If somebody were to ask me to explain why we believe in math, I would say because it is consistent within its own assumptions and because it is useful. I don't know how accurate that is. What is your answer to the question?
06-10-2017 08:20 PM
#1
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Why do we believe in math?If somebody were to ask me to explain why we believe in math, I would say because it is consistent within its own assumptions and because it is useful. I don't know how accurate that is. What is your answer to the question? |
06-10-2017 08:31 PM
#2
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I don't. |
06-10-2017 08:51 PM
#3
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Try harder. |
06-11-2017 05:26 AM
#4
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I believe that to be a very poorly worded question. | |
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06-11-2017 06:52 AM
#5
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06-11-2017 02:32 PM
#6
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06-11-2017 02:58 PM
#7
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06-11-2017 03:35 PM
#8
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I could use an explanation. |
06-12-2017 09:50 AM
#9
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What do you mean by "believe in?" | |
06-12-2017 10:13 AM
#10
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06-12-2017 10:42 AM
#11
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06-12-2017 10:48 AM
#12
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06-12-2017 12:58 PM
#13
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"Acknowledge the existence of" is a fine way of putting it too. I chose to not use that phraseology for a reason, but that reason is probably unimportant. Perhaps "why is it useful" might be a decent way of putting the question. Maybe. |
Last edited by wufwugy; 06-12-2017 at 01:20 PM. | |
06-12-2017 12:59 PM
#14
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06-12-2017 01:08 PM
#15
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I'd say it's probably both invented and discovered. |
Last edited by wufwugy; 06-12-2017 at 01:26 PM. | |
06-12-2017 01:50 PM
#16
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06-12-2017 02:05 PM
#17
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06-12-2017 02:26 PM
#18
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06-12-2017 02:29 PM
#19
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I don't see how touch and sight are relevant, here. These properties are true of all ideas and emotions. | |
06-12-2017 03:08 PM
#20
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I haven't researched this in years. Start with google. | |
06-12-2017 03:18 PM
#21
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This is another assertion which makes me think myself in circles. | |
06-12-2017 04:20 PM
#22
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06-12-2017 04:24 PM
#23
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"Discovered" makes more sense to me than "invented." Like, if we hadn't come along and starting counting on our fingers and toes, there would be no maths? Meh. There might not be maths textbooks, but there would still be maths. | |
06-12-2017 04:25 PM
#24
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What do you mean by 'models reality'? The maths doesn't model anything. It's the people applying it that are doing the modeling. | |
06-12-2017 04:29 PM
#25
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I mean something along these lines: the equation 2 + 2 = 4 is a mathematical framework that models reality, like, say, when we have 2 and 2 apples. Regardless, the terminology I chose might not be appropriate. Perhaps what I mean to say is that mathematics provides a framework with which reality can be coherently described. |
06-12-2017 06:59 PM
#26
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Ah, gotcha. | |
06-12-2017 08:53 PM
#27
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Argh. "to a degree..." Sure... to a degree. What have we communicated to each other, here? | |
06-13-2017 05:26 PM
#28
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Wuf rather than trying to get information out of people in a certain way why don't you just ask the question you really want to ask. I'd be much more inclined to give some better* answers and feel like this is going somewhere that way. |
06-13-2017 05:30 PM
#29
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06-13-2017 06:35 PM
#30
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06-13-2017 06:49 PM
#31
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The key reason I became atheist is because I found the argument that any known religious ideas are not demonstrated by science. Yet, it has recently come to my attention that this is probably the wrong way of looking at religious ideas. The reason is because they are metaphysical in nature, and it appears that science can't actually tell us much about them. So, I wanted to look at how people typically view other metaphysical things. This brings us to numbers*. Numbers are possibly the most "true" thing humans have an idea about with any sense of objective and fundamental nature of reality. So, I want to better understand exactly what that idea is, and then apply those same rules to spiritual and religious ideas. For example if we can say that numbers are a fundamental truth to existence (which we might not be able to say) because they provide a framework of coherent description of natural phenomena, in my estimation it is appropriate to say that a particular religious idea would be a fundamental truth to existence if it also provides a framework of coherent description of natural phenomena. Granted, there may be some fatal flaw somewhere in there, and even if there isn't I have a feeling that any non-numbers framework would be far too open to interpretation, but still I want to give the idea a go. |
06-13-2017 06:58 PM
#32
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I thought so, see my previous answers. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-13-2017 at 07:00 PM. | |
06-13-2017 08:27 PM
#33
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You'd have to provide answers then. |
06-13-2017 08:41 PM
#34
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Course you do because you have dog in the fight and just realising it's all bullshit isn't enough. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-13-2017 at 08:44 PM. | |
06-13-2017 08:43 PM
#35
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06-13-2017 09:16 PM
#36
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Still haven't answered the question. |
06-13-2017 11:33 PM
#37
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06-13-2017 11:37 PM
#38
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It's relative in the fact that I know a lot of maths lecturers/professors/readers/etc compared to the average person. To you probably not* maybe go and ask some. If I was you I probably wouldn't, comes across a little derogatory. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-13-2017 at 11:39 PM. | |
06-13-2017 11:44 PM
#39
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It sounds like wuf is trying to get at a core question of why do we believe anything and how do we justify those beliefs? | |
06-13-2017 11:49 PM
#40
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So don't believe in shit until it lets you get an edge in life? If you ask me (no one ever does understandably) what my thoughts are on things like the big bang etc I come to the conclusion that they probably aren't right they are just much more right than everything else. Lots of very ITK scientists have problems with the big bang, or pick from a list of other long theories, yet that doesn't mean you can believe in any old shit to begin with. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-13-2017 at 11:52 PM. | |
06-13-2017 11:56 PM
#41
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IF you're not willing to directly enumerate the math professors with which you've spoken on this topic and how many of them argued this with you, then you're still blowing hot air. | |
06-14-2017 12:08 AM
#42
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I think the fact that I bring light to the bold being true means I clearly am not stating that the bold is true. What you're actually getting at is whether or not they think it's inventing or discovering, which I was getting at tongue in cheek that they have all said inventing. I'd put this number at about 5. This is from their own mouths, no guiding questions to lead them to a certain word. |
06-14-2017 12:10 AM
#43
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I said nothing of the sort. I'm not telling anyone what to believe. I'm looking at the struggle to understand belief, and it's importance to humans. | |
06-14-2017 12:13 AM
#44
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06-14-2017 12:15 AM
#45
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Sorry none of my post was intended to disagree with things you said. I expected you to agree with everything I said to a fairly strong degree and you did. It was more just pointing things out that maybe aren't clear to others. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-14-2017 at 12:21 AM. | |
06-14-2017 12:23 AM
#46
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On inventing vs. discovering... Fine... I'll look into it. You're the 2nd person to ask. | |
06-14-2017 12:24 AM
#47
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It's a good question. The best answer I can come up with (stolen from Jordan Peterson) is that which has led to reproduction. In the human scope, even the organism scope, this has limits. However, it might be applicable logic to existence itself. For example, a mode of being of a quantum particle that doesn't lead to survivability of its system can probably be thought of as unworthy since it is an elimination of itself, roughly speaking. |
06-14-2017 12:27 AM
#48
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The funny thing is if you can ask it in a non-bias way I imagine most people would say inventing in terms of what they do for their job but when quizzed on the whole invent/discover debate would say discover. |
06-14-2017 12:37 AM
#49
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They both move forward in the sense you provide, as well as they occupy mostly different space. Fundamentalism has made a big mistake, in my estimation, by treating religious ideas as scientifically viable. They're not and they never really have been. Religious ideas have never really been about the physical world but about the metaphysical world. They attempt to describe the unknown, at least as far as it interacts with human experience. Science has made less stuff unknown, but it has no answer for other stuff. Even if we think that religious things are human phenomena, human phenomena are derivative of physical phenomena, which can mean that there is something else to them other than which is understood using just raw material, so to speak. |
06-14-2017 12:37 AM
#50
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I don't understand how you can "believe" in math. Math is a set of rules, wherein we agree on a set of beginning assumptions. 1+2=3 only makes sense because we all agree on the definitions of 1, 2, 3, +, and =. An alien race could come down, and say # € × ! 0 and be conveying the same information...but it doesn't look like 1+2=3 because their agreed upon definitions are different. | |
06-14-2017 12:39 AM
#51
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@wuf: You need to get to the core of what you mean when you assert that something is true. | |
06-14-2017 12:40 AM
#52
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More correct is the important phrasing. |
Last edited by Savy; 06-14-2017 at 12:44 AM. | |
06-14-2017 12:41 AM
#53
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Mathematicians probably think of themselves as inventors more than discoverers. I know I would. The human approach to it is highly inventive. |
06-14-2017 12:46 AM
#54
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I think the opposite is true here, as I said in my post. Most take an underlying view that maths is something that controls the universe and is true hence they are discovering it rather than making something up. |
06-14-2017 12:49 AM
#55
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That's a great one. |
06-14-2017 12:50 AM
#56
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When I say math applies itself to things...I should say instead that we (people) see something and go "hey, I can describe what I see with maths!". Sometimes we are wrong in how we described that thing though. | |
06-14-2017 12:50 AM
#57
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Dude... you gotta travel outside of AZ once in a while. You don't need aliens to see that kind of shiz waz, just internationals. | |
06-14-2017 12:52 AM
#58
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I think I reached the limits of my understanding, which is partly why I brought it up here. |
06-14-2017 12:55 AM
#59
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Do you think words always do accurately describe information? |
Last edited by Savy; 06-14-2017 at 12:59 AM. | |
06-14-2017 12:56 AM
#60
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Actually, I'm unsure how good of a question this is. Words are a little different than numbers in that it's easy to think of words as arbitrary. Numbers certainly can be arbitrary, but there seems to be a system of them that is not. That's what I wanna know why we think of them the way we do. |
06-14-2017 01:00 AM
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06-14-2017 01:02 AM
#62
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Yeah, really the only thing I can say about the words thing is that it could be the case that that which runs our existence might be a bunch of symbols constructed in some coherent fashion. As far as I can tell, the universe could be like a super duper advanced computer program, or it could be like, well, something as of yet not determined. |
06-14-2017 01:04 AM
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06-14-2017 01:14 AM
#64
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Ignore what I said. What I was getting at is more along the lines of when something is not exactly defined. Words in colloquial language might not be exactly defined, but numbers in mathematics are. Granted, as far as I can tell, words in code are exactly defined, so the point I was trying to make could be useless. Do you think that numbers not being arbitrary lends to the idea that they are a fundamental nature? |
06-14-2017 01:15 AM
#65
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Words are no different than math. You can misuse both, but that doesn't mean they aren't accurate descriptors. | |
06-14-2017 01:15 AM
#66
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06-14-2017 01:28 AM
#67
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06-14-2017 01:33 AM
#68
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06-14-2017 01:35 AM
#69
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06-14-2017 01:35 AM
#70
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Last edited by Savy; 06-14-2017 at 01:38 AM. | |
06-14-2017 01:39 AM
#71
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Ultimately tell me what is and isn't a plate. If you can list literally everything as one or the other or give me some grander meaning as to the word plate I'm all ears. |
06-14-2017 01:40 AM
#72
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Okay, this might help. Numbers are a concept and me being Thor is a concept. People treat numbers as if they are real and don't treat me as Thor as being real. While it is possible that I am actually Thor, I would agree that numbers seem to be of a true nature regarding reality and me being Thor does not. What, then, distinguishes numbers from me being Thor? What do we think of when we think of the relationship between numbers and reality, and why is that distinct from the idea that I am Thor? |
06-14-2017 01:45 AM
#73
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I feel like I chose the wrong words to describe my thought. | |
06-14-2017 01:47 AM
#74
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06-14-2017 01:50 AM
#75
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Oh I remember now why I said numbers can be arbitrary but some systems dont seem to be. I don't know this from my own investigation but it's something I think I have seen from people discussing math (mostly here): there are all sorts of systems of mathematics that are internally consistent yet don't reflect the physical universe. I don't know of what any of them are or even if my statement is correct, but I seem to recall that people have created internally coherent mathematics that are not coherent when applied outside of the system, or something to that effect. |