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Numberphile posted a vid on 5-31-17 about Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Near the end of the vid, the professor argues that proving that the Riemann Hypothesis is undecidable would PROVE the Riemann Hypothesis.

His logic, as I understand it, that a RH counter-example would render the problem decidable, therefore if the RH is undecidable no counter-example can exist.

https://youtu.be/O4ndIDcDSGc?t=713

This an Oxford math prof, so I'm sure he knows what he’s doing, but deciding something by proving it can’t be decided seems like a wee contradiction to me. Can anyone clear this up?

Jerry Guern
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    There have been several similar questions about this video recently... – Angina Seng Jun 01 '17 at 18:54
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    I didn't watch the video, but take anything stated on a Numberphile video with a grain of salt. – Aweygan Jun 01 '17 at 18:54
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    @Aweygan Hey, I would never just accept something I heard from an Oxford professor until I got confirmation from Stack Exchange! – Jerry Guern Jun 01 '17 at 18:56
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    @Jerry Guem savage – FickyLicky Jun 01 '17 at 19:00
  • @LordSharktheUnknown Yes, you're right this is a duplicate of that question. I didn't spot that when I searched because his question title isn't very illuminating. I left a comment suggesting he change that. – Jerry Guern Jun 01 '17 at 19:05
  • @LordSharktheUnknown I'm actually not sure it's a duplicate - that question is about the logical form of RH (or rather, its equivalent formulation in terms of natural numbers) which makes it different from Goldbach ($\Pi_1$ versus $\Pi_2$), whereas this question (I think) is about the tension between undecidability and provability in general. – Noah Schweber Jun 01 '17 at 19:07
  • @NoahSchweber Thanks for the backup, but that other question actually is a long-winded super-set of this question. He covers a number of topics, but this one was in there. – Jerry Guern Jun 01 '17 at 19:13
  • Another one: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2305838/if-the-collatz-conjecture-is-unsolvable-is-it-true – Angina Seng Jun 01 '17 at 19:17

1 Answers1

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I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but the argument you've described makes an important error which is incidental to this question; I'll treat this error below.

There's a subtlety here, which crops up all the time in logic or whenever we're doing logic-y things: what system are we working in?

Whenever you use words like "provable," "undecidable," or similar, you're always hiding an important bit of context; provability only makes sense with respect to some system of axioms. Goedel's incompleteness theorem is a great example of this: given an appropriate theory $T$, we find a sentence $p$ and prove "$p$ is true but $T$ doesn't prove $p$" - but we prove this in a theory stronger than $T$ itself, so this isn't a contradiction.

The exact same thing is going on here. We have some appropriate (in particular, sufficiently strong) theory $T$, and some stronger theory $S$. Suppose $S$ proves that $T$ doesn't disprove RH; there are two relevant facts kicking around here:

  • If $T$ doesn't disprove RH, then RH is true. (This is provable in $T$ itself.)

  • $T$ doesn't disprove RH. (This is provable in $S$, but not necessarily in $T$.)

In order to conclude "RH is true," we need both of these facts; $S$ has them, but $T$ doesn't necessarily. So we can think of this as a kind of meta-reasoning - we're using two different kinds of provability here ($S$-provability and $T$-provability), and our argument only gives us a proof of RH in the first sense.


In fact, we can prove (again, in a stronger theory than $T$ :P) that $T$ doesn't prove that it doesn't disprove RH (whew, that's a mouthful!). This is because if $T$ is inconsistent, then it disproves everything; put another way, if $T$ doesn't disprove something, then $T$ is consistent. $T$ can prove this if $T$ is sufficiently powerful, so if $T$ proved "I don't disprove RH" then $T$ would prove "I am consistent," and this can't happen as long as $T$ is consistent by Goedel's second incompleteness theorem. So the theory $T+Con(T)$, which is stronger than $T$, proves "$T$ doesn't prove that $T$ doesn't disprove RH" (and of course we can replace RH with anything here).


OK, now the error:

Suppose there was a counterexample to RH. This counterexample is some complex number $z$. But there are uncountably many complex numbers, and only countably many expressions in the language of our theory; so most complex numbers can't be defined in the language we're working in! This means that for most complex numbers $z$, our theory $T$ can't even express the statement "$z$ is a counterexample to RH," let alone prove it. And now we have a problem: what if there are counterexamples to RH, but they're all undefinable?

So the argument there is really missing something important. This can, however, be fixed: it turns out that RH is equivalent to an appropriate statement about natural numbers, such that our theory $T$ can verify a counterexample to it if one exists.

But this is a really important point, and it's annoying to see it glossed over!

Noah Schweber
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  • That's why I prefer such argumentation using Goldbach instead of RH ... :) – Hagen von Eitzen Jun 01 '17 at 20:06
  • I would call this a flaw in the argument rather than an error. The statement "$z$ is a counterexample to RH" may not be expressible, but the statement "there is a counterexample to RH in the open rectangle $q_1 < x < q_2$, $q_3 < y < q_4$" certainly is expressible for rational $q_i$, and such statements are decidable (not sure if this would be true for an arbitrary analytic function, but we know enough about how to count zeros of $zeta$ for this to work). – Erick Wong Jun 02 '17 at 09:00