TVAA, tell me again about your scientist friends and their hidden lab. Ooh ooh and about how you have an understanding of the cogitative mechanisms of the human mind more complete than any person living or dead.
Last question, do you do what the voices tell you to, or do you try and fight them?
TVAA, I was thinking of you as the record player… Carry on skipping, sir – it must be very tiring, though, what with feet and tongue all tangled.
Seriously, take a step back from your dogmatism in both this thread and the original; wander on through the whole damn thing and try and read all the posts, yours included, with some objectivity. See what others are seeing.
Thank you for the suggestion. Permit me to interpret the implications:
------1st 2 sentences of SA article: “Giving a mathematically precise statement of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem would only obscure its important intuitive content from almost anyone who is not a specialist in mathematical logic. So instead, I will rephrase and simplify it in the language of computers.”
Ok, in order to discuss GID outside of a mathematical context, one must rephrase and simplify it. Or at the very least, that is what the author chose to do.
I see no indication that the author claims that his translation is perfect: I only see the claim that his exercise is useful insofar as it allows nonmathematicians to learn something from GIT.
------ 2nd to last sentence: “Anyone with Internet access using a search engine like Alta Vista can find several hundred articles of highly varying quality on Godel’s Theorem.”
In other words, some rephrasings are better than others.
I would assert that when disagreements over the meaning of the original text arise, that it is necessary to evaluate the original source, in its native (mathematical) language.
I’m not claiming here that translation is impossible. I’m merely claiming that assessing the accuracy of a translation requires knowledge of the original language.
Separately, I would assert that interpretations of mathematical formulas are exactly that, interpretations. But that is a seperate matter.
Two semi-relevant points here:[ol][li]There is a difference between writing an equation in words instead of symbols and taking a complicated set of definitions, terms, and the like and hand-waving your way through a natural language formulation of the same thing in such a way as to omit certain preconditions which are replaced by hand-wavy versions of same. I’m sure this was obvious to someone of your vast intellect.[/li][li]This example also illustrates, however, the problem with using common language for mathematical concepts. Because, ignoring the fact that the equation isn’t even true (which was obvious to someone of your vast intellect), it’s not useful until you’ve defined “force,” “mass,” and “acceleration.” Which was obvious to someone of your vast intellect. Each of these things, of course, has a specific technical definition, which is why we use equations to communicate in technical fields to begin with: one doesn’t lose the technical definitions with equations the way one might with everyday English reformulations of the same concepts. People have a common, natural language understanding of the concepts “mass” and “acceleration,” and is most cases this understanding isn’t, in fact, accurate to begin with, leading one into all sorts of problems if one attempts to use the equation you wrote out in words.[/li]Which was obvious to someone of your vast intellect.
[/ol]
** I’d say that rephrasing it is necessary; simplification isn’t required, but it would usually occur.
Fair enough.
** Also quite reasonable.
Here is where I’m forced to disagree. If someone claims that elliptical orbits are not the result of an attractive force that varies with the inverse square of distance, we don’t have to go back to Newton’s Principia to resolve the dispute.
** This is reasonable. We might also look at a large number of translations and see how they’re similar; while it’s not necessarily the case that the majority will be correct, we can reasonably assume that the quality of the translation will be related to the overall quality of the source.
I’ve read lots and lots of standard-English explanations of what GIT is and what it implies. Spiritus… well, obviously hasn’t.
Looking over his statements, I see that he makes several claims (repeatedly) that simply are not correct. I can think of two reasons for this:
He doesn’t understand GIT at all.
He does understand GIT, but he can’t think about it in any language other than a very specific and specialized one.
In the first case, regardless of the quality of my argument, he’s not qualified to make statements about it unless he can demonstrate fundamental logical errors in it. He hasn’t done so yet…
In the second case, he’s again not qualified to make statements about any discussion of GIT in standard English. Since he can’t evaluate such statements or make such statements without making gross and fairly obvious errors, he simply has no grounds to determine what is and isn’t correct.
It’s also possible to discuss what they mean.
** We’ve been talking about the preconditions for nearly nine pages of this argument, if we include the OT. There’s been no hand-waving… except possibly on the part of Spiritus, who persists in making inaccurate statements about GIT.
It’s one thing if you’re simply not convinced by my argument. That’s your right. Stating that it’s wrong… when you don’t even seem to have a clear idea of what it is, no matter how much I try to explain and simplify… well.
The technical definitions of “mass”, “acceleration”, and “force” aren’t particularly complicated. Any intelligent high school student can pick them up in a single afternoon (heck, any intelligent 4th grader should be able to understand them).
Secondly, what exactly do you mean, O great wise guy of the desert? I don’t recall F=ma being shown to be wrong… It’s not even altered in either form of Relativity. Instead, it’s one of the centerpoints of Newtonian mechanics… which is sufficiently accurate to allow us to send devices millions of miles with only minor deviations for their course.
Care to explain your wisdom?
I am gobsmacked that this thread is STILL going. TVAA, will you give it a fucking rest already?
Is being ‘right’ always so important in your scheme of things? Have YOU learned anything from this thread about your own shortcomings perhaps??
Or are you gleeful in your spouting off of topics/language that most of us find incomprehensible? Is that how you get your jollies? Do you reckon that engaging in such an esoteric argument such as this makes the rest of us think that you must be some uber-intelligent dude who Should Not Be Fucked With??
Nah…you’re a dickhead, just like the rest of us mate.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
It doesn’t matter if I’m right… what matters is that I’m right, or that I can identify who is.
You think I’m doing this because I want to show that I’m smarter than everyone else?
If I wanted to do that, I’d begin a debate that’s truly esoteric. This is a relatively simple and straightforward topic – which is the primary reason I’m surprised at the amount of resistance.
No, apparently we invent some experts who agree with us and call the other person stupid. I think anyone would be forced to agree that this is by far the preferable course of action.
The irony is that I actually do have resource to experts who called Spiritus and his Superfriends stupid…
[sigh]
Oh, the pain of it all…
I was hoping that you would Go. The. Fuck. Away.
If you really want to get on TVAA’s case, why don’t you ring him during dinner and try to sell him aluminum siding, or whatever the fuck it is that you tele-market?
Your own qualifications to comment on this issue, one way or the other, are absolutely zip.
Drat… that was supposed to be “recourse”. Accursed typos and lack-of-editing-at-SD…
Thank you, Desmostylus. Regardless of which side (if any) you’re supporting in this discussion, your smackdown of the witless one is appreciated.
You’ll have to forgive my skepticism there, TVAA. My own understandings of mathematics, how we use it to model physics, and what that does or does not imply forbids me from making such statements.
Bring your experts here. Otherwise the discussion is intractable.
I still don’t see where you’ve pointed out any errors of Spiritus’s.
Oh, geez I’m so sorry Desmostylus. I didn’t think I was actually commenting on the ‘issue’, rather the errant enthusiasm with which the issue was approached.
I’ll make sure that I check with you next time before I dare make a post, if that’s OK with you??
** I’m working on it. One agrees that Spiritus is wrong, but isn’t convinced that my position is necessarily right – he’s said that if he knew professional mathematicians had rigorous demonstrated the argument and I were merely explaining it, he’d have no trouble accepting it and finding it neat, but he’s not willing to commit.
The other has indeed chastized me for lack of rigorousness (and in the ethics thread, stated that my argument is incomplete because I’m taking the Excluded Middle for granted), but not only says that my point is essentially correct but that Spiritus really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
:dubious: You didn’t notice that his claims about what GIT implies contradict the mathematics sources I linked to?
You didn’t notice that his statements about soundness were necessarily unrelated to the debate?
You didn’t see that he couldn’t tell the difference between showing that something is true in (with) a system and showing that something is true in (about) a system?
Hey Desmostlyus, how about making your email addy available via your profile so I can refrain from hijacking this thread?
Or do you have a problem with that?
Or… you could just refrain from hijacking this thread!
Wow! You know, I’ve heard the people at the Straight Dope even have an entire forum for people to call out others who have annoyed them! I think it’s called… The Pit.
Check it out, d00d.
Honestly, man, no. I think your personal lack of rigor is forbidding you from seeing that his statements, when properly qualified, are correct. We’ve got people quite skilled in mathematics on this board and there has been nothing but a minor quibble on a quite irrelevant tangent against him, except for from you. And I am not going to play super-knowledge guy here—I’m honestly out of my league, and found that out to my dismay in my own thread on this very topic—but knowing Spiritus as I do, and what I recall of his background, I think I’m deferring my judgement to him here. KNowing ultrafilter as I do, which is much less, but I’ve never found errors in his presentations either. Of course, again, I’m really not in the position to judge on this topic, but if you ask me, the anwer is no: I didn’t notice errors.
This is, of course, not meant to be a character attack on you, but from what I’ve read here and what I gleaned from external sources I think GIT is the Quantum Mysticism of the mathematical world. I think GEB reached, a lot, and I say this with a lot of respect for Hofstader (if for no other reason than by association with another “reacher” I respect: Dennett). I’ve read some presentations on incompleteness and UTMs, and how the ITs can be formulated there and so on. And while the subject is interesting, I’ve not felt particularly compelled or motivated by any presentations of it.
My problem remains with your—shall we say—equivocation between abstract axiomatic structure and manifested reality.
If the universe is a UTM then where does it get its input? That goes against the definition of the universe as “everything”, doesn’t it?
If it is a UTM and is everything and isn’t getting input but is just “running some program” then who cares about destructive inputs? Not me. That’s for sure. Who cares about states that the universe can never reach? As if GIT was really the limiting factor here anyway.
I see no reason to think the universe is a UTM. I see no reason to think that it would matter even if it was.
I do have a problem with that. Especially given the recent fracas at another board where you used to be a moderator. The behind the scenes communications on your part aren’t helpful.
Nevertheless, I’ve sent you an e-mail. You can respond to that if you wish.
Yes, bring your experts here. I’d love to have a chat with them.
For the record, I don’t know that you’re wrong on everything, and I don’t believe that I’ve ever claimed that. I do think you’re intellectually dishonest, and that you have not provided any support for your any of your statements.
However, the only way you’re going to convince me is to give a detailed proof of some claim. This doesn’t need to be in mathematical language–plain English is fine, subject to two restrictions:
You give precise definitions for any term, and use the term only in that manner. Furthermore, you give precise statements that are completely unambiguous.
You make every step explicit. No “this is trivial/obvious/easy/simple”. If it’s that easy, it shouldn’t be hard for you to write it.
Lastly, paraphrases and restatements are fine for general arguments, but if you want to make a specific claim that statement A follows from GIT, you must deal with what GIT actually says. A “sufficiently strong” theory is one with six very specific properties, and you must work with them.
Let’s start with something very simple. I have a Turing machine that accepts all input. Bearing in mind that this machine does not have a physical realization–it exists only in the mind–how do you propose that we crash it?