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Epistemic status: unhinged, mostly subjective, yet fun. Motivations The main objective of this post is to expose the molten core of mathematics and figure out from first principles what it means to “do mathematics”. There is no better stage for this than Set Theory. What follows is not the classical introduction to Sets. This part is heavily inspired by Tom Leinster’s Rethinking Set Theory. This is an attempt to expand on his paper. For further details please visit his website and his other mind-bending papers. ...

Epistemic status: High confidence from pattern recognition across many conversations. Both math-phobia (“I’m just not a math person”) and math-smugness (“I’m naturally gifted”) are illusions—–opposite reactions to dumb teaching procedures. During my university years I had this piece of conversation over and over, in many different flavours: Nice to meet you. What are you studying? < Mathematics. > Ugh, I hate math. immediate change of topic ...