 PM

Theorem. If ZFC is consistent, then there is a model of ZFC that has a definable complete ordered field ℝ with a definable algebraic closure ℂ, such that the two square roots of −1 in ℂ are set-theoretically indiscernible, even with ordinal parameters.

Haven’t thought it through so I’m quite possibly wrong but it seems to me this implies that in such a situation you can’t have a coordinate view. How can you have two indistinguishable views of something while being able to pick one view?

show 1 reply