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Almost every critique of the axiom of infinity is philosophical. I don't think you can just say "the axiom is sound, so what's your point". And you don't even get to claim that because of Godel's incompleteness theorem.

The axioms were not handed to us from above. They were a product of a thought process anchored to intuition about the real world. The outcomes of that process can be argued about. This includes the belief that the outcomes are wrong even if we can't point to any obvious paradox.

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"Sound" means free of contradiction with respect to the axioms assumed.

If you can derive a contradiction using his methods of computation I would study that with interest.

By "sound" I do not mean provably sound. I mean I have not seen a proof of unsoundness yet.

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To clarify:

“Sound” != proof of soundness in the same way that the Riemann Hypothesis being true is not the same as RH being proven.

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Not a bad analogy. Damn good.
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> "Sound" means free of contradiction with respect to the axioms assumed.

Gödel wept.

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> It precisely states the existence of some object than can be thought of as infinite but does not assign any semantics to it

Can you elaborate on this? I think many understand that the "existence of some object" implies there is some semantic difference even if there isn't a practical one.

I really enjoyed Wildberger's take back in high school and college. It can be far more intuitive to avoid unnecessary invocation of calculation and abstraction when possible.

I think the main thrust of his argument was that if we're going to give in to notions of infinity, irrationals, etc. it should be when they're truly needed. Most students are being given the opposite (as early as possible and with bad examples) to suit the limited time given in school. He then asks if/where we really need them at all, and has yet to be answered convincingly enough (probably only because nobody cares).

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