Cardinal arithmetic for skeptics

We present a survey of some results of the pcf-theory and their applications to cardinal arithmetic. We review basics notions (in section 1), briefly look at history in section 2 (and some personal history in section 3). We present main results on pcf in section 5 and describe applications to cardinal arithmetic in section 6. The limitations on independence proofs are discussed in section 7, and in section 8 we discuss the status of two axioms that arise in the new setting. Applications to other areas are found in section 9.