Alphabeta Math
False statementConstruction: AI-adaptedVerification: AI-generatedPipeline-generatedjudge pass (gpt-5.6-terra)audited 2026-09-12
How statement and proof provenance work

The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.

  • Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
  • AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
  • AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.

These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.

ZFC proves there is an inaccessible cardinal

Statement

False assertion: ZFC proves that a strongly inaccessible cardinal exists.

The refutation is conditional: if ZFC is consistent, there is no such proof. This makes no assertion of Con(ZFC).

Facts & Assumptions

Given: ZFC finite-proof metatheory. For a fixed purported proof, reflected its finite axiom list into the least inaccessible rank segment, checked actual cardinalhood of the internal witness, and built a contradiction without a CTM-from-consistency assumption.

[F1]

An inaccessible rank segment models ZFC: An inaccessible rank segment satisfies each ZFC axiom, and small-cardinal inaccessibility is absolute.

[F2]

Soundness for arbitrary set signatures: Finite derivations are sound for a set model of their finitely many axiom instances.

[F3]

Relativization agrees with induced set satisfaction: Fixed-formula relativization agrees with the actual set structure satisfaction.

Refutation

1.1F2F3

Fix, externally, a purported finite ZFC derivation p of the sentence E asserting that an inaccessible exists. Only finitely many ZFC axiom instances occur as assumptions in p; call their conjunction A_p. Soundness F2 applied to this fixed finite derivation is a theorem of ZF saying that any nonempty set structure satisfying those instances satisfies E. No assertion about a truth predicate for V is involved.

2.1F1F3step 1.1

Work now inside ZFC under E. Choose the least inaccessible kappa by ordinal minimization below one witness. F1 proves each of the finitely many instances in A_p relativized to V_kappa; combining these finite proofs and F3 makes its nonempty membership structure a model of A_p. Step 1.1 gives that V_kappa satisfies E. Thus some alpha in V_kappa is internally an inaccessible ordinal. Transitivity gives an actual ordinal alpha<kappa. Its internal cardinalhood is actual cardinalhood: any external bijection between alpha and a smaller ordinal has a graph of rank at most alpha plus finitely many successors, hence belongs to V_kappa, contradicting internal cardinalhood if it existed. F1's inaccessibility absoluteness now applies to this actual cardinal and makes alpha an actual inaccessible, contradicting leastness of kappa.

3.1F2step 2.1∎

The preceding construction is a finite ZFC derivation of E implies contradiction, depending on the fixed finite proof p. Append it to p, which derives E, and infer a contradiction in ZFC. Therefore the existence of such p implies inconsistency of ZFC. Contraposition yields exactly the stated conditional nonprovability. This neither extracts a transitive model from Con(ZFC) nor invokes a uniform universe satisfaction relation.

Depends on

Used by

Nothing in the library uses this result yet.

Dependency tree · two levels

12 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.

Sources