How real are real numbers? (2004)
"So, in Borel’s view, most reals, with probability one, are mathematical fantasies, because there is no way to specify them uniquely." (Paraphrasing, because there are only countably many possible math papers that might describe a number.)I think Borel has confused names with things. The fact that we can only write down only countably many expressions for numbers doesn't mean that there are numbers that we may never write expressions for - only that in a single symbolic system we can't have expressions for all of them at once.Besides, if you confuse extant with useful you might end up believing that some random large integers aren't "there!"