Plus, I Got Religion

[Triple Zero]

Yeah, I knew you'd love that. But I don't believe it is so because it happens to jive with model-agnosticism, model-agnosticism happens to jive with me because (among other reasons), this


Oh and for accuracy, I quoted the Einstein thing from memory, so it might have been worded differently (hell he might have spoken it in German for all I know), but this is the gist of it.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah, I knew you'd love that. But I don't believe it is so because it happens to jive with model-agnosticism, model-agnosticism happens to jive with me because (among other reasons), this


Oh and for accuracy, I quoted the Einstein thing from memory, so it might have been worded differently (hell he might have spoken it in German for all I know), but this is the gist of it.

I loved Hofstadter before RAW 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But never entirely accurately. When math tries to describe things that exist, it always fails at a certain point.

Name a language that doesn't.

[Cramulus]

I'm confused. Are you saying that math is a language like english?

[Verbal Mike]

It's obviously not a natural language (that is, the type of languages that humans naturally generate), but the man has a point. Like natural languages, it can describe things that exist, to a degree, and things that don't exist, to a degree. Like natural languages it encounters difficulty in fully describing the nature of reality. (Which does not mean the difficulty is insurmountable.)
Still, these similiraties do not imply that it is a system of natural language.

[Triple Zero]

But never entirely accurately. When math tries to describe things that exist, it always fails at a certain point.

Name a language that doesn't.

I'm not saying math is not a language, I'm saying that what it describes is a construct. which is what I meant when I said it is both.

that's different from other languages, in the sense that they are made (grown) to describe reality, also fictional realities, so let's say they (attempt to) describe the whole of human experience.

mathematics is quite different from that. it describes both much more and much less than the human experience, in so far, that I think it is fair to say it doesn't describe it at all. Take the Mandelbrot fractal, sure you can plot it using a computer and view any part of it you like, but it has infinite detail and variation, the totality of which is beyond human experience. But it is all described by math. It's also got a zillion interesting properties, and different ways of looking at it (the "buddha brot" for instance), showing that it is much more than just an image on a screen, but it all follows from math.

See it's kind of like this taoism thing, "the road you talk about is not the road you walk upon"? (I know you dont like Taoism, I dont relate much to it either, but this bit is useful). Regular human language cannot describe things completely. When you describe your computer, you cannot describe all the electrons that flow through it (among other countless things), but when mathematics describes the Mandelbrot set as "Z^2+C" it really says it all, a complete representation of the infinite complexity of this mathematical object.

That's how it's different IMO.

Btw, when you said it's not a construct, what did you mean by construct? Cause maybe we have definitions mixed up.

[Verbal Mike]

Being the linguistic devil's advocate here, one could argue that math is similar to a natural-language jargon: it describes a narrow area in great depth, is unintelligible to the uninitiated, and mostly useless when describing something outside of its field. Of course, jargons always build upon a natural language and work like natural languages, whereas mathematics is independent of natural language.

[Honey]

I'd like to make a comment here but I'm a little pissed off atm (& embarassed to call myself American & too fukkin' embarassed to use the emoticons) but I do like what's been said here.  I was tracked into taking 3 years of math in 2 years so I could whiz thru & take calculus in high school.  I did that & then took it again in college.  Looking back, I don't understand the rush?  Personally, I think it would have been better for me to wait & take it when I was a little older & my mind was a little more seasoned.  I would've enjoyed it more.  Aside from that, being able to define randomness mathematically might be nice, but what do I know 'bout these things?  How would I know?  I think all languages are nice.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm confused. Are you saying that math is a language like english?

Yes, if what you are discussing is how the universe works*.





* May not apply in Washington, Ottawa, or London

[The Good Reverend Roger]

See it's kind of like this taoism thing, "the road you talk about is not the road you walk upon"? (I know you dont like Taoism, I dont relate much to it either, but this bit is useful).

Listen, Mister...I don't know how you do things on that side of the pond, but here in America we keep our Eastern mysticism OUT of our mathematics.

And by "construct", I mean an artificial model.  Math is not an artificial model any more than any language is, it's a means of describing a model, artificial or otherwise. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'd like to make a comment here but I'm a little pissed off atm (& embarassed to call myself American & too fukkin' embarassed to use the emoticons) but I do like what's been said here.  I was tracked into taking 3 years of math in 2 years so I could whiz thru & take calculus in high school.  I did that & then took it again in college.  Looking back, I don't understand the rush?  Personally, I think it would have been better for me to wait & take it when I was a little older & my mind was a little more seasoned.  I would've enjoyed it more.  Aside from that, being able to define randomness mathematically might be nice, but what do I know 'bout these things?  How would I know?  I think all languages are nice.

Since the 80s, parents think their children are failures if they aren't cracking tensor calculus in 5th grade, playing violin at Juliard by 13 years old, and breaking 2 olympic records by 17.

So they push their kids too fast, and when the kid stumbles, the parents give up entirely, and the kid spends the rest of his life in front of an X-box.

[Honey]

I also got tracked in English & Science too but didn't encounter as much trouble there (needing more time for my mind to catch up with the concepts).  Y'got tracked there too by taking standardized tests but in my experience it was more like you were in class with people who were NOT tl;dr.  Now isn't THAT just simply amazing?       

Took the English & Science classes again in college too.  Of course, they delved deeper.  & of course there were even less tl;dr people.  & some things just plainly defy reason!

I traveled as much as I possibly could with my son.  At one point, when he learned there was such a thing as being home-schooled, he asked me about it.  He said he learned more from traveling to other places, going to museums, observing nature in the wild & walking around Manhattan etc. than he did in school.  I tried my best to explain THAT one to him.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

See it's kind of like this taoism thing, "the road you talk about is not the road you walk upon"? (I know you dont like Taoism, I dont relate much to it either, but this bit is useful).

Listen, Mister...I don't know how you do things on that side of the pond, but here in America we keep our Eastern mysticism OUT of our mathematics.

And by "construct", I mean an artificial model.  Math is not an artificial model any more than any language is, it's a means of describing a model, artificial or otherwise.  

You are using a different definition of "construct" from what I'm using. Calling language a construct using the definition you're using would be authentically stupid. Language is not necessarily an artificial (depending on how you define artificial) or abstract model so it's not a construct using your definition, yet it is a human product of history and circumstance, so under the definition I'm using, it is a construct.

Therefore, I am declaring this avenue of argument stupid and not worth wasting any more of our time on.

[Iron Sulfide]

I understand what you're saying, but I can't get around the problem of religion just being a mind-bendingly stupid concept.

on the other hand, I get the feeling that alot of people here are using the word "religion" when what they mean is "grid that I sometimes impose because I enjoy it and find it occasionally useful in my pursuit of higher understanding of the universe and human nature but which I realize deep-down is nothing more than a grid".

I mean, if it's a religion, that means that you literally believe in divine supernatural entities.

I think one of the funniest parts about Discordja as religion is that it provides one with all the basic tools necessary to ditch that meme set and construct their own/modify another/ et cetera...but a lot of people end up lifting that meme-set onto a pedestal, stunting the growth of both parietal and occipital lobes.

oh, and ECH- Buddhism. Has. No. Gods.  i mean- they have something, to be fair, which has to be assumed with no impirical evidence to support it, sure. But gods, spirits, demons, etc... are considered mental products more or less in that religion. Or Taoism. Or certain traditions in Hinduism.

IOW- i think religion is less ridgidly defined than you make it seem.

[LMNO]

However, doesn't Buddhism have Ghosts and Demons and an afterlife?

I would tend to put that in the "supernatural entity" category.