Indian chief has 3 pregnant women.
He puts 1 in a teepee with a deer skin
He puts the 2nd in a teepee with an elk skin
He looks about and all that he has left is a hippopatamus skin for the 3rd one
Next day they all gave birth. The last one had twins others had singles
The chief observed
The squaw on the hippopatamus hide is equal the the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.
Personal insults aren’t allowed in this forum.
No, it’s denial of intuitionism. It’s a statement that the math that is correct based on proofs and internal logic is wrong. It’s a ratinalle-less rejection of mathematics itself.
It’s kind of like what it takes to get creationism into a science class, actually.
No. Triangles exist in the abstract model called “mathematics/geometry” which does not exist in reality, but is useful because when reality is found to match the model to some degree, the model can be used to infer additional useful data that is accurate in proportion to the degree that the chunk of reality you are observing matches the model.
The supernatural is also an abstact model that does not exist in reality, but unlike math it is useless - you cannot match the supernatural elements with reality directly, since we can’t find anything resembling actual ghosts and gods running around, and attempts to use observed “results” to infer the presence of the supernatural consistently fail to yeild better predictive power than chance, once you correct for observer bias.
Using the supernatural to “infer” the souce of goodness is like “inferring” that ((334 * 999 + 1) * 37 - 12345678) happened just because you run across the number 1. In theory that might have been the math that led to the answer you see, but there’s no real reason to think so.
I looked up anti-realism, and atheism doens’t qualify. Quoting wikipedia, “In philosophy of science, anti-realism applies chiefly to claims about the non-reality of “unobservable” entities such as electrons or DNA, which are not detectable with human senses.” Which is to say, it disregards all secondary evidence - no matter how consistent or compelling the secondary evidence is. This is not something atheists generally do - atheists not only almost universally believe in electrons and DNA, they also would accept sufficently compelling secondary evidence for God. The problem is, of course, that all the so-called evidence for god is the crudest level of misinterpretable personal anecdotes - and it’s wildly inconsistent across varying populations besides.
Though this is just the crap argument that skepticism isn’t justifiable repeated again, I will say that this is one of the most intellectually complex phrasings of it I’ve ever seen. Kudos.
I’m going to give you better answers than your rambling questions deserve.
Reality is real. Mathematics is an abstract model - it’s all in your head. However, if you find things in reality that approxomate things in mathematics, the math can tell you additional facts about the real things, to the degree that reality matches the math.
Yes to the reality part. The math stuff here is gibberish.
Apparently not - and even those of us who have it, had to learn it; it’s not inherent, not any more than the Klingon language is.
Mathematical knowledge can be known for sure, though you might not know it. However, the only thing that math is sure about is other math. When you start to talk about the bits of reality that resemble the things in the abstract math, then errors will exist between the abstract math results and the actual reality, because the reality doesn’t precisely match the model.
That said, reality can be known directly, to the limits of your sensory apparatus. Those aren’t perfectly accurate, but that’s not math’s fault.
Math isn’t where you “touch reality” (with me, that’s my skin), so this is gibberish.
Electricity isn’t fictional. (Dunno about “light” energy.) There is as much reality to your mind as there is to your computer browser; both are things that exist due to and created by the organized behavior of electrons operating within and interacting with a material substrate.
Most humans learn very early on how to distinguish between separate objects - the awareness that distinct objects exists gives rise to the notion of the number 1 - each distinct object that you can recognize is 1 object.
The number 1 without units is an abstraction from individual objects ‘with’ units - which is to say, you go from “an orange” to “1 orange” to “1”. The abstraction exists because there are common properties of things that all can be describes as “1”: for example, when you have two of them together, you get “2”. Between when you abstract it (take the units off) and when you later use it as a model of some part of reality (put the units on), it does not exist in reality; it’s just part of the mathematical model. You can do things with it, but all the things you do are still part of the abstract mathematical model.
Err, it’s ink on paper. That’s my explanation. It’s usually done to help other people learn things about the abstract thing called “math”, the same way that books exist to help people learnd about the abstract thing called “Klingon”.
And it’s mostly cool because integers unexpectedly popping up is cool in math like this. It’s not cool because it maps to something “inside year head” (in the abstract model called “math”) - there’s lots of boring things that are equally mathematical. 13 + 2 = 15, for example.
I dunno about you, but I don’t have a big hole in my head to let light in. And electrons are everywhere, and the beasties that stumbled on putting them in clever patterns outcompeted enough other beasties to survive. That’s all there is to it.
The universe didn’t put 3 4 5 in my head. Some human figured it out, based on math which humans made up from their ability to tell one thing from another, and then eventually some teacher tought it to me. That’s how it got in my head, and the universe couldn’t care less.
Yes.
The same way the res of my thoughs do - they’re arrangements of chemicals and electrons that are meaningful when interpreted according to rules encoded in the electrochemical arrangements in the other parts of my head. Your computer’s memory works exactly the same way.
Look at your screen, here: R. See that letter R? It’s held in your computer’s memory, but not in an arragment of “light particles”:rolleyes: in the shape of a letter R. It’s encoded. Just like our thoughts are.
We can’t, but we don’t have to, because our thoughts are encoded. And further, all we encode are the things we actually know, which is untroubled by the fact we don’t know the other angles (or at least, we’re not usually taught them when we learn the 3-4-5 triangle thing.)
No “real” 3 4 5 triangle exists in your head.
Nonsense. The 3 4 5 triangle is an emergent behavior of the abstract system called mathematics/trigonometry. This system is useful because it gives us approxomately accurate information when applied to things in real life that approxomately line up with it. Because it is useful, it should be mentioned and used when it is useful to do so.
Evolution doesn’t struggle, any more than 1 and 1 struggle to make 2. Evolution is just the way things happen in certain circumstances - just like in the circumstances when you have 1 and 1, they make 2. And math didn’t evolve anyway; it was deduced by humans independent of their evolution. And as for what’s going on in your head, it’s as real as what’s going on in your computer case. There are no browsers floating around in there, but you can get on the internet just the same.
A weird coincidence: I had been planning myself to use the abstract concept of the letter ‘R’ as an example to illustrate a point, and then begbert2 went and did it independently, same letter and everything.
Pffft… the 3-4-5 Triangle?
I always preferred the 30-60-90 Triangle. And who could forget it’s unloved stepchild, but infinitely more likable 45-45-90 Triangle.
Screw the evolutionary distance, man, it’s all about the *angels *in the angles!
edit whoops, just noticed this was by the sperm guy. I’ll quietly slink away and come back in a few days to see where this train of discussion actually goes.
From many minutes of rigorous masturb… calculation, I have calculated 2(two) equally proble results.
1: Frickin’ Frightning
2: What happens when you smoke a full 1/4oz of prime grade skunk
Strangely enough Frickin’ Frightning[sup]2[/sup] + What happens when you smoke a full 1/4g of prime grade skunk[sup]2[/sup] = confission[sup]2[/sup]
If confission wants to post this, again, in MPSIMS or a Joke forum on another board, that is fine, butr it is not funny enough to be left here and it is certainly nothing resembling a legitimate debate.
Closed.
[ /Moderating ]