> One morning in 1976, the Princeton mathematician Edward Nelson (opens a new tab) woke up and experienced a crisis of faith. “I felt the momentary overwhelming presence of one who convicted me of arrogance for my belief in the real existence of an infinite world of numbers,” he reflected decades later (opens a new tab), “leaving me like an infant in my crib reduced to counting on my fingers.”

Friends don't let friends do Platonism.

For real, if you're a formalist you can ask these foundational questions without fear of this kind of dread; they become methodological rather than some kind of metaphysical mess.