Alien math. (was Another example of Schuh as moron (was Another Synthol moron))

On Oct 3, 9:09 pm, Andrzej Rosa wrote:


So I'm strongman, because I load and carry stuff from time to time. I'm
a strongman of a first floor level, turn to left at the end of a
corridor.

If you move furniture for a living, you're at least as much a lifter
as some typical gym dweeb who drops a few dumbbells around and
scatters plates here and there a couple of times a week.

And to be called just like some sportsmen, you gotta compete at the
sport.

No, you can be an artist and not have ever sold a painting. Kafka was
a greater writer and never even tried getting his stuff published.
Etc.

You miss the spirit, the soul, of it all. The soul of weighlifting,
or any sport, is not in competition, or winning one, or even only
training for one...it is much more than that, and yet does not even
have to include any of that. Until you understand it for yourself --
and not just because I'm telling you and use logic or personal
anecdotes to convince you -- you remain a "materialist," for all your
Platonism WRT mathematics!

So, you have a cutoff too? So do have plenty of people who bother
competing. You know, that regular training isn't the same as doing an
activity on occasion. They know, that actually going out there and
facing the bar isn't the same as training.

It's not the same -- but that's why there are different kinds of
lifters. You don't need to be a competitive lifter to be a lifter.
Just like you needn't be an Army Ranger to be an Army infantryman.
Etc.

Poor Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer (all *very* heavy smokers). They could
be so much brighter without all those nasty cumulative effects.

It may well be possible...I would even submit that had they spent some
time in the gym and around a track, they might have had other insights
into physics, given the increased blood flow and adrenaline rush, not
to mention endorphins and so forth....

No, it wasn't. They found that if a smoker inhales a smoke, then some
part of toxins actually goes into his body and he doesn't breathe them
out, but that's it. The rest was a lot of ********.

Well, why split hairs over carcinogens...they're all bad. Don't do
it. Don't be an idiot. I've met vegans who smoke, lifters who smoke,
joggers who smoke...what morons. Nothing says, "I'm a idiot, shoot
me!" than someone paying money to get poisoned.

There was a study on this too, and they found that if you cycle the same
distance as you drive in a car, on the highway (with bikes being much
slower), you still had lower concentration of toxins in your blood at the
end of the road.

So cycling even in traffic is still healthy.

Eh? Cycling in traffic is still healthy compared to what? Driving in
a car??

No, I mean real triangle, as derived from the axioms of euclidean geometry
(for example). We know a lot of useful stuff about such triangles, and
we know them for sure.

On the other hand, we can say relatively little about real life examples
of a triangle.

Um, not sure I follow you here...axioms about triangles necessarily
relate to real life instances of them....

You mean that mathematicians invented that triangles happen to have the
sum of their angles equal 180 degrees? And before they invented this
fact, triangles could have random sum of their angles?

"180 degrees" is a way of thinking about objects designated
"angles"...an extraterrestrial mindset, particularly if its life is
not carbon-based, might well view such objects differently....

Again, consider that colors like "red" are a particular stimulation on
a particular kind of eyeball attached to a particular kind of
brain...reasoning analogously, one can see how our very system of
mathematics is not so much "discovered" as "invented," given our
particular kind of brains....

They are _facts_, not "facts". They can afford it, because these facts
happen in a very well defined world.

I'm "agnostic" about these things. If the Hindus are right,
everything is but a dream in the mind of Vishnu, anyway -- and when he
wakes up, it will all be over. So where would your facts be, then?

While I would not challenge mathematic axioms, I would still leave
open the possibility that they are only axioms given how we view
things, given our particular brain structure...a six-dimensional
creature, say, might see things very differently...it's all conjecture
at this point, but I'm merely leaving open the possibility that our
mathematics may still be "incomplete" or only a particular way of
"rendering" the world which would only suit the human species...again,
we assume way too much that an alien intelligence would basically
think like us....

Stupid Pythagoras. He should invent his equation without squares. It
would make all the calculations so much simpler. ;-)

Well, I don't think he was concerned with calculations per se, but the
ultimate reality of numbers and music...I think his equations were
supposed to have been a stepping stone in that "religion" of his....

Actually that's typical. All science works this way, and they aren't
all that fussy about strictly naming their equations. Especially
because most of the time you don't know your unaccounted parameters, so
you can't say in which conditions your equation will stop working
precisely.

Well, sure, there's room for improvement, for fine tuning...but
insofar as an equation is supposed to describe its domain of physical
phenomena, it is finalized and would cover all possibilities -- e=mc2
and all that.

All the time. That's why mathematicians do not regard reality to be a
worthy topic of study.

Well, they're not very good equations, then, or you are not aware of
the precise limits of their domains of applicability. No
mathematician is satisfied by an equation that purports to work only
most of the time, with an asterisk leading to the fine print "results
may vary."

[I agree with your aptitude vs skill here]

Indeed, I don't think we really disagree on much.

The first was Russian.

LOL -- not much difference between the French and the
Russians...that's like blacks and hispanics!

Well, it's not like I'm picking on Clarke. It's just that no other
author think up anything comparable to Golem or Summa Technologiae.

But OK. I take back what I wrote.

Solaris, eh? Okay, we'll see...should I read the book first or watch
the movies?

It could be, as long as they were some sort of alien elves, who do not
build or produce complicated things. Once you start building complex
stuff, you need your tools, math among them.

Perhaps they would have other conceptual tools. I mean, it is said
that many Native Americans did not fully appreciate the Europeans'
sense of property rights when they sold them Manhattan Island. That
would be like an alien civilization landing on earth asking to
purchase rights to the air, say...to the Natives, they had the notion
that the land was for everyone, so to sell the land from here to there
to someone would be like saying from here to there is my airspace and
only I can breathe it....so the Natives did not have the concept of
property rights as such, even though they certainly engaged in warfare
to drive off rivals from their hunting grounds, right....

So similarly, an alien intelligence might have different conceptual
tools with regards to whatever issues they confront.

Note also that you agree that math is a conceptual tool. You could be
implicitly agreeing, without realizing it, with my earlier statement
that math is invented, not discovered. Tools are typically made --
found objects can be used as tools, to be sure, but the proper
(certainly the "higher") definition of a tool is that is is made.

I think that even telepathic beings would need a "language", just like
all technologically advanced civilizations would need a math.

Hello?? The only reason we have "language" is because we could not
communicate otherwise. If a whole species were telepathic, you would
not need language at all -- including math! Communication would be
instantaneous -- indeed, it would not even be "communication" at all,
properly speaking; at least not in the way we understand it, in terms
of a sender, a message, and a receiver...a telepathic species --
implying "globalized" telepathy -- likely would not even regard its
members as individuals in the sense we understand that term...can you
imagine such a mindset?? No, it is totally beyond anything we can
imagine. Its "math," such as we might recognize anything resembling
our own ways of describing the physical world and the intellectual
world of human abstractions and logic, would be very different
indeed....

Everybody is "only something". Especially those, who strive to improve
themselves.

I'm only human! And born five hundred years too early.

So how do they know the effective range of their saucers?

Heck, don't you know how much you can lift without a scientific
equation detailing the output of the cross-section of your muscle
fibers? How does God travel from star to star -- does He need a GPS
system??

Don't fall into the human-centric mentality which plagues many a
science fiction story, that "intelligence" must resemble our own, and
that there's only one way -- a mathematical one -- to skin the problem
of intergalactic travel.

You mean, without patterns? Unlikely. Patterns let you predict
outcomes. You see sun rising in the East and setting in the West, and
you see a pattern there, so you expect the sun to do the same the next
day. It is very useful thing to have.

Useful, again, for *our* brains. And patterns are not foolproof, of
course -- we've all the experience of new situations not fitting
within old paradigms. The point is that our brains may well be
uniquely human, not just on this planet, but across the universe. It
almost follows that different brains would perceive the world on a
different basis....

It's just probably the best sci-fi book ever written, so you
shouldn't expect much. ;-)

Blurbs like that are what make me so wary: they sound like
advertising's "New! Improved!"

Because dogs are stupid.

No, not because they're stupid: again, even if the dog could talk, and
otherwise had human cognition, its very biology prevents it from
experiencing aspects of human life like colors.

But you could explain colors to a (color) blind
intelligent person. Using examples, analogies, experiments and so on,
but he would be able to understand that contrary to him, you see
colors.

No -- a congenitally blind person can never "understand" colors. I
think that's very self-evident.

There are things in our _knowledge_ that stretch our ability to
intuitively comprehend them. Take Aussies, for example. Do you want me
to really grasp the fact, that they walk upside down? No way!

And "up" is merely a convention, isn't it? Mathematics is but a human
convention, a convention of the human brain, whose chief purpose is
pattern-recognition/pattern-generation.

Yet, we know it and comprehend it, and are able to predict outcomes of
such crazy things like traveling around the world.

That it works for us isn't what is in question. The discussion is
over whether an alien lifeform would think in such ways as well.

Should you feed your car grass just because your horse runs on it?

--
Andrzej Rosa 1127R

Dnia Thu, 04 Oct 2007 o 16:54 GMT Prisoner at War napisa³(a):
On Oct 3, 9:09 pm, Andrzej Rosa wrote:
[...]
Poor Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer (all *very* heavy smokers). They could
be so much brighter without all those nasty cumulative effects.

It may well be possible...

Not likely. Actually I believe the other way around. I stopped smoking
once for 1.5 year, and I consistently couldn't think so hard and for as
long as when I was a smoker. It went back to "normal", when I started
smoking again. It seems to me, that smoking is a bit like taking
amphetamine, which was mildly popular (and undoubtedly effective)
performance enhancing drug among students during my time in college.

I would even submit that had they spent some
time in the gym and around a track, they might have had other insights
into physics,

Oppenheimer was a sailor, Bohr used to climb, I don't know anything
about Einstein besides him being supposedly gifted dancer. Turing was
an endurance weenie, iirc.

[...]
No, it wasn't. They found that if a smoker inhales a smoke, then some
part of toxins actually goes into his body and he doesn't breathe them
out, but that's it. The rest was a lot of ********.

Well, why split hairs over carcinogens...

Why spin-doctor irrelevant results of a shabby science? To spread
FUD, or something?

they're all bad.

Especially oxygen.

Don't do
it. Don't be an idiot. I've met vegans who smoke, lifters who smoke,
joggers who smoke...what morons. Nothing says, "I'm a idiot, shoot
me!" than someone paying money to get poisoned.

Sure, throw a grenade into a bar. There are only idiots deserving to be
shot inside, because they all went there to (_literally_) poison
themselves.

BTW - if you want to live longer, you should castrate yourself
immediately. The sooner, the better. Both your chances for
developing cancer and your life expectancy will be affected
stronger by castration than if you started smoking. Smoking on
average costs about 7 years of life, eunuchs on average live about
15 years longer than normal men.

[...]
So cycling even in traffic is still healthy.

Eh? Cycling in traffic is still healthy compared to what? Driving in
a car??

Yes. Besides, I doubt anybody could show, that the amount of toxins we
get while driving a car is actually harmful. You can't say that if big
amount of toxins is undoubtedly harmful, also a small amount will be.
Our bodies do not work that way. If so, moderate training wouldn't be
healthy.

No, I mean real triangle, as derived from the axioms of euclidean geometry
(for example). We know a lot of useful stuff about such triangles, and
we know them for sure.

On the other hand, we can say relatively little about real life examples
of a triangle.

Um, not sure I follow you here...axioms about triangles necessarily
relate to real life instances of them....

Axioms let you define triangles. The only "real" triangles. And there
are exactly 0 instances of "real life" triangles.

You mean that mathematicians invented that triangles happen to have the
sum of their angles equal 180 degrees? And before they invented this
fact, triangles could have random sum of their angles?

"180 degrees" is a way of thinking about objects designated
"angles"...an extraterrestrial mindset, particularly if its life is
not carbon-based, might well view such objects differently....

You mean, that they wouldn't know about that, or that they would know
differently? They could not know, if they were "elves". If they knew
"differently" they would be wrong. That simple.

Again, consider that colors like "red" are a particular stimulation on
a particular kind of eyeball attached to a particular kind of
brain...reasoning analogously, one can see how our very system of
mathematics is not so much "discovered" as "invented," given our
particular kind of brains....

Do not overcomplicate things without dire need (Occam's pledge ;-).
Colors are the same as triangles, especially in that regard, that you
can say whatever you want about them, as long as you don't mind being
wrong.

They are _facts_, not "facts". They can afford it, because these facts
happen in a very well defined world.

I'm "agnostic" about these things. If the Hindus are right,
everything is but a dream in the mind of Vishnu, anyway -- and when he
wakes up, it will all be over. So where would your facts be, then?

That discussion goes way too far.

While I would not challenge mathematic axioms,

Why not? They were challenged many times, and a lot of good math was
build upon various sets of axioms.

I would still leave
open the possibility that they are only axioms given how we view
things, given our particular brain structure...a six-dimensional
creature, say, might see things very differently...it's all conjecture
at this point, but I'm merely leaving open the possibility that our
mathematics may still be "incomplete" or only a particular way of
"rendering" the world which would only suit the human species...again,
we assume way too much that an alien intelligence would basically
think like us....

You can have various axioms and the math will still work. They aren't
"beliefs", they are assumptions.

[...]
Actually that's typical. All science works this way, and they aren't
all that fussy about strictly naming their equations. Especially
because most of the time you don't know your unaccounted parameters, so
you can't say in which conditions your equation will stop working
precisely.

Well, sure, there's room for improvement, for fine tuning...but
insofar as an equation is supposed to describe its domain of physical
phenomena, it is finalized and would cover all possibilities -- e=mc2
and all that.

We don't know if e=mc^2 is universally true. Before we discovered this
equations, we thought that energy and mass is constant in all processes.
Now we think, that only energy and mass taken together remain constant,
but maybe they don't? (and there are very accurate theories, which allow
for this equation to be violated)

[...]
Well, it's not like I'm picking on Clarke. It's just that no other
author think up anything comparable to Golem or Summa Technologiae.

But OK. I take back what I wrote.

Solaris, eh? Okay, we'll see...should I read the book first or watch
the movies?

I haven't seen any of those movies, but they aren't supposedly very
good, so book first.

[...]
I think that even telepathic beings would need a "language", just like
all technologically advanced civilizations would need a math.

Hello?? The only reason we have "language" is because we could not
communicate otherwise. If a whole species were telepathic, you would
not need language at all

You would still need a code of sorts. First, you couldn't freely
exchange all information between two individuals, because you'd flood
them with irrelevant info. You have to select things you are going to
"tell" to someone. Once you start selecting, you create a channel of
communication, which demands some sort of coding. Like a CB radio or
ethernet, for example. All units can't talk to all units at the same
time, because then information becomes noise.

In this regard telepathy is just another way to talking, you just don't
need to move your lips.

properly speaking; at least not in the way we understand it, in terms
of a sender, a message, and a receiver...a telepathic species --
implying "globalized" telepathy -- likely would not even regard its
members as individuals in the sense we understand that term...can you
imagine such a mindset??

Yes, easily. Everybody talks at the same time in a crowded room.

[...]
So how do they know the effective range of their saucers?

Heck, don't you know how much you can lift without a scientific
equation detailing the output of the cross-section of your muscle
fibers?

I know my abilities from experience. You can't build sophisticated
technology relying solely on experience.

[...]
Because dogs are stupid.

No, not because they're stupid: again, even if the dog could talk, and
otherwise had human cognition, its very biology prevents it from
experiencing aspects of human life like colors.

You don't need direct experience to understand something. Actually most
of our knowledge isn't based on direct experiences, and that's my point.
Another limitation wouldn't matter. We would know what sound is and how
Doppler effect works even if we were deaf.

But you could explain colors to a (color) blind
intelligent person. Using examples, analogies, experiments and so on,
but he would be able to understand that contrary to him, you see
colors.

No -- a congenitally blind person can never "understand" colors. I
think that's very self-evident.

What "understand"? It's not poetry we are talking about, so you don't
need to "understand" anything. You need to be able to predict what
studied thing will do in various circumstances. "Understanding" has
nothing to do about it.

There are things in our _knowledge_ that stretch our ability to
intuitively comprehend them. Take Aussies, for example. Do you want me
to really grasp the fact, that they walk upside down? No way!

And "up" is merely a convention, isn't it?

See? Nothing in the world we evolved in prepared us to such a shock,
like Aussies living the life of bats, but somehow we manage anyway. We
weren't crippled in our ability to comprehend it.

[...]
Yet, we know it and comprehend it, and are able to predict outcomes of
such crazy things like traveling around the world.

That it works for us isn't what is in question. The discussion is
over whether an alien lifeform would think in such ways as well.

The same thing. Even if their brains are different and they would have
trouble with "understanding" colors, but not Aussies, it changes very
little.

[...]
--
Andrzej Rosa 1127R