Mathematical philosophy on YouTube!

If you follow my blog, you probably know that I am a big fan of Michael Stevens from the VSauce channel, who in the recent year or so released several very good videos about mathematics, and about infinity in particular. Not being a trained mathematician, Michael is doing an incredible task.

Non-mathematicians often tend to be Platonists "by default", so they will assume that every question has an answer and sometimes it's just that we don't know that answer. But it's out there. It's a fine approach, but it can somewhat fly in the face of independence if you are not trained to think about the difference between true and provable.

This morning, as I was watching the new video of Physics Girl, there was an announcement about a new math channel. So of course I went to look into that channel. It's fairly new, and there are only a handful of videos, but they already tackled some nice topics. The videos are written and hosted by a Cornell grad student, Kelsey Houston-Edwards. I watched the one about a hierarchy of infinities, and while I was a bit skeptic after the first minute, I was quite happy at the end, when the discussion went from just the fact that the reals are uncountable (although without a proof, and that's fine, I guess, there are plenty of those on the internet), to a discussion about the continuum hypothesis.

In another video, Kelsey tackles mathematical Platonism and its somewhat-opposite, Formalism. And it's done well. Kelsey doesn't lean into one side or another, because at the end of the day, mathematicians—as opposed to mathematical philosophers—do mathematics, and that is their main concern. The philosophy is mostly a spice to add some taste and meaning to your work.

In any case, I enjoyed watching the few videos that I have, and I hope that you will as well. I'm sure that this is not the last that you'll see me talk about Kelsey and her channel.