# Are there more true statements than false ones?

Let us enumerate all statements of PA or ZFC by length, upto n characters, then in the limit as $n\rightarrow\infty$, what proportion of statements are provably true, provably false, or independent?

Ok, no enumeration necessary, just count all of length less then n and take the limit.

Is it perhaps 50%,50%,0%?

What if we discard all statements which are simply the negation character in front of a shorter statement?

What is the asymptotic density of independent statements?

Is any non-trivial results of this sort known for any theory?

• Since all three sets are countably infinite. So it amounts to how you are going to enumerate them. – Asaf Karagila Jan 2 '14 at 20:14
• Negating a sentence changes its truth value so it seems that true and false percentages should be equal. – hot_queen Jan 2 '14 at 20:28
• @MJD: Yes, your suggestion fails for $\forall x_1(x_1=x_1),\forall x_2(x_2=x_2)$ and so on; but that too can be easily corrected. This is just an example of ambiguity within this post. In the comments the OP also pointed out that $3$ is in the language, to my knowledge, $3$ is just a shorthand for $SSS0$, but the comment seemed to indicate something else. Therefore, I still wait for the OP to clarify and remove ambiguities like that. Ideally an enumeration which is not handwaved around like this one, will also be given. – Asaf Karagila Jan 2 '14 at 21:43
• But the variables are not indexed by the language, but rather the meta-language. So writing $x_{SSS0}$ makes no sense. I still feel that you need to write down exactly what the language you are using it. Then perhaps we can formulate things slightly better (e.g. consider $\varphi\equiv\psi$ if and only if $\sf PA$ proves $\varphi\leftrightarrow\psi$; there are countably many equivalence classes, from each one choose the one which is both the shortest, and the variables appearing (quantified or not) appear in order (first $x_1$ then $x_2$ and so on) and without jumps), and then we can proceed. – Asaf Karagila Jan 3 '14 at 15:41
• No need for being rude; insulting and dismissing researchers in the field is not the way to get help on your problem. Your question is ill-posed as it stands currently, pointing it out should actually be considered help. – Andrés E. Caicedo Jan 3 '14 at 21:04

• This doesn't answer the question; the proportion of true statements that are independent goes to $1$ according to the paper, but that's not the same as the proportion of all statements that are independent! – user21820 Jan 21 '17 at 16:33
• @user21820: Each false statement corresponds to a true one, by prefixing a ¬, or by deleting an already prefixed ¬. So the false statements are, asymptotically with respect to statement length, of the same density as the true ones. A statement is independent if neither it nor its negation is provable. So, if the proportion of true statements that are independent is asymptotically $1$, then the proportion of false statements that are independent is asymptotically $1$ too. Hence the proportion of all statements, true or false, is asymptotically $1$. – John Bentin Jan 21 '17 at 20:48
• Hmm it's not clear to me it's rigorously correct since you're basically using the assumption that on average a random true statement of length $n$ is equally likely to be a negation than not. That is maybe why it's stated as an open problem at the end of the very paper you linked to. But I intuitively buy the argument, though you should make clear what is proven by the paper. – user21820 Jan 22 '17 at 11:28