Here is one thing commonly thought to be true but is quite horribly wrong on many accounts:
There is a notion of mathematics where we can say things are
"actually true" or "actually false".
An example of making this error: the OP. Other examples: the many responses.
There are several reasons why this is wrong. First, in the system most mathematicians assume when not being explicit, we have no standard model (we have no models within that system because any model would show the system consistent which we know we cannot show in that system through blah blah Godel blah.. I know you don't want details, just explaining what I'm getting at). Truth and falsity are semantic - they exist in models and so without one, we don't make claims of truth or falsity.
But also, mathematics is not "the system most mathematicians assume when not being explicit" - it is formalisation in general. There are many systems seriously investigated by mathematicians that make numerous "counterintuitive" derivations. For instance, these are all obvious and wrong in different systems:
- A statement cannot be both true and false. (In paraconsistent logics, statements can be both true and false and the system does not collapse to trivial - in fact, a number of dialetheists argue this is a much more accurate logical system for real world reasoning).
- There are discontinuous total functions. (In a number of constructive systems it is not possible to prove the existence of discontinuous total functions. Some are even strong enough to prove that all total functions are continuous.)
- Every infinite set A has the same cardinality as AxA. (This is not necessarily true in systems without the axiom of choice. Famously, Tarski tried to publish his result on this implication and was rejected by both Frechet and Lebesgue. Frechet thought the paper was obvious and well-known and had no mathematical merit. Lebesgue thought both the axiom of choice and the implication from it were both wrong, so the paper had no mathematical merit.)
I only bring these examples up not as answers to the OP but simply to illustrate my real answer that the question itself demonstrates an extremely common assumption in mathematics that is in fact wrong.
EDIT
This is an area that I think is often a place of common misunderstanding, and discussion in the comments makes it clear I should elaborate. Modern mathematics separates out the domains we make statements on into syntax and semantics.
Syntax
The syntax is the theory - the formal language, axioms specified as sentences in the formal language, and some metalogical rules of inference. In the syntax, we talk about sentences, propositions, terms, derivations, and proofs. It is a place of symbol manipulation.
Semantics
The semantics is the model - it is the meaning we ascribe to the statements of the theory. An interpretation of a theory is a model that assigns to each formula of the theory a meaning value - typically truth. Truth is semantic and is specific to a model.
The "problem"
A model is a consistent interpretation of the truth meaning of a theory. If a theory has a model, it has almost trivially been shown to be consistent. But... it is well known that a theory strong enough to express the Gödel diagonalisation can never prove it's own consistency. For these theories, we will never have a model and cannot make statements about the meaning of any formula.
In these theories, it is wrong to talk about truth or falsity. We don't have a model giving meaning to that. We will never have a model.
That's not really a problem. For centuries, mathematicians had loosely combined derivation and truth and had mostly discussed them as one thing. Derivation and proof were seen as the important part of mathematics and formalization. You still have that.
Also, it is perfectly meaningful to derive results that say "if this theory is consistent and has a model, then...". Model theory has been doing that for nearly a century.
What about truth predicates?
But people seem to want more. They want to talk about truth, as that is a form of meaning that holds a special place. They often go to great lengths to try to continue to assign truth and falsity. One common approach is to form truth predicates - predicates in the syntax that have the property that asserting the predicate on a formula corresponds to asserting the validity of the statement (that it is true in all models).
Note the switch - a truth predicate is syntactical. We still aren't talking about true or false here - the context of their use is still whether statements including the predicate "are derivable" or "obtain". Theories may have multiple models - most theories are not categorical just from things like Löwenheim–Skolem, so predicates cannot talk about truth. They can talk about validity - and that's really what is going on here - but even that is extremely problematic.
Incomplete theories cannot actually derive anything about validity on the total theory. And actually, this is where Tarski's theorem on nondefinability comes in and it is shown that such a predicate doesn't actually exist. So others keep at it with a hierarchy and reflection extensions of the base theory, seeking out some approximation of a fixed point for validity.
But this doesn't actually buy anything to do with insight into truth. It cannot. There is nothing you can do to reach truth because you cannot know if the theory is consistent or not and whether truth exists. And no attempts to reach beyond derivability actually give a predicate that can be used and say "this is true". The predicate is only useful to say "this is provable".
But there are already provability predicates, and that investigation is much more profitable. Truth predicates are a voiceless oracles. They do not help anyone make assertions on truth. They are simply reformulations of "if we knew that X was consistent, and we had some platonic sight that could see the truth values in all models, and we could collate the infinite possibilities and see the validities forever hidden, then this predicate applied to this class of statements would agree with those assertions that are valid". But if we had that supernatural sight, we could more easily just say "hey, that's true in that model - and that's false over there." Without that, we can use the predicate to say "truth is preserved in this derivation". Which doesn't add anything.
A truth predicate doesn't talk about truth. It is irrelevant to the point.
So...
So.. life goes on. My whole point in posting this answer was to illustrate that the initial question was making a common obvious assumption that is actually wrong. You should not talk about truth in the commonly used ambient theory - just talk about what is provable and you are fine. If you want to talk about truth, ensure you specify the ambient theory and it is one where such discussions are meaningful. Or talk about conditional models as model theorists do.
It may not be intellectually satisfying to some people. Clearly, as of writing this, my answer has received 3 downvotes and two upvotes, so it doesn't sit right with some anonymous readers of a math web site. But there is nothing controversial about the point. It has been known for almost 100 years and it is still a common mistake.