ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory

Von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel set theory is a way of talking about groups of things or sets. Imagine you have a bunch of toys, and you want to put them into groups. You might put all the cars in one group, the dolls in another group, and the blocks in yet another group.

Now, imagine you have an infinite number of toys. You can't just put them all into different groups - you need a way to talk about all of them in a more structured way. That's where set theory comes in. It's a way to organize an infinite number of toys or any other objects.

Von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel set theory is a particular way of doing this. It was developed by a group of mathematicians named von Neumann, Bernays, and Gödel. They came up with some rules for talking about sets, so everyone could agree on what they meant. These rules are based on some basic assumptions, like the idea that sets can contain other sets, and that there is a set of all sets.

Using these rules, mathematicians can talk about very complicated sets and how they relate to each other. For example, they can study sets that contain sets that contain other sets, and so on. This may sound confusing to a five-year-old, but it helps mathematicians understand really complex problems.

Overall, Von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel set theory is a way of organizing objects or ideas into groups, using a set of agreed-upon rules. It was developed by some really smart mathematicians, who used it to solve really tough problems.