How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer.

| Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity

Proof Moves Math Closer to an
Answer.
By Natalie WolchoverJuly 15, 2021

“His method creates an ambiguity in our universe of sets,” said Hugh

Woodin, a set theorist at Harvard University. “It creates this cloud of
virtual universes, and how do I know which one I’m in?”

What was virtual and what was real? Which of two conflicting objects,
dreamed up by different forcing procedures, should be permitted? It
wasn’t clear when or even whether an object, just because it could be
conceived of with Cohen’s method, really exists.

To address this problem, mathematicians posed various “forcing axioms”

— rules that established the actual existence of specific objects rendered
possible by Cohen’s method. “If you can imagine an object to exist, then
it does; this is the guiding intuitive principle that leads to forcing axioms,”
Magidor explained. In 1988, Magidor, Matthew Foreman and Saharon
Shelah took this ethos to its logical conclusion by posing Martin’s
maximum, which says that anything you can conceive of using any
forcing procedure will be a true mathematical entity, so long as the
procedure satisfies a certain consistency condition.

For all the expansiveness of Martin’s maximum, in order to

simultaneously permit all those products of forcing (while satisfying that
constancy condition), the size of the continuum jumps only to a
conservative ℵ2— one cardinal number more than the minimum possible
value.

Besides settling the continuum problem, Martin’s maximum has proved

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How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

to be a powerful tool for exploring the properties of infinite sets.

Proponents say it fosters many sweeping statements and general
theorems. By contrast, assuming that the continuum has cardinality
ℵ1 tends to yield more exceptional cases and roadblocks to proofs — “a
paradise of counterexamples,” in Magidor’s words.

Martin’s maximum became massively popular as an extension of ZFC.

But then in the 1990s, Woodin proposed another compelling axiom that
also kills the continuum hypothesis and pins the continuum at ℵ2 but by
a totally different route. Woodin named the axiom (*), pronounced “star,”
because it was “like a bright source — a source of structure, a source of
light,” he told me.

(*) concerns a model universe of sets that satisfies the nine ZF axioms
plus the axiom of determinacy, rather than the axiom of choice.
Determinacy and choice logically contradict each other, which is why (*)
and Martin’s maximum seemed irreconcilable. But Woodin devised a
forcing procedure by which to extend his model mathematical universe
into a larger one that is consistent with ZFC, and it’s in this universe that
the (*) axiom holds true.

What makes (*) so illuminating is that it lets mathematicians make

statements of the form “For all X, there exists Y, such that Z” when
referring to properties of sets within the domain. Such statements are
powerful modes of mathematical reasoning. One such statement is: “For
all sets of ℵ1 reals, there exist reals not in those sets.” This is the
negation of the continuum hypothesis. Thus, according to (*), Cantor’s
conjecture is false. The fact that (*) lets mathematicians conclude this
and assert many other properties of sets of reals makes it an “attractive
hypothesis,” Schindler said.

With two highly productive axioms floating around, proponents of forcing

faced a disturbing surplus. “Both the forcing axiom [Martin’s maximum]
and the (*) axiom are beautiful and feel right and natural,” Schindler said,
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How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

so “which one do you choose?”

If the axioms contradicted each other, then adopting one would mean
sacrificing the other’s nice consequences, and the judgment call might
feel arbitrary. “You would have had to come up with some reasons why
one of them is true and the other one is false — or maybe both should be
false,” Schindler said.

Instead, his new work with Asperó shows that Martin’s maximum++ (a
technical variation of Martin’s maximum) implies (*). “If you unify these
theories, as we did,” Schindler said, “I would say that you can take it as a
case in favor of: Maybe people got something right.”

Missing Link
Asperó and Schindler were young researchers together at an institute in
Vienna 20 years ago. Their proof germinated several years later, when
Schindler read a manuscript, handwritten as usual, by the set theorist
Ronald Jensen. In it, Jensen invented a technique called L-forcing.
Schindler was impressed by it and asked a student of his to try to
develop it further. Five years later, in 2011, he described L-forcing to
Asperó, who was visiting him in Münster. Asperó immediately suggested
that they might be able to use the technique to derive (*) from Martin’s
maximum++.

They announced that they had a proof the next year, in 2012. Woodin
immediately identified a mistake, and they withdrew their paper in shame.
They revisited the proof often in the years that followed, but they
invariably found that they lacked one key idea — a “missing link,” Asperó
said, in the logical chain leading from Martin’s maximum++ to (*).
Two men standing up and drinking from coffee cups.

The set theorists Ralf Schindler (left) and David Asperó, authors of a new proof uniting
rival axioms of infinite math, pictured in 2001.

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How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

Their plan of attack for deriving the latter axiom from the former was to
develop a forcing procedure similar to L-forcing with which to generate a
type of object called a witness. This witness verifies all statements of the
form of (*). So long as the forcing procedure obeys the requisite
consistency condition, Martin’s maximum++ will establish that the
witness, since it can be forced to exist, exists. And thus (*) follows.

“We knew how to build such forcings,” Asperó said, but they couldn’t see
how to guarantee that their forcing procedure would meet the key
requirement of Martin’s maximum. Asperó’s “flash experience” in the car
in 2018 finally showed the way: They could break up the forcing into a
recursive sequence of forcings, each satisfying necessary conditions. “I
remember feeling very confident that this ingredient would in fact make
the proof work,” he said, though it took further flashes of insight from
both Asperó and Schindler to work it all out.

Other Stars
The convergence of Martin’s maximum++ and (*) creates a solid
foundation for a tower of infinities in which the cardinality of the
continuum is ℵ2. “The question is, is it true?” asks Peter Koellner, a set
theorist at Harvard.

According to Koellner, knowing that the strongest forcing axiom implies

(*) can count as evidence either for or against it. “Really that depends on
what your take on (*) is,” he said.

The convergence result will focus scrutiny on (*)’s plausibility, since (*)
allows mathematicians to make those powerful “for all X, there exists Y”
statements that have consequences for the properties of the real
numbers.

Despite (*)’s extreme usefulness in permitting those statements,

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How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

seemingly without contradiction, Koellner is among those who doubt the

axiom. One of its implications — a mirroring of the structure of a certain
large class of sets with a much smaller set — strikes him as strange.

Notably, the person who might have been most enthusiastic about (*)’s
correctness has also turned against it. “I’m considered a traitor,” Woodin
said in one of our Zoom conversations this summer.

Twenty-five years ago, when he posed (*), Woodin thought the

continuum hypothesis was false, and thus that (*) was a source of light.
But about a decade ago, he changed his mind. He now thinks that the
continuum has cardinality ℵ1 and that (*) and forcing are “doomed.”

Woodin called Asperó and Schindler’s proof “a fantastic result” that

“deserves to be in the Annals” — the Annals of Mathematics is widely
considered to be the top math journal — and he acknowledged that this
kind of convergence result “is usually taken as evidence of some kind of
truth.” But he doesn’t buy it. There’s the issue mentioned by Koellner, and
another even bigger problem that he identified in a flash experience of
his own in 2019, shortly after reading the preprint of Asperó and
Schindler’s paper. “It’s an unexpected twist in the story,” Woodin said.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

When he posed (*), Woodin also posed stronger variants called (*)+ and
(*)++, which apply to the full power set (the set of all subsets) of the
reals. It’s known that, in various models of the mathematical universe if
not in general, (*)+ contradicts Martin’s maximum. In a new proof, which
he began to share with mathematicians in May, Woodin showed that (*)+
and (*)++ are equivalent, which means (*)++ contradicts Martin’s
maximum in various models also.

(*)+ and (*)++ far outshine (*), for one reason: They permit
mathematicians to make statements of the form “There exists a set of

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How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine 16/07/2021 7:29 PM

reals …” and thus to describe and analyze properties of any and all sets
of reals. (*) does not provide such an “existential theory” of sets of reals.
And because Martin’s maximum seems to contradict (*)+ and (*)++, it
seems that existential statements about sets of reals might not be
possible in the Martin’s maximum framework. For Woodin, this is a deal
breaker: “What this is saying is, it’s doomed.”

The other main players are all still digesting Woodin’s proof. But a few
stressed that his arguments are conjectural. Even Woodin acknowledges
that a surprising discovery could change the picture (and his opinion), as
has happened before.

Many in the community await the results of Woodin’s attempt to prove

the “ultimate L” conjecture: that is, the existence of an all-encompassing
generalization of Gödel’s model universe of sets. If ultimate L exists —
Woodin has good reason to think it does, and he is 400 pages into a
proof attempt now — he’ll consider it obvious that the “dream axiom” to
add to ZFC must be the ultimate L axiom, or the statement that ultimate L
is the universe of sets. And in ultimate L, Cantor is right: The continuum
has cardinality ℵ1. If the proof works out, the ultimate L axiom will be, if
not an obvious choice of extension for ZFC, at least a formidable rival for
Martin’s maximum.

Ever since Gödel and Cohen established the independence of the

continuum hypothesis from ZFC, infinite math has been a choose-your-
own-adventure story in which set theorists can force the number of reals
up to any level — ℵ35, or ℵ1000, say — and explore the consequences.
But with Asperó and Schindler’s result pointing compellingly to ℵ2, and
Woodin building the case for ℵ1, a clear dichotomy has established itself,
and an outright winner seems newly possible. Most set theorists would
like nothing more than to exit the mathematical multiverse and coalesce
behind a single picture of Cantor’s paradise, one that’s beautiful enough
to call true.

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Kennedy, for one, thinks we may soon return to that “prelapsarian world.”
“Hilbert, when he gave his speech, said human dignity depends upon us
being able to decide things in mathematics in a yes-or-no fashion,” she
said. “This was a matter of redeeming humanity, of whether mathematics
is what we always thought it was: to establish the truth. Not just this
truth, that truth. Not just possibilities. No. The continuum is this size,
period.”

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